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  Disorda Interview
interview 0305 added 25.05.05 words: Mike
technical:
QED
On the 19th April, I headed
down to the Suspect Packages and Boombox Distribution
warehouse to meet up with probably the biggest fan of UK hip
hop, the man known as Disorda. He runs two of the most
successful companies within this realm, which means that you can
support your addiction to the best in UK ish with relative ease,
no matter where you live. He also provides a guide to the best
of UK hip hop with his series of mixtapes and his soon to be
released compilation album. Check out what he has to say...
Can you introduce yourself please?
 I’m
Disorda, Suspect Packages.com and Boombox Distribution Network
director, DJ on Itch FM. All round nice guy.
What are you first and foremost,
shopkeeper or DJ?
Neither, I think. I wouldn’t really say I’m a DJ, I’ve never
really gone out to say I’m a DJ. I DJ out yeah, but I don’t call
myself DJ Disorda, never have done. I guess I would have to say
more shopkeeper than, if you want an answer for that question.
But I would say I’m more a new school promoter.
Do you still have to do all the hip hop
stuff in your spare time or are you able to live off it now?
Yeah, living off it now. But it’s taken a good eight to ten
years to get here. I’ve got one person working for me now in
Suspect Packages, and I’ve got two others working full time for
Boombox, beside myself and Skeg, we’re the directors. So yeah,
making a living off it now, but working longer hours now then
when I was working a full time job and Suspect Packages
together. It’s hard work, but it’s worthwhile. We play a classic
album every day to make ourselves realise why we got into this,
which was a long time ago now!
You’ve obviously seen a lot of people
come and go within the scene so how have you managed to do so
well, longevity-wise?
I’m just a nice guy! But I don’t know really. I like to think
I’ve always been honest about what I’ve done and with the
feedback that I give people. Obviously I’m not an artist in that
sense, so in the sense of keeping going it’s purely all I’ve
been aiming to do, which is to get exposure for the UK hip hop
scene. Or the hip hop scene here in the UK, I know some people
don’t like to label it UK hip hop. But that’s basically all I’ve
done and still do to this day. In terms of longevity, I guess
I’ve taken a different route from being an artist, and luckily
been able to make a living out of it, purely be accident.
What’s your honest assessment of the
current state of the scene?
Not enough quality control coming in respect of artists pressing
up vinyl.
[Doorbell rings]
Oh, I suppose we better pause there a second.
[Disorda lets Tufkut into the office so that he can drop off
some records]
OK, after that interruption by Tufkut,
you were talking about lack of quality control.
Yeah, I think generally, I wouldn’t say it’s a rule, but it’s
too easy to press records and it’s too easy to press CDs up and
people need to be a little bit more on point when they’re doing
this. If you’ve got money you can press up a record and put it
out there. Whether it’s any good or not is another thing. And I
think that people need to reassess and be a little bit more
honest with themselves. As a distribution company, we’ve got a
high level of quality control in place. Likewise with Suspect
Packages, I always have some sort of quality control and there’s
a lot of stuff that I turn down. Everything comes through me
first, and if it doesn’t get through me, then… This all goes
back down, doesn’t necessarily have to be us as a distribution
company or Suspect Packages as a retailer, it can be the person
pressing the records, it can be the person who is marketing it,
but foremost, it’s the artist themselves. And there is some
really good stuff out there, don’t get me wrong, but there does
need to be a level of quality control at the artist’s level. You
know, if you don’t think you’re record is as good as your
favourite record at the moment, then why the hell are you
putting it out? But overall, the scene is really very healthy.
“...If you’ve
got money you can press up a record and put it out there.
Whether it’s any good or not is another thing...”
There are a lot of good quality releases, there are a lot more
shows happening. The scene has grown in the last three or four
years, sales-wise. There are a lot more people doing tours,
there are a lot more mix CDs coming out, there are a lot more
eager kids getting up on shit and wanting to emcee. They’ve got
to have the skills though, and work for a good two or three
years doing the open mics and getting their name out. It’s not
just a case of “Yeah, I’m an emcee, I’m gonna press up a record
and put it out and it’s gonna sell a thousand copies”, cos it’s
not basically. Do your groundwork, get your shit sorted first
before you even start considering putting things out. I have
people coming up to me and telling me they’re putting out an
album and I’ve never even heard of them! Not to be big headed
but if you’re gonna put out an album when you haven’t even been
on an open mic, or you haven’t put anything on a mix CD or you
haven’t had any 12s out, no one’s gonna buy your album cos they
don’t fucking know you. It’s a case of building up your rep,
which is something people are overlooking these days. But I
don’t want to sound disheartening, cos the scene is healthy,
it’s a lot healthier than five years ago. And the quality is a
lot better, emcee and production wise, it’s a lot better than it
used to be. And it’s getting recognised, not just in this
country, but overseas as well.
Where does UK hip hop go from here?
 Onwards
and upwards, as I’ve always been trying to push it, furthering
it forward, getting it further afield. It’s just a case of what
we’ve done in setting up a distribution company, cos there’s
never been a distribution company that knows what it’s talking
about with hip hop and funk related products and that, in the
sense of getting it into the independent stores and knowing what
to talk about to the independent stores. And to the chain stores
as well, HMV and Virgin. You know, in the last three years we’ve
managed to get product into these stores whereas it didn’t
really happen before, by people who knew what they were talking
about and by people who went home and listened to the product,
and didn’t go home and listen to fucking gabba! It can only go
onwards and upwards really, cos the foundations are set, we’ve
got the radio stations, we’ve got the right DJs in the right
spots, apart from Westwood, we’ve got the stores wanting the
product, we’ve got the websites, we’ve got the shows happening,
we’ve got the distribution, we’ve got the promotional companies,
we’ve got magazines, we’ve got our own labels. We’re basically
running shit ourselves now, people can’t really fuck with that.
We’re in control, it’s up to us basically to forge our way
forward. Like, the distribution company has been set up purely
for the longevity, I’m not thinking that this is a hobby, this
is actually my career now, I’m looking ten, twenty plus years
down the line, and I hope to be able to give other people the
chance to make a living off it, not just in sales or
distribution or DJing or promotional sides but the artists as
well so that we can get more people like Roots Manuva up there.
How big can it get, or how big do you
think it should get?
How big can it get? I don’t know, a lot of it is on the music,
so if people are making the right music, then the music will
speak for itself. Like I said, the foundations are there, so
it’s all on the music. If the music turns into a load of crap,
which is where the quality control comes into play again, then
that’s gonna backfire and everyone’s gonna turn around and say
what they were saying twenty years ago. But if people have that
quality control in place and do their homework and have the
right product to sell then it can go as big as you want.
“...If you
don’t think you’re record is as good as your favourite record at
the moment, then why the hell are you putting it out?...”
I’d like to get to
the point where we’ve got x amounts of people like Roots Manuva,
making decent enough sales and doing tours, and not just in the
UK but worldwide as well. Who knows how big it can get? I’d like
to say on a large scale, like it is in the States. But saying
that, hip hop music in the States is pop music. Not all of it,
obviously there’s an independent scene there and that’s
surviving. But I would like to be in a position where there are
a lot more people making a living out of it. So let’s see, but
I’ll say it again – quality control!
Well, I guess that kind of answers this
question, but what has been the biggest failing of UK hip hop
over the years?
Yeah, quality control. And people taking it for a joke. And
smoking too much weed, man. But we all smoke weed, I’m trying to
give it up, although it’s not working! But basically,
professionalism. Yeah, people take things seriously when
recording a track but even down to mastering your track, making
sure it’s mastered properly, making sure it’s mixed down
properly, making sure your product looks good and isn’t just
some white label sitting on a shelf. I can appreciate not
everyone has the money to do full colour covers, but it all
helps, it’s not just about the music itself. And once your
product is there, making sure you’ve got a whole three, four
months process after that before you physically get it in the
store, and people don’t seem to realise that, and that’s where
people are lacking in terms of knowledge with what to actually
do with their product when they had it out. People just need to
know what they’re doing with their product, it doesn’t just stop
at the recording studio, there’s a whole other process behind
it. Some people don’t even know what a press release is, and
that scares me! So do your homework and work out what you’ve got
to do to get that product out, to get further than 100 copies to
your mates.
So do artists like The Streets and
Dizzee Rascal really help UK hip hop?
In some ways yes, and in some ways no. I’ve had this
conversation with quite a lot of people, although more from
overseas really. From an overseas point of view, it can help in
that someone might hear Dizzee Rascal and they might not have
even known that the UK has a hip hop scene. Where they’ve been
buried for the last twenty years or so, I don’t know! But if it
entices them to dig a little bit deeper, maybe on ukhh.com or on
Suspect Packages, and see what else there is about, once they
look on Suspect Packages they’ll be fucking blown away if the
only thing they’ve heard is Dizzee Rascal.
“...We’re
basically running shit ourselves now, people can’t really fuck
with that...”
But on the other side of it, I have people from overseas saying
that Dizzee Rascal, The Streets and people like that are hip
hop, and that’s what they’re being marketed as, as UK hip hop,
as they don’t really know how to market it, and the people at
these stupid magazines overseas haven’t got a fucking clue what
they’re writing about and just jump on the latest bandwagon as
they’re doing with grime, and just basically think that it’s hip
hop and that that is what’s going on in the UK, and they’re
totally misconceived and basically they spread that knowledge
into other people’s minds by their magazine and then other
people think the hip hop scene here in the UK is Dizzee Rascal
and The Streets, and I don’t consider it to be hip hop at all. I
can’t stand The Streets to be honest, and I don’t really like
Dizzee Rascal, but that’s just my personal view. I would say
though that overall it doesn’t really help, but if it opens up
other avenues for people to look a little bit further than it
will help.
Can you tell us about your new mixtape/compilation
album? What artists have you got on there and when does it come
out?
It’s out on the 16th May, it’s basically a progression from the
UK Hustlerz mixtapes which people still think I’m doing today,
but I actually stopped doing them in 1999. But basically, it’s a
compilation album, it’s not a mixtape. It’s on CD and vinyl,
it’s a twenty track CD and a fourteen track double vinyl.
Basically, I kept the name UK Hustlerz cos that’s still what it
is really. I could have thought of a different name, but I
wanted to keep the same name going cos people know it, and some
people might get confused thinking it’s a mix CD, but it’s not.
It’s 80% brand new tracks, there are new tracks on there from
Lewis Parker, Skinnyman, Jehst, Braintax, Roots Manuva, Ghost
and Kashmere, MSI & Asylum, Taskforce and DJ Pursuit from
Norway, Skuff, Hoodz Underground, Kapitel, and Foreign Beggars,
and there’s stuff that has come out previously which I feel
didn’t get the exposure or the sales it deserved, so I put them
on there as well.
“...We’re in
control, it’s up to us basically to forge our way forward...”
And there are tracks
that have been previously released either only on 12” and I’ve
put them on my CD version or maybe they came out on CD and have
never been on vinyl before, like the Universal Soldiers track.
The Last Skeptic and Sway, that’s on the CD version of the
album, Kamanchi Sly’s Hung, Drawn and Quartered is also on the
CD version, the IRS tune is on the CD version as well. So yeah,
there are some big dogs on there! And it’s released on the 16th
May, but it might be on Suspect Packages earlier than that. But
it is gonna be worldwide, not just UK, we’ve got proper
distribution for it and we’ve got some very strong pre-sales in
the sense that we’ve sold out the CD version already, and it’s
not even out. This is something I wanted to do years ago, a
proper compilation album, but I didn’t have the resources or the
time, and now I have.
I’m gonna be asking a bit about
mixtapes, as that’s what I thought your new album was, although
it does fit in with the idea of a compilation album, so what
process do you go through in picking tunes? Is it purely stuff
that you’re personally feeling, or do you throw tracks on there
that you know others like but you may not?
 For
my personal stuff, it’s predominantly stuff that I’m feeling,
which is why I put my name to it. But generally, it is also good
to consider other people’s opinions. For instance, with my
album, I played a lot of people the shortlist, some people who
don’t like hip hop and some people who do, and got their
reactions and it helps. But generally, it has to come from
myself. That’s all I’ve ever done, played and promote stuff that
I’m really into. It depends how you’re working it though, if
you’re putting out a mix CD to promote yourself, you need to
have your selection on there, but if you’re putting it out to
promote a lot of the artists then you try and work to that.
Obviously a good mixtape or compilation will have a wide range
of material on there. But it’s got to be straight up bangers
really, otherwise it’s not gonna sell!
You’re first few tapes in the UK
Hustlerz series came out on cassette didn’t they? So how did
putting those together differ to this current album?
Yeah, the last Hustlerz I did, Volume 6 was subtitled Low Budget
Style. And it certainly was, it was literally two turntables, a
tape deck and a CD player, there was none of this computer
malarkey that everyone seems to be running with these days! It
was recorded in my kitchen with the turntables over the sink and
it was literally a microphone up to the tape deck speaker for
some of the drops, it was proper low budget style. Obviously if
I was still doing the mixtapes now they might be done a little
differently. But I still like to do shit that is predominantly
turntable based rather than getting on the computer and mixing
that way, although I know a lot of people do their mix CDs that
way. That’s just the way that it’s all evolved.
“...That’s all
I’ve ever done, played and promote stuff that I’m really
into...”
But obviously the
compilation album was a process of what I wanted to put on it,
and I knew artists that I wanted to put on it and I approached
them and they said either yes or no and then we worked out the
financial side of it with everybody, it’s not a case of people
not being paid, it’s all above board, there are royalties being
involved, it’s a big process, whereas with mix CDs it’s not
always that case. Some people still put stuff out without paying
people, which I think is wrong. But it was a process of
elimination and whittling it down to twenty tracks for the CD
and fourteen on the vinyl, purely for quality control. I
couldn’t put all the tracks on the vinyl as it wouldn’t be good
quality, but some of the tracks have been on vinyl already so
that’s why they made the CD version. There was a lot of stuff I
couldn’t get on the album, purely through people not getting
back to me or just being too busy. But the majority of stuff on
there is hand picked.
What about the running order though?
Obviously with tapes you have the aspect of it having to be
turned over half way through, and in terms of your recent
compilation, how do you come up with a track order?
It’s just a case of playing them back to back and seeing how
they work together, and obviously not playing one really
up-tempo tune next to a really, really slow tune, that doesn’t
really work. I don’t know many people who do mixtapes anymore,
but it’s kind of funny when you play a tape nowadays and it
stops and you ask someone to turn it over, it sounds kinda funny
to say that these days. But yeah, with a mix CD it is all about
the running order, and a lot of people don’t realise that, but
you just have to have an ear for good music. It’s the same when
you’re DJing out really, you need to know what sounds good
together.
Do you think we’ll ever lose the word
mixtape considering the fact that the vast majority, if not all,
mixtapes don’t actually come out on cassette?
Mixtapes forever! I’m actually buying up all my classic albums
on tape, I’ve got the biggest tape collection ever! I think you
can still use the term mixtape even though it’s a CD, I think
people predominantly know that tapes are kind of redundant know.
There is still stuff on tape, obviously not all cars have got CD
players in them, and not everyone’s got a personal CD player.
They might have an iPod, they might not even have a walkman! I
think tapes will become extinct, but I’m gonna revive the tape
scene and start putting albums out on tape!
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