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!
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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
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