027: Q&A Interview With Mister U
027: Q&A Interview With Mister U
An in-depth exchange with one of London's most dexterous and active DJs
Friends,
For this month’s newsletter, I had the privilege of talking to Mister U, a London based DJ with many hustles to his name. He’s one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met, let alone interviewed, and there’s a lot of knowledge and wisdom to be gained from this edition.
But anyway, let’s get back to business…
Q: Can we start with an introduction? Tell us about yourself and all things Mister U.
MU: “Where do I start? I’m an old man already! I was born and raised in West London – my father is from Hong Kong and my mother is from Malaysia. I’ve spent plenty of time in those two places, plus I lived in Manchester for a bit. I was into music from an early age, initially I was influenced by my older brother – he was a big music guy and was always listening to something. He introduced Michael Jackson to me by showing me the Thriller video – it scared the shit out of me, but at the same time I was captivated by MJ and what he did in that. That started my journey into R&B music – the ‘Dangerous’ album got me into New Jack Swing hard, and from there I moved onto Hip-Hop, and then Soul.
Moving into my teens I fell in with some real music lovers at school – we would hit all the record stores every Saturday and buy different albums and share them amongst each other to save money. Then at university I got a reputation as the go to guy for new music and for mixtapes, not mixing in the DJ sense but people would ask me for compilations of tunes.
After I graduated I started getting into club promotions – I was hitting clubs every week and became well known on the South East Asian scene. The 00s was a big time – there were loads of students coming over from Hong Kong, China, Malaysia etc, plus there was already a big community in London. I ran my own company with a couple of friends, and also worked for other promotions. We booked massive clubs with 3000+ capacities like SEOne and The Coronet (now closed), and sold them out consistently. It was a wild time – I would be selling hundreds of tickets on my own and the phone was constantly ringing!
I ran clubs for around 3 years before I realised that I knew the music as well as, if not better than a lot of the DJs I was working with. This is no sleight on those guys though – they were incredible DJs and pioneers for SEA artists in this country, but my knowledge was definitely not inferior. So I got one of my crew, a DJ called IC5 to give me a quick lesson on beat matching before we opened the club. It was so brief that he doesn’t even remember doing it! But I took that knowledge and started building on it. I would get to venues early and practise on the decks before we opened, and then I started to do opening sets myself. I knew so many people on the scene from my promoting that people started calling me to be a main DJ for their events too, and off I went. The next major event came through IC5 again – he was given a spot on a pirate station in West London called Juice FM. It was near where I lived, so he called me and asked me to join him. Eventually I took over the show myself, and then I got known on the pirate radio scene. I’ve been on three other black-owned radio stations since then, and I’ve recently moved to the biggest one, LWR, where I host a show on their RELOAD channel every Tuesday night from 10-midnight.”
Q: There’s a lot to unpack with you; your work, content, ventures, and passions are an intriguing mix. Can you recall what came first? Did of any of these overlap with one another? Was one a catalyst into other avenues or the decisions you made around what you do, or what you love?
MU: “Music was definitely the first passion. I was spending my pocket money on music when I was 8 years old! By the time I left for University I had over 200 albums and just as many singles. I even insured my CD collection as part of my student accommodation insurance. My mum used to rinse me for it, saying that I was wasting my money, but I built my DJ career on that collection, so I ended up having the last laugh.
I love sport as well, specifically football and basketball. I would say there’s a big crossover between sport and music in general, but basketball is probably the clearest evidence of it. Back in the 90s the NBA released their own mixtapes – they would put together videos of compilations and then commission Hip-Hop and R&B artists to make songs as the background music. You can find them on YouTube, and I even have the NBA Jam Session CD. It’s still a great listen!
There’s also a love of film that I developed from my father. He idolised Bruce Lee and would put on his films all the time. Then I started getting into martial arts cinema – it became one of the few links that I had to my own culture and language. Growing up in the 80s was a tough time for a child of an immigrant family, and watching those films gave me a sense of who I was and where I came from. I carry on my love for that with the Fighting Spirit Film Festival.”
Q: I’ve obviously had the pleasure of meeting you personally, so I could sense your love of music from the way you talked about your journey into DJing, not to mention your excellent knowledge of R&B, Soul and Hip-Hop. How would you describe your own relationship with music? Both in terms of your own taste and choices, and everything beyond that? What’s it like for a DJ trying to strike a balance between creating your own moods and feelings for the listener, versus what their demands might be? How do you find the connection, and if you don’t, what’s the best way to deal with it or solve it?
MU: “I think anyone who loves music has a similar relationship with music that I do. It can make your mood, or fit your mood, it can reflect your innermost thoughts, and give you an outlet to release whatever you’re holding inside, both good and bad.
Being a curator of music changes things completely though. To be a great DJ you can’t just love music, you need to understand it too. You must have the same approach as a musician because you need to be able to manipulate songs in different ways. Listening to music is a skill all by itself and needs to be trained appropriately. There are many different layers to it, and I could write a whole dissertation on it, but I’ll try and use a couple of simple concepts.
Firstly, a DJ needs to understand the technical aspects of music. This isn’t the same as learning to play an instrument, reading sheet music, or writing songs. When I listen to anything now, I don’t care what genre it is, or who’s singing it, I just care about how well the song is constructed, and what it makes feel when I’m listening to it. What is the tone of the song – is it beautiful, is it bouncy, is it calm? Does it have rhythm? I identify those things and then I can use that to decide what kind of sets I can put a song into, or what kind of listeners would like that song.
Secondly you need to put all your prejudices aside. While it sounds simple, it’s a very difficult thing for people. For example, I can bet that nearly all the of people reading this blog will say that music was better back in the day. That is completely and utterly false – music isn’t better or worse than it was however many years ago, it’s just different. Understanding this will completely change your perception of how you listen to music – having an emotional attachment to a song will make you treat other songs differently.
For my last concept I’ll defer to the legendary producer Quincy Jones. He said music needs to be interesting, and when asked to provide an example from his body of work to demonstrate that, he chose ‘Baby Be Mine’ by Michael Jackson. When you listen to the song it’s a lot easier to understand what he means – the song is constantly changing throughout. There’s lots of different elements to it – the twanging guitar riffs, the horns that only come in on the second bridge, the synths in the chorus, the percussion that only shows up on the second chorus, and of course, MJ’s vocals. That principle is something that completely drives how I listen to music now – and of course, a song can be interesting in different ways.
Since I play out, but also on radio, I have to remember all these things when I’m listening to music, and when I’m playing music. When I’m playing out, all my personal feelings are put aside because the crowd doesn’t give a crap whether I like a song or not, they want what they will like and they want to be taken on a musical journey that they will enjoy. I’ve seen many a DJ fall by the wayside because they were too intent on playing what they liked, and ignored how the dancefloor was responding to them. I think my background in club promotion served me very well when I transitioned to DJing, I could already read crowds and feel the vibe of the club, so that made life a lot easier for me.
Radio is different because listeners have different intentions. Radio listeners are more willing to be challenged and want to discover new music. Also, radio listeners are not face to face with you, which means you don’t have to be as scared of them!”
Q: Alongside yourself, I follow a couple of other DJs online as well. I have a cousin who used to get busy on the turntables back in the day too, so I’ve always been in awe of the skills needed to be a great DJ; to command an audience and, essentially, dictate and be responsible for their capacity to enjoy themselves in that given moment. Especially in hip-hop, the DJ is a crucial, borderline sacred role in the culture. How do you see the role of the DJ now? It feels like their presence is few and far between nowadays. In the past, you’d hear regular shot outs to DJs in songs, or heavy involvement in mixtape production and distribution. Maybe I am wrong, so it’d be great to know your thoughts as somebody in the trenches, so to speak.
MU: “Honestly, the appreciation of a great DJ is virtually gone now. There’s many reasons for this, but I guess one of the main reasons is the rise of streaming platforms and the shift to mp3. When I first started out, the main source of new music would be the DJ in a club, or on radio, and that was because of accessibility. Labels would be giving DJs pre-releases so that they could build hype for the track before the actual release. That isn’t required anymore because everyone, no matter where they are, can listen to a track on a streaming platform as soon as it drops.
The other part of this is that the importance of radio is heavily diminished because of streaming. A good example from back in 2000 is Shaggy’s biggest hit ‘It Wasn’t Me’. It initially flopped on release, but then a radio DJ in Hawaii picked it up and started playing it, and then it took off from there. That just wouldn’t happen now.
I would say there’s only one genre now where the DJ is still appreciated, which is Electronic Dance Music (EDM). The EDM scene is the largest party scene in music now, which means that talented EDM DJs can command huge sums of money and a massive fanbase. However, good DJs need to also be producers to keep their names out there, and that isn’t a thing that all of them can do. Also, that scene is also very reliant on the image it projects – glitz, glamour, and all the trappings that go along with it – meaning that celebrities like Paris Hilton can headline major clubs despite having zero experience and virtually no knowledge of music. So you have this weird juxtaposition of big name DJs and celebrities, and everyone who doesn’t fall into one of those categories just gets ignored. It’s also meant that clubbing has become image focused rather than music focused, which again has obvious impacts on the DJs.
Honestly, the people that suffer most are the club DJs who go out there for residencies and smash it every night, only to be dropped because club managers don’t understand the value of the DJ anymore, and just focus on trying to keep their nights as bling as possible. I know loads of amazing DJs who just can’t settle on long term residencies because some boneheaded manager doesn’t realise that the DJ is the one keeping people in the club, not the sparklers on the champagne bottles, or the expensive VIP booths.”
Q: So has the art of DJing lost its appeal nowadays? Have people started to underappreciate it as a role and the artform itself? And is this a problem across music in general, based on your experiences and interactions with others? I think about some of the memes born out of the likes of David Guetta, and how a lot of “influencers” try their hand at this by providing an incredibly simplified, dumbed down DJ service, so it would be interesting to know your feelings towards this as a follow up to the previous question.
MU: “I think there’s still a good appreciation for the artform but it’s become more specialised. It’s a time where there’s tons of subcultures with really loyal fans, and music is no different from that. Mainstream chart music will always have its followers, but it’s possible for an independent artist to build a really strong fanbase and gig regularly – the same could be said for DJs.
It’s great that something like the Red Bull Thre3style exists and is a high profile music event – whatever your feelings are about Red Bull it’s undeniable that they’re contributing to keeping turntablism alive, and giving it a worldwide presence.
One of the things that has really changed the game is the rise of digital DJing, which has made the art far more accessible at a much lower cost. What people always forget is that even though it’s more accessible, that doesn’t mean it’s easier. Picking up a guitar doesn’t mean you’ll turn into Jimi Hendrix, and buying a DJ controller won’t turn you into Jazzy Jeff. People still need to put in the work and learn the craft. Influencer culture means that anyone can go out there and do something and make money but they never earn respect. No one thinks Jake Paul is a good boxer, they’re just playing along because of the show. If people enjoy that, then what does it matter to me? They’re not the people I want to appeal to.”
Q: As far as the music and cultures go for the aforementioned genres, what was it like growing up in London trying to get up-to-date and in the know for artists and different pockets of sounds? I ask this because, having gone through a lot of your Podomatic archives, you cover a lot of sub-genres within Hip-Hop, R&B… etc. Was there a particular movement that grabbed your attention?
MU: “Growing up in London was great because it was so multi-cultural, I had friends from all walks of life and was exposed to loads of different music. However, back in the 80s and 90s minorities gravitated towards each other, so the focus for a lot of us was in the black music scene, since it was growing so massively. I went through the Hip-Hop phase, the R&B phase, then discovered Soul, it was exciting times. I was purely a consumer though – I didn’t roll with any artists and I wasn’t in the dance scene either, so I don’t think I was fully immersed in any particular culture.
I would say the most memorable time was when Garage came out. Clubs were already dying out, but Garage revived the scene in a massive way, and drove the UK music scene in a way that no other genre was able to. It was so edgy, so raw, and importantly, the music was fun. In my 17 years of spinning I can still say that even now, no genre gets a crowd going quite like Garage does.
Something more recent is the comeback of R&B and Soul in the UK. It feels like another golden era for the UK.
My upbringing meant that my tastes are extremely varied – as I said earlier any good DJ should be able to understand what good music is, regardless of the genre, and that means I can enjoy a ton of different music. It’s a great life!”
Q: Let’s switch it up to talk about your song writing exploits. Can you detail what that process is like, and how your DJing and/or music fandom contributes to what you’re trying to do creatively in that department, but also the kind of influence you’d like to have on people collaborating with you? Do other domains of music force you to make extra considerations, or is it a case of compartmentalising this section creativity and it existing separately to your other areas?
MU: “It's been an interesting journey so far. It’s something I was always interested in, but I don’t think I have a particular talent for music writing. I tried to learn guitar when I was younger, but I wasn’t particularly good at it, and once I discovered DJing I stopped completely, since I was so much better on the decks.
I got involved in song writing completely by accident – I was doing a private gig for a friend’s 40th birthday, and there was a woman who was also hired to sing there. We got talking and she took my contact details, and then a couple of weeks later she called me to ask my opinion on some music she had written. So we met up and I listened to it, and I told her straight that I didn’t like her music, and explained why. With most artists, you’d get a punch in the face for doing that, but she liked my honesty, and then asked me what she could do to improve. After that conversation she asked me to mentor her. At first, I started out more like an A&R – I made her listen to loads more music, helped her to develop a style, and then really pushed to figure out what kind of music she wanted to write. Then she started to bring songs to me, and we would do quality control together. I would pick out things that I thought should be changed, and suggest different arrangements etc, and then it eventually became part of the song writing and producing process.
I still don’t write any music, but every song she writes doesn’t get finalised until I have worked on it as well. So when you ask how my DJ life has fed into this – because I have that knowledge of what makes a song good, and knowledge of so many different genres and artists, the way I listen to music and understand it is completely different from her as a singer-songwriter, so my perspective is very useful because it helps her refine her ideas into something accessible. If you listen to her most popular song, Escape, you can tell it’s very different to the music that I play, but that doesn’t matter to me.”
Q: Are there other avenues that interest you where you’d like to test your song writing or DJing abilities? If so, why these specifically? And do you think it’s best to try different things or double down on your specialist areas?
"MU: “At the moment I’m more focused on DJing, but that’s mostly because I haven’t met another artist who I think I could work with. I’ve been DJing for 17 years now and I’m at that stage where I’d rather focus on music that I like and want to play, rather than pandering to a promoter or a commercial audience.
My current focus is to promote more Soul music – there’s been a huge revival in Soul music in the past few years and I think there’s a lot of artists out there who are getting a decent amount of streams, but it doesn’t feel like anyone apart from myself is playing their music anywhere else. I wanted to get these songs into a more public setting, so I’ve recently set up a new night in partnership with Root 25 where I’ll be doing a regular Soul Fridays. That should be starting up again around May time, so keep an eye on the socials for that.”
Q: For sure. As this is a Hip-Hop newsletter, lets change the focus to this now, as I know its another thing that you’re equally as passionate about. Let’s imagine you were given a blank notepad or journal where you had to document all things Hip-Hop related. The music, the culture, the impact it had on you and your life, what it means to you, positive and negative effects personally and overall. Do you think there’d be a theme and commonality that could summarise all of this? Would this be in line with your expectations you may have once had in the past, versus where it is now?
MU: “Funnily enough, the first ever CD I owned was Snoop Dogg’s ‘Doggystyle’. Don’t ask me how I managed to get my hands on it, since I was way underage, but it was the first Hip-Hop album I ever listened to, and it blew my mind. I was barely in my teens and I couldn’t even conceive that there was music that was so raw, so daring, and so real. Then the whole 2Pac and Biggie thing happened, and I was in. What I loved about Hip-Hop back then is that it represented life in a way that no other music could. There were songs about basketball, love, war, gangs – what other genre can claim that kind of range? If was mad I could listen to ‘Straight Outta Compton’, if I wanted to chill I could throw on ‘This DJ’, if I had a crush then ‘Hey Lover’ would be the place to go. I had a friend that passed and Notorious B.I.G had my back with ‘Miss U’.
A commonality that I think a lot of Hip-Hop fans share is that we all know it’s a music that represents. Which is a beautiful thing – you can hear Hip-Hop from all over the world and it will represent the place where it came from. Japan kept the underground scene alive back in the 00s with producers like Nujabes and DJ Deckstream and the music they came out with was so fresh and had so many Japanese influences – to this day their impact is still evident in modern artists. Hip-Hop constantly morphs and changes, for better or worse, and that’s why I love it.”
Q: Indeed. Can you walk us through the Fighting Spirit Film Festival? You’ve built this martial arts films platform from scratch and I’d love to know about the motivation behind this passion. Furthermore, there is of course some cross over between hip-hop and martial arts, with the Wu-Tang being the most prominent example, so could you maybe talk about these two entities’ existence and roles they play with one another and in your personal life?
MU: “Firstly, I want to make it clear that the founder of the festival is the amazing Soo Cole, who is an inspiration to us all. I joined after the first year as the Assistant Director and it’s been one hell of a journey. What attracted me to it wasn’t just my love of martial arts film, it was the vision that Soo had. She wanted to build an event that represented the principles of martial arts too. It wasn’t just about showing films – she wanted to inspire people through those films, promote martial arts culture, and support people making those films. It sounds like a grand vision, but we’re 8 years down the line and still growing, despite receiving very little funding.
We have two events a year; a half day event in Birmingham, and our main festival in London which is an entire weekend. We have a partnership with Picturehouse Cinema, support from industry legends like Cynthia Rothrock and Scott Adkins, and last year, for the first time, we were able to convince some established UK film companies to come on board and support us as well. It isn’t just down to me; we have a core team that has worked with us since 2017 and we all share that same passion for martial arts and film.
Honestly, despite the Wu Tang Clan’s prominence, I had never fully realised the crossover between Hip-Hop and Martial Arts. I had always wondered why Kung Fu films were so popular with the black community, but I only found out the history behind it thanks to this interesting video put together by Josh Toussaint-Strauss, ‘Why Do So Many Black People Love Kung Fu Movies?’. It filled in a lot of the blanks for me, and I was so interested by this that I ended up organising an online seminar during lockdown called ‘The Cultural Impact of Martial Arts Film’ with the afore-mentioned Josh and a few other guests who were also heavily influenced by Martial Arts Film.
Hip Hop for life, Kung Fu for life!”
Q: Finally, can you tell us about some of your favourite artists, albums and films to tie all of this together for our readers before we sign off?
MU: “It would take me too long to break this down so here’s a small list.
Classic albums:
Brown Sugar – D’Angelo
Dummy – Portishead
Rhythm Nation 1814 – Janet Jackson
Thriller – Michael Jackson
Things Fall Apart – The Roots
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill – Lauryn Hill
II – Boyz II Men
Ready To Die – Notorious B.I.G
The Magnificent – DJ Jazzy Jeff
Urban Hang Suite – Maxwell
Thug Life: Volume 1 – 2Pac
More recent albums:
Unpolished - Malia
Mother – Cleo Sol
Boys & Girls Mixtape – edbl
DLUXLIFE – Charlie Taft
Y5 – Yuna
Love Me/Love Me Not – HONNE
Run Home Slow – The Teskey Brothers
S:INEMA – SAAY
KISS – THREE1989
Ology - Gallant
Black Materia: The Remake – Mega Ran
Films:
Drunken Master 2
Castle In The Sky
Back To The Future
White Men Can’t Jump
Terminator 2
Once Upon A Time In China 2
A Better Tomorrow 2
Big Trouble In Little China
Wheels On Meals
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Dodgeball
Airplane
The God Of Cookery
Q: Any final thoughts and comments you’d like to put out there before we finish?
MU: “You can find me on Twitter or Instagram @MisterUDJ – I have a regular Tuesday night radio show on LWR Reload from 10pm to midnight BST, or there’s my archive with mixtapes and old shows. If you have any love for action movies then please come and check out the Fighting Spirit Film Festival and say hello!”
