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Breakdancer, DJ, producer and label owner, DJ Junk from the 'Second to None' breaker crew has lived and breathed hip-hop for the best part of the last 18 years. The Twizt managed to keep him still long enough to catch a few brief words.
How did you first get into hip-hop and breaking?
1) Amen Brother -The Winstons
1) Its The Music - Magnum © 2002 ukhh.com
interview
0116 added
22.08.02 words Twizt
It was early 1984, I was 14 and going to the local under 18s' disco and I saw some kids bodypopping. I was fascinated and wanted to learn, so I started practising arm-waves, moonwalks etc. Later on Breakdance The Movie came out and I saw proper breaking for the first time, with windmills etc and I thought it looked amazing so I started to try and learn it. About the same time the Street Sounds Electro albums started to come out and when I heard Electro One I loved it straight away; I couldn't stop listening to it.
I can still remember the excitement of those days - I'd heard nothing like it. Do you think that feeling has gone since hip-hop thing became such big business?
Yeah, definitely, and that's what has put me off it in the last few years. When the first stuff I heard came out it was ground-breaking and sounded new and exciting. That happened all through the 80s and early 90s for me; each new act seemed to bring out a new style.
That's before it blew up into the multi-million dollar business it is now, a lot of the stuff I'm hearing at the moment is like some record boss at the 'Very Big Record Company' has got hold of hip-hop, cleaned it up and marketed it to the MTV and pop market. Take Eminem: His new record doesn't even sound like a hip-hop track. I don't hear any breaks, I don't hear any scratches. Hip-hop has gone mainstream but lost a lot of flavour in the process… that's my opinion anyway. I know others will think differently but there are one or two new things I hear that are good, that still have that element that attracted me in the first place. Diamond D's stuff sounds wicked, breaks and soul loops with a wicked voice; Wu Tang's stuff still sounds hard, plus tracks scattered about that I hear. I'm not always up on the names of them though, I'm afraid to say.
How did you move into DJing?
Kind of a natural interest, not for the reasons kids start DJing these days; fame etc. In those days, you didn't get the celebrity DJ, they were either a Dave double-decks down the local night club or an American scratch DJ like DJ Cheese. I'd been to Freestyle 85 and seen the Imperial Mixers and DJ Cheese at UK Fresh 86.
Must have been a great experience
Yeah, it was incredible, when you got to a jam, every element would blow you away - the breaking, the music, the graffiti, even the fashion. So I'd seen a lot of scratch DJs and was interested but had no decks. Some of my friends at the time were cutting up on cheap decks. I tried this with poor results. Then around '87 my brother bought two Technics 1200s and I was on them all the time, cutting up two copies of the Ultimate Breaks and Beats and mixing Electro. I used to mix up tapes to break to. From then onwards I started collecting hip-hop and soul records seriously. A few years later I got my own decks.
How did the Second To None crew come about?
We had the Second To None Crew from 1985 onwards. Tony and I were in it at that time
but there were other members then, some of which gave up. The current line up came in around '86-'87 and it's been like that ever since.
And the label?
The label was started in 1996, kind of by accident. I'd been making breakbeat mix tapes on a sampler in '93, just to dance to, and I went to Germany in '94 and took about 60 tapes to a jam, stood outside with a ghetto-blaster and sold all the tapes. Next year I went to Battle Of The Year, this time with a new tape and more copies. I sold all the tapes again and did this for the next few years.
In '96 I took all the best bits of my breakbeat tapes, put them on a DAT and got a vinyl album cut. In between the tracks I put some film and hip-hop samples - all the bits you want to cut up but worry about wearing out the originals. I only had 10 test presses printed at this point as I wasn't sure if
there was a market for this kind of record. Then I heard a mix tape from Switzerland and it had a track from the album on it. I was amazed as there were only 10 copies out which I'd sold at Battle Of The Year.
I got my ass into gear and made a cover and a name. I called it 'Breaker Breaks One', and thought it would be a good idea to use the Second To None name on the record like I did with the tapes. I got 500 pressed and sent one to a distributor, who really liked it. Even though they were a drum and bass
distributor they sold the 500 and ordered more. In the end I sold about 10,000 of that album and decided to become serious about doing the Second To None label.
'...I've always felt the UK can be a bit cold towards its own artists. I've always got the impression that they consider it less worthy than the US stuff...'
What do you make of the current UK scene, after being around back in the days of Hijack and Hard Noise when we all thought it was going to blow up?
Yeah, I was around then, I met all those guys. We did a music video for Son Of Noise and we used to dance at Blade's early gigs, in some crap places but he always got it rocking. The trouble came in the early '90s with the rave explosion and UK hip-hop got stigmatised as being not as good as the US, so labels weren't interested in home-grown acts. The UK scene has come back from those days, the sound is different now. Personally I preferred the UK hip-hop of the early '90s to now - but that's
just my taste. The stuff then was more B-boy orientated and those tracks were getting a lot of play at the European jams. 'Untitled' is massive in Germany, so is 'Can You Relate' - DJ Mink.
It does seem that mainland Europe has been more open to UK hip-hop than our domestic market.
I've always felt the UK can be a bit cold towards its own artists. I've always got the impression that they consider it less worthy than the US stuff. In Europe and other places they love the English stuff, I've even found that myself with the stuff I've been putting out, not that much sells in the UK, but I sell loads in Europe, Japan, Australia and even America. I think that's what killed the enthusiasm for those early UK groups, they didn't get that much support from their own country.
Why do you think the music style has moved away from more B-boy orientated tracks?
Because the majority of hip-hop fans don't break, can't break and haven't got that same sense of funk B-boys (and B-girls) have, so the music is aimed at them 'cos they are the ones who will buy more units. The 'B-boy music scene' and modern hip-hop are almost two separate things now. Newer hip-hop is not good for breaking and Jo Public who are getting into rap from seeing it on MTV can't dance to the stuff B-boys dance too. I'll give you an example: I was at Funkin' Pussy the other night and Dump was on the decks. He played 'Give The DJ A Break' and it sounded wicked. I went up to the decks and said to him "This tune sounds wicked out there," and he said, "Yeah, it does but some girl just asked me if I could play something they could dance to". I said "What, they can't dance to that?!".
Give us a plug for what you're working on right now.
I got a few things lined up for the label: First Rate's second battleweapon is ready to get pressed, followed by Trouble With Funk 2 and B-Boy Anthems 6. I've also got a 12" that I want to press up soon. It's a remix of C.R.E.A.M by The Wu Tang Clan, one mix by myself, breakbeat style and an ambient mix by Wax Buzzard from Second To None. I hope to get all these out by the end of this year. Not going to be easy, putting out records is very demanding.
DJ Junks top five breaks?
Just for everyone, I'll do two lists - known and unknown.
Known breaks
2) Apache - Incredible Bongo band
3) Give It Up and Turn It Loose- James Brown
4) I Can't Stop- John Davis Monster Orch.
5) Funky Music Is The Thing Pt2 - Dynamic Corvettes
Unknown
2) Meltingpot -Dickey Whiteman & The Sessions.
3) Armadillo -Soul Destroyers
4) Keep On Dancing - Commordores
5) Ray Davis - Can't remember the title of this one but its a killer!
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