j*9 interviews Lucy Pink

J*9: How did the Diesel Radio Station Start?
Lucy Pink: It all started in May 2008 and it was a pop up project and we were above the Amersham Arms in New Cross and it was just meant to be for 6 weeks. The idea was that we got bands, musicians, DJs and artists to host their own shows where they come in and take over. Then we went off air and were never to come back again, but in September 2008 they asked us to come back for another 6 weeks and then we went off air again. In April 2009 we started off again and we have been going ever since. Its kind of varies between 6 weeks being really full on and the few months with one live show a day.

J*9: So how did you get involved?
Lucy Pink: Emma our Creative Director put the idea to Diesel and we had done a similar thing for Bestival and I have been doing that for 6 years. I worked with Emma and the team on the Bestival radio as well so when this came up, she picked her radio team and I was on that list. I was working full time when the first project happened and my work gave me six weeks off because they knew this is what I wanted to be doing. The second time it came up, I thought I can’t ask them again but then I thought I could ask them again. I know this is really cheeky but I want to go do it again they were like yeah go do it! It was like having a family as a work place who were so supportive.

J*9: What has been the response since you first started the project?
Lucy Pink: It’s been huge, huge, and huge. When they know about it they like this is great. When the artists come down to do their show they are like we have had the best time. Or people who come as guest see the space and feel the vibe, they like I want to come back and do something here. Dawn Pen did that recently she was like when you are going to get me to do a show? I was like anytime, she came and guessed with Roots Manuva. She just dropped by but after spending the night here she was like I want to do one. As it is Internet based we are getting a good international response and it is not just listeners from the UK. We have done broadcasts out in New York, which was insane, Berlin and Milan and venturing out here there and everywhere. When they [artists] are doing their show we guide them we don’t tell them what to do. They will be like can I play this really random record that I found and we will be like of course you can.

J*9: Is there a set format or is it down to the artists?
Lucy Pink: It is completely down to the artists as the shows are one-offs. I do a weekly show for Diesel and Tom Ravencroft as well we are in-house producers but every other show was one-off. It’s not that format of breakfast or drive time, its completely random you could have Drum & Bass at nine o’clock in the morning, or Smooth Jazz at eleven at night. You don’t really know what is going to happen throughout the day, which is pretty cool.

J*9: What guests have you had on the show?
Lucy Pink: The one show that stood out was the Banana Clan showcase. We had Roots Manuva, The Banana Skins Bands, Ricky Rankin, Jimmy Screech. Roots had guessed on my show and I was like why don’t you do your own show. So he came down to do his own and took over the space and made it into a performance area. Roots had invited Dawn Penn she turned up with her guitarists and they rocked with this full live show and were being broadcasted at the same time. Everyone had so much fun; it was like friends coming together to do an event.

J*9: What were the highlights?
Lucy Pink: Being in New York was the biggest, I got to interview Consequence and Ryan Leslie these huge super stars out there which was mind blowing. I got to link with the End of the Weak out there and did some stuff with them. In show wise there have been so many!

J*9: Did any guests surprise you?
Lucy Pink: I think the most comedic and random one had to be Kashmere and DJ Ghost. They were using stuff here like xylophones and random instruments that you find at children’s parties they were not even trying to be musical. Dan Greenpeace and DJ Excalibah were getting involved it was like they were at their mates house having a laugh. We keep things under control but we are like do whatever you like. Sometimes it can go the other way, people turn up and you think they may do one thing but come with a complete band. I thought Speech Dubelle was coming in for an interview and she turned up with a full live band. This is fantastic but now I need to run around the studio and set everything up.

J*9: How did you get into radio?
Lucy Pink: I started at uni and I got involved straight away. I started spending more time on radio than my degree. I did a weekly show there and it built up and we were getting sponsorships from local record shops that gave us all our music. I guess that was how I got into hip-hop, but I was more drum & bass back then. When I left I came to London and did hospital radio and did just as much as I could. Starting making pod casts, going out on the scene, interviewing people, I guess I saw it as practice and to get to where I am. Practising and perfecting my craft and just meeting people, understanding it all, I’m not there yet, I have still got a lot more learning to do.

J*9: How long you been on radio?
Lucy Pink: Seven years, it has only been in the last 2-3 years that it has become more established and more regular. There is still so much more to do and I write my to do list every day.

J*9: What items are on your to do lists?
Lucy Pink: Perfecting my editing and DJing skills. I am more a radio DJ than live a DJ so practising my mixing so I can do gigs. I don’t want to be one of those DJs that are really bad! I just want to get the show built up and not miss any opportunities.

J*9: Are you more into indie radio or something major like the beep?
Lucy Pink: I would love to do something like the BBC because that is like the top point. I enjoy doing this [Diesel FM] and I love doing this and I’m seeing where it can all go and what happens. It just the case of contacting people and getting everything perfected. If 1Extra came knocking, I’ll be hell yeah! Nothing is really permanent it is always leading to other stuff.

J*9: Do you remember your first show?
Lucy Pink: It was awful! I was co-presenting with this guy who is still a friend of mine. Listening back to them I sounded really nervous and a bit false, I guess you are your biggest critique. But with our shows we really loved music, once we started talking about music it sounded really natural. It was those opening links, I think because I was really nervous. But show really developed and they kept us going for three years and we had the prime time slot. Someone must have thought it was all right but when I listen to him or her I cringe!

J*9: I think it’s the case of listening to your own voice, I personally hate it!
Lucy Pink: But you have too! Especially when I have done my pod cast, I need to arrange it in way that makes sense to the listener and just ignore the fact that you hate the sound of your own voice. Now I do it a lot, to work out where things can be improved or can’t be said. When you are just talking you don’t realise how often you would say a certain word or phrases. It’s like oh my god I just said wicked 50 times in half an hour and it sounds really shit.

J*9: How do you know when listeners are feeling the music?
Lucy Pink: Feedback, people using social network sites like twitter, facebook, my space sending in comments and people are responding straight away. With my show as well, there is a lot of underground and up coming artists so we get feedback from them and get sent lot stuff. The show it is really different from a DJ set, so I hand picked all my music or get sent stuff and filter through and see what I like. If I have a guest on I will play a lot of their stuff in the interview. I don’t plan to start off chilled and then heavy; it kind of just bounce around and that is what I love about radio.

Check Lucy Pink on:
www.dieselumusicradio.com
http://lucypink.podomatic.com
www.myspace.com/lucyadam

The Female MC by Krista Keating

The female MC. She exists. I know she does. I've seen her at my local open mic. I've seen her on cheesy reality shows. I've heard her on college and independent radio. I've seen her at female MC showcases. I've read her flows on web cyphers. I've seen her on My Space. But how come I don't hear her on KMEL or see her video on MTV or BET? Yeah, I can catch some out dated joint by Lil' Kim or Foxy Brown and Lauryn Hill's flows never get old, but, where is the new generation of female MCs?

It's a man's world. I get this. Men run and ruin this world at their will. Women clean up the mess, however that may manifest itself. Hip Hop, the progressive counter-culture that we may be, still subscribes to sexist values that choke the female MCs voice. The male dominated industry of Hip Hop still lacks faith in the female MC.

A few weeks ago I was at a function when a few men started to talk about Hip Hop. This issue having been on my mind for awhile now prompted me to tell the men that there are no new female MCs on the radio and quite frankly Hip Hop, the industry, doesn't seem to give a hoot. The response, by one Bay Area MC, was "Who gives a shit? If there were females dope enough to be heard, they would be." His response angered me. There are most certainly female MCs trying to be heard who are dope enough to be put on. And there are most certainly wack male MCs getting breaded out for spitting garbage!

One might say that just like the women's liberation struggle, only women can uplift women. Thus, the responsibility of putting female MCs into the mainstream falls on the shoulders of women. But the truth is that the heads of major labels, major radio stations are not women. The labels are run by men. It's a man's world.

So, just like with the women's struggle for equality, the challenge to put talented female MCs into the mainstream, requires that men join our cause. If the same ol' cookie cutter gangster, ride or die female MC is what the mainstream allows for, why haven't we had a new one of those in few years? What's the problem?

The entertainment biz is cutthroat. It's musical chairs, there's never enough room for everybody to play. If you are trying to blow up as an MC, the threat that the next MC will take your spot is real, and can happen at any given moment. The public fan base is wishy-washy and easily distracted, often only offering unconditional loyalty after your dead and gone. Investment into an MC can be risky. But with no female MCs to speak of, why not take the leap? Why not offer up something new to a male gangster MC saturated radio line up? Isn't that why Lil' Wayne gave us Drake or why T-Pain resurrected the auto-tune, to come new? The same shit over and over gets played out, that's why T-Pain's auto-tune craze is already falling off.

I am a grown woman. I have kids to raise. The truth is a pain I need in order to arm my children for the real world. The reality that it's a man's world doesn't distract me from other truths, such as, women have the right to be heard, even if it unsettles their men's world.

The truth is that a crop of female MCs to shake up the game would be both a wise financial and cultural investment into the future of Hip Hop. Let's step our game up!

Text: Krista Keating
Check Krista on:
http://www.jzybelle.blogspot.com

J*9 interviews Diss Miss of Dutty Girls

J*9:Tell me, why did you call yourselves ‘Dutty Girl’?
Diss Miss: ‘Dutty Girl’ wasn’t a crew name, but it was a club night that I’d launched 6 years ago. I liked the name because it just seemed to sum up what I was trying to do with the night. Of course not everybody will take it in the same way as I meant it, it just seems to resonate with people, and that’s what a name ideally needs to do! I was doing bar work in a Jamaican pub in Bristol, The Star and Garter. The landlord there is nicknamed ‘Dutty Ken’ my friend who also worked there wrote ‘dutty girl’ really small on the corner of her T-shirt. I’d noticed it, and I said: ‘Please, please, I have to have that name for my night!!’ I really liked it and it’s all a bit of fun really! The name is similar to how Missy Elliott took the name ‘bitch’ and used it to talk about her, switched it and made it positive. Calling ourselves ‘Dutty’ was a risk of course; some people don’t get it at all!! It’s about owning your own sexuality as a woman (yawn, yawn I know!), but we really are truly ourselves, just normal girls!! We don’t believe you have to act like either sluts or tomboys to be accepted in hip-hop or bass driven music. Hopefully we are just the happy medium!



J*9:What has the reception been like to Dutty Girl?
Diss Miss: Really, really good! We have been lucky to do a lot so far and have had some great experiences supporting other acts and doing a bit of traveling. We also had a lot of success with our regular club night. We had some great acts come down over the five years like; No.Lay, Tor, C.Mone, Tali, DJ Sarah Love, Graziella and more. We’ve scaled down to do a small monthly crew night now because it was all just so much work, and we had to prioritise. We have more time to get on with our studio stuff, which needed to take precedence for now. We’ve done a few festivals and carnivals so far, and this year we’re getting ready to hit Bloc Weekender in March with all our own material, we can’t wait to blow up the spot! It’s one of our first chances to bring our finished tracks to a big audience, up until now we were more of a DJ/MC thing, now it’s more of a finished act.

J*9:How do you all collaborate with each other?
Diss Miss: DJ Dazee and I work together on the production, using Logic mainly to make the backing tracks for the MCs and Singers. They have a lot of lyrics and songs that are ready for beats so we’re just keeping the instrumentals coming to keep up with them at the moment! Sometimes they tell us what kind of track they want, or they give us the lyrics so we can make a track to go with it, and sometimes we just make a track and give it to them to do something with. We all work together in different ways though, whether it’s DJing together, making mix tapes, coming up with song ideas, we’re just all good friends really, so all the ideas come from just hanging out together and acting really stupid (which probably gets really annoying for other people!

J*9:You are perhaps one of the few female hip-hop collectives comprising of the 4 elements, what was your aim with this?
Diss Miss: To be honest that was always my aim, but it hasn’t quite worked out like that. We have DJs, Producers and MCs but are still yet to bring in Graf writers and Girls. Over the years I’ve met some girls that either graf or break-dance but we’ve never really gelled in to a crew yet. I think that the girls that are in the crew mainly came together because of the music, it’s our first true love and the relationships just happened. If we were to meet B-girl or graf girls that were into the same music and had a similar attitude to life then I think it would definitely work. But the possibility is always there, we could easily bring together a lot of girls from all elements to represent the Dutty Girl ethos and do a J*9: A as a crew and individually you have supported some big names like Estelle ?uest love, Dj Jazzy Jeff, how did that happen?
Diss Miss: Yes, it’s been fantastic! I supported Est’elle myself, as a DJ that was great fun! It was few years ago now, before she went so big! But I had a good chance to meet her and even interviewed her, she was a really, really nice person! I’m so glad to see a UK female mc/singer make it so big! I think it must all be down to her great attitude on life! I supported ?uestlove last year too, he is a real hero of mine so that was something else, he was so lovely, I could hardly speak to him much though as I was so nervous of playing just before him! Generally, I guess we’ve been lucky and we’ve built up our act and our reputation well, so a lot of people in Bristol and beyond are hearing about what we do and booking us.

J*9:What is your favorite genre of music?
Diss Miss: If you had asked me that question five years ago I would have said ‘Hip Hop’ at the drop of a hat! I’m still tempted to, but now I’m so much more versatile in what I like. I think good music is good music, and obviously we each have our own perception of what that is, but luckily some of us do agree on it! I’m definitely big on baselines, I love Reggae, and I guess a lot of what I like is some kind a derivation. So if my life depended on it and I could only listen to one genre ever again, it would probably be that!

J*9:What was the first record you bought?
Prince – Purple rain!

J*9:How did you first get into hip-hop?
Diss Miss: My most prominent memory of it is when I was about 13, my best friend’s brother was driving us home from school and was playing a ‘2 Live Crew’ album in his car. I was hooked from there on! I was just amazed with what they were saying and knew I had to find out more! I’d already heard some popular hip-hop of course but that was my first taste of some real underground stuff. I guess the obsession started from then on.

J*9:How did you first start DJing?
Diss Miss:I first started DJing in the late 90s, I was getting into hip-hop more and more and just started to amass a collection of records. Any serious record collector knows that real compulsive need to just HAVE certain records and the NEED to just keep on collecting! So I ended up with a massive collection over time. I also had some good friends that DJ and I used to go to their nights and parties all the time, and although I loved what they played I’d noticed that quite often they would lose the crowd as there would often be a dip in the vibe when they weren’t really playing the right tunes to keep us dancing. It frustrated me and I realised I would be much happier behind the decks than I was on the dance floor. That way I would be able to keep the tunes coming and keep on dancing too!



J*9:What is more important, beats or lyrics?
Diss Miss: Totally equal, a good balance of the two would be perfect! But, if I’m hearing something new I look for innovation in a track

J*9:What are the key ingredients of getting the crowd going?
LDiss Miss:t’s all about reading the crowd, it seems obvious to say but some people still don’t get it I guess! You have to be true to yourself and play what you think is truly good of course, but you really do have to play for others. I’ve played all sorts of crowds and I think it’s at least 50% about being prepared for anything, making sure you have back-ups in your bag! I think I’m a versatile DJ I may go to a gig expecting to play loads of new dubstep you’ll get there and realise it’s not going to go down well, so I’ll end up playing dancehall or something. But at least the people are happy and they’ve danced. I can’t stand when DJs are so bloody minded they want to play all the fresh dub plates they have and don’t care if people are getting into it.

J*9: You also run female hip-hop nights are it important that they’re specific events just for women?
Diss Miss: The nights we used to run did involve mainly female acts, but there would generally always be some male input on the night, whether it was for the open mic or whether they were actually on the poster itself. But it was always important to do it mainly as a female thing as it was about showcasing female talents and giving the girls their own platform for that. The crowd liked it because of the lack of ego; machismo and boisterousness that you might expect at a lot of male led hip-hop nights. Some girls find it very hard to come up against the guys and that is not because they aren’t as good, but it’s just that females are often less aggressive in their approach and much more humble generally, so they find it hard to fight for the spotlight sometimes.



I used to think it was very important to have it all separated like that, and I guess it was, just to give the girls the opportunity, but I’m a little bit less bothered now to be honest, I think we’ve done it for long enough now! I used to be on this whole-hearted mission to get women more noticed in hip-hop! And to some extent I guess we did, but now it’s time for us to put our own music first and stand up in the music scene regardless of our genre. The mission is the same though. I just realised after a while that we could put on night after night in Bristol and not make much of a difference to the big picture, where as we can release our own tunes and start a revolution! Ha ha!

J*9:Do you feel compromised to play other female hip-hop stuff?
Diss Miss:To be honest, I would never play anything because I felt I should. I’ve built up a great collection of female hip-hop, because I was interested in knowing what had come before, but I don’t play much of it out. My mantra as a DJ is to play good music that people want to dance to. I’m not a radio DJ or a chill out DJ. I play so that people can dance! I would be more likely to play some ‘Salt and Pepa, Missy Elliott or JJ Fad’ in my set than some Jean Grae, although I probably have more real respect for her as an artist than the others, if that makes sense! I’ll listen to Jean Grae at home, and when I’m out I play what works on the dance floor. There’s always room for innovation or a wildcard in my sets but a lot of female hip-hop is not dance floor worthy sadly. That’s why with Dutty Girl we do make music for dance floors; we’re not moaning on about our hormones and trying to be quirky all the time.


J*9:As women in hip-hop is it our responsibility to support each other to build a community?
Diss Miss: Absolutely! It’s everybody’s responsibility to build healthy relationships in life anyway and it’s always important to support people and build regardless. Where women in hip hop are concerned it becomes just as - if not more important, like any minority group we need to have networks and support for each other. I find it really sad when some women don’t see it the same way. I guess we have that thing of being so few and far between that some believe there isn’t going to be enough slices of pie to go round, so they get nervous and on the offence all the time. It’s just not productive though is it?



J*9:You have your own shop, how did that kick off?
Diss Miss: I started the Dutty Girl shop not long after I had started the club night; it was something I just fell into really. I’d been ill and had had to take time out of work, so as I was getting back on my feet I was wondering what to do, I knew that hip hop was what I needed to do with my life (as it were!!), but I had to find something that would keep me busy and make me money day to day. One day when I was down at the record shop in the market, the guy there, who I knew quite well, suggested that I rent a shop, as the unit next to his was coming up for lease. It just felt right, so without much thought I did it! I started selling vintage clothing, some customised clothing I made myself and I got some Dutty Girl merchandise made up – hoodies, t-shirts etc. It worked for me because it felt like it was all still incorporated into the music still. We’ve moved now to a bigger shop and I have a business partner, so it’s great having someone to share it all with and it’s a much bigger space. I love having a window to display stuff too! We launched our website recently and the online shop is coming very soon!

J*9:Do you have any up coming projects?
Diss Miss: We are working on putting out an EP and we’ve just started working with a manager so things are looking good. We’re putting together a line-up for next month’s Weapon of Choice night here in Bristol, which is kind of like Bristol’s ‘Secret wars’. It’s an all-female line up again so that should be really fun, and there are a couple of really good female writers doing the boards, so that’s really exciting. Other than that we’re just hoping for lots of festival action this year and we’re getting on with studio stuff. I think 2010 could be really good for us! Starting with Bloc Weekend!

Images
Group picture: DJ SafeSoul, MC Sarah B, Singer Klair, DJ Izzy, DJ Diss Miss, DJ Dazee

Check out the Dutty Girls on:
http://www.myspace.com/duttygirlmusic
http://twitter.com/DuttyGirl
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dutty-Girl/21513380633?ref=ts