IN CONVERSATION: Chrome
Continuing on from Junior Disprol and Evil Ed, the next full-length ‘in conversation’ from HEADZ-zINe follows. This week, I am delighted to present Chrome, one of the hardest-working artists in UK hip hop music and beyond. Like Junior Disprol and Evil Ed, Chrome’s work spans four decades, as he broadens his musical journey with his band, Chrome+. The article below was originally published in HEADZ-zINe 2.3 earlier this year.
(Adam) It’s great to chat Mike, it has been too long! So, are you still doing your driving instructor game?
(Chrome) No, it’s been two years now I've not been a driving instructor, I'm just living off DJing.
Wow.
And you know, not saying making music or being a musician as a living, but just as a DJ. The thing is, as a DJ I’m doing bar work and clubs and functions, so I’m basically having to play very middle of the road, but it’s paying well, so yeah.
But that’s good, I had noticed that you’d upped your … well, I wouldn't say upped your DJ game, because of course you’re extremely good and we’ll come on to that. But you seem to be doing more in that realm, so that makes sense if that’s your focus at the minute.
Yeah, I’m doing like three gigs a week at the minute. So, you know it’s been good this year especially, it’s been really full on, which is great, non-stop bookings and so on. So, Christmas period coming up … very busy. Loads of nasty, drunken staff parties and so on.
People waving their phones shouting, “Can you play that?”
All of that. Yeah. It can be taxing, but it’s also really good fun at times.
I guess you’ve just got to embrace it, don’t you, in that way?
I have to stay very current with what happening musically. So, I’m quite up on my Afro beat; new stuff. Do you know what I mean?
Well, there can be worse things to be having to keep current with, you know?
I’ve DJ’ed all my life and I just really like music, you know, I love music. Do you know what I mean? As we all do and you know, I’m deep into my jazz and I'm deep into my reggae and I’m deep into my African music and beyond. But with that I’m also OK with listening to pop music and the middle of the road mainstream stuff. I can deal with it, and I don’t mind bopping about playing a bit of chart music if it’s gonna pay me well, I’m OK with that.
Yeah. I get that. And I think that, I don’t know about you, but my mindset changed when I had kids in that way, you know, my kid’s almost six and he’s just mad into musicals, you know, Disney stuff. And when you listen to some of that stuff, it’s well put together; when you come to it, you just forget that it’s Disney or that it’s from a cartoon or whatever.
‘Moana’!
That’s exactly the one I was thinking of. Yeah!
Just crazy, really, really good, the ‘Encanto’ one as well.
They’re really well-made pieces of music. So, yeah, I’ve been there and done all that, you know? It’s good, then I'm like, can we get Skinny Boys on now, though, you know, ‘Rip the Cut’ …
Not one of their hardest then? Just ‘Rip the Cut’ …
Yeah, I should go with ‘Feed Us the Beat’, right? You know what I mean? Haha.
It’s funny, I do the same. I'll think ‘what will make him laugh?’ So I stuck on ‘Beat Box is Rocking’, and he was like, “ooo what's that?” And he started getting a bit interested in beatboxing. Then I played him ‘The Show’ and he was like, “Oh, it’s too long. It’s really slow.”
Greg Nice ‘Three minutes of Beat Box’ …
Yeah, absolutely, haha. So now we’re talking about rap records, what’s the first thing that you remember in terms of hip hop?
It’s the classic, isn’t it? All our age era, we all go back to that ‘Buffalo Gals’ moment on Top of the Pops. I have a real good memory of it, of seeing it, you know, sitting in my living room with my brother and my mum, as we did every Thursday night at seven o’clock, and this video comes on and you're like, ‘What is that?’ I’d never seen anything like it, ‘What? What are they doing with the record?’ And the next day going into the school playground and kids trying to break dance. That was the memory for me.I didn’t know what it was, but that’s what hip hop was for us. I do remember my brother trying to body pop to ‘Rockit’ too, I had a K-Tel compilation double album of chart hits and I think ‘Rockit’ was on that. He’d seen popping at school. So, my brother being four-and-a-half years older than me, he was seeing this stuff, and I was still in middle school. We lived in the Midlands just outside of Stoke then. There was obviously a bit of a breaking scene already, or popping scene; a robotic scene, I suppose you’d call it. Also, seeing Jeffrey Daniel from Shalamar; I’m pretty sure I’ve heard you say the same, right?
Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s interesting, isn’t it, because we think we pinpoint something and then when we have an open conversation about it, it feels like there were many different things happening at the same time. We were just given clues. I didn’t see the Jeffrey Daniel thing, but I remember the aftermath, I suppose, like when you’re talking about people trying to break the next day in school. I lived in a small village, and there was a tiny youth centre where only about fifteen of us went because the village didn’t have many kids.There was this kid who was a couple of years older who turned up with white gloves on one day, and he was doing robotics and popping to ‘The Model’ by Kraftwerk. That would have been ‘82, it’s the lived memory as much as what we were seeing on TV. Another one, it’s a bit later, RAH Band’s ‘Clouds Across the Moon’, and the video with the android telephone operator doing robotics and popping.I remember it resonating with me and I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, we’re doing that at school’; it’s linking it together, I think, especially when you don’t live in Central London, Manchester or Birmingham.
Yeah, it’s funny, isn’t it? Because I was listening to Bucks Fizz, Shakin’ Stevens, Adam and The Ants, you know, maybe some Madness. And even though, when ‘Buffalo Gals’ came along I remember my brother (Wayne) bringing it home. Pretty soon after that, he brought home ‘Electro 1’. So, it would have been ‘83, I suppose, and I still have it. I was like, this music’s amazing. It’s crazy. Totally different to everything else I’ve been listening to, like ‘Making Your Mind Up’ and ‘Prince Charming’ or whatever. I was properly gripped by the music by the time ‘Electro 5’ came out, I remember Wayne getting ‘Electro 5’. Literally it came out and he got it. So what year is that? Is that ‘84?
‘84 yeah, yeah.
’84; so I was nine years old. Then ‘Techno Scratch’ came on, and I’m like, ‘This is crazy!’
Oh, interesting, is that the track for you on ‘Electro 5’?
I think it was defining. It was just so fucking different. I suppose the Woody Woodpecker scratching I found quirky and interesting and yeah, loved it. I remember Wayne had the vinyl, I taped it so I had it in my bedroom by myself and I would just rewind, and play ‘Techno Scratch’ again and again.You know, I wasn’t bothered by the rest of ‘Electro 5’ at that point, really. I mean I liked ‘Fast Life’ and ‘Egypt, Egypt’, but ‘Techno Scratch’ was amazing to me. I think I got ‘Electro 4’ after so I kind of went back, and I remember listening to ‘Sucker MCs’, and I’m thinking it was the first moment that I’d really found the actual sound of rapping, because before that it was just the electro beats, you know, I was more into trying to break, so I’d want the more up-tempo tracks. But then ‘Sucker MCs’ really got me.
That differentiation between electro as in electro, and electro as in hip hop; it’s really interesting.
‘Techno Scratch’ to me is as hip hop as it gets, but it’s what people would call an electro tune, right? The drum beats and the tempo maybe, but it’s straight up hip hop, whereas I suppose you’d say, ‘I'm The Pac-Man’, is more like an electro tune.
Yeah, I definitely agree, I think perhaps if ‘Techno Scratch’ didn’t have cuts in it, then it would be a different conversation. I think you’re right, and I really like that idea of identifying with rap when you heard ‘Sucker MCs’. It is about pace, because for me, I had that very similar moment when I first heard ‘Jam On It’, also in ’84. Like ‘White Lines’, I mean, that’s a monumental record but I think for me – ‘Jam On It’ – I remember seeing people break to it and that felt more, I don’t know, more exciting. It took me a while to understand ‘White Lines’ and to really get it as a song, you know at the time I was like, ‘Oh, what's all this? It’s got singing on it’…
I was gonna say exactly the same, it put me off. Yeah, I was like, ‘That’s not fucking hard enough.’ I wanted something gritty but, and I suppose that's what I'm saying about ‘Techno Scratch’ and ‘Sucker MCs’, is the simplicity. ‘Sucker MCs’ just worked, and the sound of Run’s voice especially was just amazing, you know? Powerful and punchy. That was when I started writing raps. ‘Sucker MCs’ instigated the whole thing of me wanting to try and write lyrics.
Wow, do you have any of those still?
I don’t. No, no, no. I remember I wrote raps to Janet Jackson’s ‘When I Think of You’.
Interesting choice.
I think it was kind of a love rap … I’m gonna write a love rap at the age of ten.
Wow, had you got any love rap influence going on at the time, were you listening to Force MDs for example, or was it just a kind of random decision?
I think it’s just because of the Janet Jackson song. I suppose I was trying to add something to her song. But if you if you look at the 12” it’s got a dub mix on the B-side, so that's what I was writing to.
That’s amazing, and a mature concept. That’s an interesting way to start writing raps.
It’s weird, and it’s also where I got the name Chrome as well. It was that first rap, and I was sort of thinking, ‘Well, I need a rap name and the way I came to the name Chrome was literally that I thought of the title MC; my name is Mike and I needed something for the ‘C’, so I just thought, ‘Oh, Chrome kind of fits’, so I’ll be MC Chrome. The whole Chrome thing has just stuck ever since, which is quite an odd one because normally people have a way of connecting to a name and there’s a deep reasoning behind why I’ve got it. But it’s literally grabbing something out of the air. That’ll do. Yeah.
I always thought it was because you were blond when you were a kid, and I’m sure I’m not the first person to have said that. So how did you start getting interested in DJing? Was it that point or was there still a while to go?
Yeah, the shiny metal connection. So, on DJing, I’ve always been obsessed with records. My sister – who sadly is no longer with us – bought me a copy of ‘Rock ‘n Roller Disco’ in 1979, which was a Ronco compilation album.
Right. Wow.
So, she bought me that when I was four years old, and I had a little kiddies turntable that my mum had bought me for Christmas, called Frisco Disco, it came with a microphone, headphones, and two speakers with lights in them and stuff, right. It was brilliant.
Sounds amazing, right?
So gutted that my mum threw it away. She also bought me these little Disney records. So, there’s classic Disney, you know, with ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’, and all that sort of stuff on it. But yeah, my sister bought me this compilation album and it had things on there like ‘Babylon’s Burning’ by The Ruts and ‘Death Disco’ by Public Image.
Wow, OK.
Yep, ‘Death Disco’, right. Four years old, and I’m listening through it and hearing these crazy sounds going through my head. That moment when you first watch a record as a kid and you’re like, ‘How is the sound coming out of that needle?’ How is it you get obsessed with it? Well, I just got totally into the idea of records. Any Christmas money or birthday money or anything, it was all records from that point on. So, by the time I’ve got to nine or ten years old, I’ve already amassed a box of sevens and a box of albums. Mainly pop music, but I’m starting to creep into getting a few ‘Electros’.
I’m trying to think of what sevens I would have bought; there was a ‘Rapper’s Delight’ in there that I’d had from a young age. My dad bought me that when I was like five or six years old. Crazy.
No! OK.
So yeah, I was already getting into the whole idea of DJing before rapping. So now let’s say ’85, my older brother would be buying a few records, and he’s starting to figure out how to scratch on mum’s record deck. You know, he’s got an old woolly jumper and a 12” and he’s made himself a slip mat that he’s glued to the rubber mat. So we’ve got a slip mat and he’s figured it all out by himself. It’s got a rotary knob on the front of the hi-fi deck, and he’s figuring out how to go forward and cut the volume out. This this is crazy, isn’t it? There were no YouTube videos. There’s no mate at school saying, “Oh, you’ve got to turn the volume off to bring it back,” he’s just figuring it out in his head, you know? So, I was watching him doing his scratching and thinking, ‘OK, I think I can do that as well.’ So now we're both trying to learn to scratch.
I think it’s interesting isn’t it, I would love to know just how many hundreds or thousands of kids were doing that kind of thing. You hear so many variations of, like you say, nobody was standing there. There wasn’t a workshop to go to. You don’t just go and get taught by somebody. It was all about self-teaching, we didn’t understand that we were analysing stuff; like with a real seriousness, actually it’s incredible. It really is. So, moving forwards, you get to a point where you realise you need some proper decks?
Yeah. So, there’s a photo I’ve got. I think I might have put it up on Facebook before. I’m trying to think, but it’s a photo of me in 1986, Christmas time, and I’m standing there looking like a proper nerd. You know, with my cap sideways and stuff. But I've got these two decks. No mixer, they’re two standalone turntables, both with separate volume controls, and that was my first idea of having two turntables and trying to mix one into another. Back and forth from each deck. You’d have to push the record to try and get the pitch correct, it’s all sounding really wonky, but it was it a natural progression of just scratching on the deck, scratching over a tape playing, you know? When I was fifteen years old, I had my first set of decks because that was the time we signed the deal with 10 Records/Virgin Records, and we had an advance.I had money in my bank and ended up buying a second hand set of turntables off a mate. Just some Citronic belt drive decks, but they did the job, and I had a Tandy mixer – a little Realistic mixer – and boom, that was it. It was game on; I’ve got some proper decks. I can sort of mix even though they were belt drive.
So how did the 10 Records deal happen?
We did this battle of bands competition in Brixton when I was thirteen. We went down and did a heat; we won the heat and then we got into the final. We went down to the final, and we won the final at Brixton, a thing called the ‘Illin’ Rap Clash’ at The Fridge.
Right.
And off the back of that, we teamed up with this dude called Trenton Harrison, who was the management for the UK branch of Rush.
Wow, OK.
So anytime any of the Rush acts were over here, he was managing the tours and so on. He was there at this competition, he came and spoke to us and says, “Right, I can get you a deal.” So, he started taking us around to MCA, to Jive and to Polydor. So, we’re going to all of these meetings, and we got to hang out with Danny Dee, the manager for Wee Papa Girl Rappers. They’d formed this crew called the West Side Connection, or the West Side Posse or something like that. And apparently, we were a part of that, even though we didn’t actually do anything, didn’t do any gigs with them or anything. But they kind of brought us in, so we hung out with Wee Papas for a little while, which sounds weird, but there was still no label interest, even though we went and had all these meetings and then we lost contact with Trenton. You know, things sort of fizzled out as they do.
So, Damian, the DJ for DefTex, said, “I’m gonna phone up some A&R people and see if we can get some interest,” so he found out some A&R names, one being Rob Manley at 10 Records. Rob said the usual thing, “Oh, just send your demo in and I’ll have listen,” and Damien was adamant he’s not doing that. He said, “We need to do face-to-face. We’ll bring the demo tape to you.” Somehow, Damien bullied his way into getting a meeting, so we all went to Rob’s office, played the demo tape and the dude just sat there gobsmacked and said, “I think we’re gonna sign you.” So, we came out of that meeting and within a couple of weeks they had the contracts sorted out, they lined us up with some management which worked great; the managers were brilliant. We signed a two-single deal in 1990.
Wow, I didn’t know any of this. This is amazing, it really is. I’m assuming the singles weren’t released?
No, we made four tracks in total, they didn’t come out. The first one was the initial demo that we’d played them in the meeting. We recorded it in the studio, took it back to them and they weren’t too happy with it. I think it wasn’t shiny enough; basically, we were trying to keep it hip hop, but with a bit of a mainstream appeal, but it wasn’t enough for them.
They said, “What we’re going to do is get you back in the studio, and we’ve got some producers that are going to come in,” and they brought in Stepski from Faze One.
Wow, ok.
Right? So, you know, I’m still in little fanboy mode, I’m like, ‘Oh it’s Stepski from Faze One!’ He tries to house it up with a 4-4 beat behind it and some bleeps here and there, and we’re all sitting there going, “No, no, no, we’re a hip hop crew. We’re not doing pop or house music.” So that didn’t happen. They said, “Well, who would you want to work with?” We said, “No Sleep Nigel, and we’ll produce it ourselves.” They agreed and booked us in for a week-long session in Oldham.
Amazing.
Yeah, a nice studio actually. And we just stayed up there for a week with No Sleep Nigel. Nigel was like, true to his name, not sleeping. Well, he just stayed up through the night and would literally sleep in the studio and then be back to it, bang – straight on it. He was non-stop.
We took the two tracks that we’d made originally with our initial demo and added another two, which would be ‘Koldspehl’ – which is on the ‘Master Blaster EP’ – and ‘Good Deed Done’, which is the other track on the ‘Master Blaster EP’, so we ended up with four tracks.
We took them back to 10 Records. We were all really happy with them going, “This is our sound, this is what you’ve signed us for,” they said no, then they had a massive cull of loads of groups that they’d signed that year, they basically chopped everyone from the label, and we were one of them.
But the good thing was – we kept our rights to the music. And, you know the advance? We didn’t have to return any of that. It was all in the in the contract; the management – luckily for us – were right on the ball, so we ended up with loads of nice studio equipment, a minibus – which we’d bought with the advance as well – and I’d got some new decks and loads of records.
Wow, that’s some story. I love that, but I mean, it’s a shame that they didn’t come out in the way that they should have, because obviously they would have been in every HMV and Our Price in the country, being released on 10 Records.
That’s the thing, if you think about the groups at the time that were on that label, the likes of Soul II Soul and Unique 3, you know, they were literally Top 20 weren’t they, with ‘Musical Melody’, so we’re thinking, ‘This is it, we’re going to be in the charts,’ but it just didn’t happen.
Fresh Four, yeah all those crews.
It was a great experience nonetheless, and to be honest, because we had the music we decided to release it with our friend at Norwich. Even though it was only a 500-run press, I like the fact that it was a bit more underground. Also, I did I have to rerecord my vocals for the ‘Master Blaster EP’ as my balls hadn’t dropped, so I was rapping in a really high-pitched voice!
Funny! Have you still got those? Did you manage to keep hold of those original recordings you did for 10 Records? Have you got them somewhere still?
I have, I’ve got them. It’s basically like a promo cassette with the 10 Records logo on the side, one of those tapes.
Oh, OK, nice.
It has all the different mixes, so there’s loads of instrumentals, a cappellas, like those promo tapes used to be.
Collectable, for sure!
Apparently, there is an acetate. I’ve been told there is; it did actually go to cut, the first one anyway. There’s a track called ‘That’s My Desire’ and ‘Addiction to Rhyme’, which was gonna be the original B-side. So, there’s an acetate out there, a mate of mine from Norwich that said he knows the guy from Virgin at that time and he's seen it.
Right. Well, that would be very nice if that surfaces at some point!
I know, I know, I want to know who this dude is!
So when you’re working with 10 Records, were you just rapping at that point, or were you involved in production as well?
I’d be involved in the arrangement and not necessarily the initial production. That was very much my brother, and Damien (DJ Shorty) to a certain extent, I think Damien was the break provider. Do you know what I mean? But my brother was like the overall producer. The good thing was I’d always be there, you know, because me and my brother lived with my mum. So, I’d be watching him, you know, studying, watching how he’s making these things. It was still a lot later that I actually started producing by myself.
So, do you feel that the experience of being around someone making beats meant that it was easier for you to navigate later down the line, when you started making your own stuff?
Yeah, it was. You know, I see a lot of my beats as an extension of what my brother did. I feel like my album on B-Line – ‘The Dopamine Hit’ album – some of my beats on there are almost made as if as if my brother would have made them; I’d made them with him in mind, you know, thinking, ‘This this is what he would have done, this is this is what he would have sampled,’ so very much I’m 100% inspired by my brother’s techniques.
Mmhmm, that's lovely, because that says a lot about how you as an artist develop over an extensive period of time; that it’s not just a direction, but you really do bring knowledge and other intangible assets with you on this incredible trajectory.
Yeah, I think it’s keeping it in the family, but it’s just purely that I was so amazed by how he did it, you know, also I didn’t have anyone else to see. There was no one else around where we lived in Norwich. You know that we were the only people – Wayne was the only person making beats really. There were a couple, but he was the only one that was actually finishing pieces of music.
The old school Days of Norwich hip hop when there were other crews about – there was a handful of other emcees and crews – they all came to Wayne for the beats, so he made all the beats for the other crews as well. Do you know what I mean? And they all came round and recorded at ours, and Wayne was the focal point. Wayne was the person on stage. Wayne had his four-track tape player when they’re performing and he’s having to take one tape out and put another tape in, and he’s got all the numbers written down of where to forward wind each tape.
Wow, serious work.
He was like our DJ Premier, or Marley Marl.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amazing. So, if he’s the Marley Marl of Norwich, are you now the Edan of Norwich then? Because you produce, you rap, you DJ, you’re that Chrome; for me anyway, I see someone who’s doing a lot of solo work and you're doing all three praxes. When you’re putting together a track on the solo, do you work between those three practices, or do you do one part of it at a time?
One part at a time. The only track I’ve worked on as a complete piece was the title track ‘Dopamine Hit’ for the last album. I remember making the beat and thinking, ‘I want this beat to be the title track,’ because I was very happy with what I produced, and I had the title of the album in my head already but hadn’t got the lyrics. But I knew what I wanted to write about. When that piece of music came together, it was a natural progression of just writing it, and I don’t normally do that.
Usually, I’ll make a beat and there will just be a collection of beats. And then without listening to a beat, I’ll write a rap and then I’ll think what that rap is going to fit with. I’ll listen to several beats, and I’ll try and match it up. Most of the time it works for me. I’m the sort of person where when I'm writing, I can’t have music playing in the background. It knocks my concentration; I get too distracted. So, there must be quiet. I’ve been around loads of other emcees that can sit there and quite easily write whilst we’re having a conversation. You know the multitasking is strong with some people! It isn’t with me, being a driving instructor for sixteen years though you’d imagine it should be.
Right. That makes sense.
You know, Multitasking’s got to be good, but no. So, I make a beat; I’ll write a rap. I’ll try and marry them together, and then I’ll add the cuts at the end, once I’ve got it all structured and arranged.
Interesting. So, do you do you ever find that cuts come first, or are they always brought in as a final touch?
Yes, but again, that’s not always the case either, because I’ve done tracks like the tune I did for the B-Line EP. The first one is a track called ‘Put It On Paper’ featuring MC Squared. I made that beat with the cuts before any of the raps were written. Just because I liked the sound of it as I was practising, and I like the cuts, it worked. So then of course the theme had to be about, you know, “put it on paper” because that was just already in the track.
It’s interesting, isn’t it, that we all have ways and methods and then sometimes it just does something different, it guides you. It does its own thing, you know.
Yeah, it does. It can be an easy flow, but then other times completely different and not be working at all, but eventually it all pieces together. It’s funny, because the most recent album that we did as ChromePlus where I’ve worked with live musicians as well, is a completely different way of working again compared to what I’ve done for the other albums and with DefTex.
Interesting. I was going to come on to the ChromePlus projects. Is it a band which just does Chrome music live, or do you also record as a band?
OK, so ChromePlus, not my idea, by the way. I wanted a different name altogether. I didn’t even want the name Chrome in it, but after discussing with the other three members, they said, “Well, it makes sense to have the name Chrome in it because there needs to be an identity to you as an emcee,” to market, so it I suppose that makes sense. And you know, it has been a collaboration. It’s not just been me with people guesting. We’ve all thrown in our parts that we needed to add and work together to make it a complete piece. So, it’s myself – raps and bits of production, bits of cutting – and then there’s JB who is on mixing and added production as well as mastering, you know, the man behind the boards. And then there’s Tom Hanner on bass, and Phil Critton on guitar. But even with both Tom and Phil, they’re not just playing bass and guitar. They’re adding their elements as well, there’s tracks on the album, which are just them.
There are little instrumental segues which they provided, they added their touch to it, which was a good thing to do because it made the album not just a hip hop album, it has different sounds, folky, rocky, and electronic too. I enjoyed that whole process.
So that that sounds different to when you were working with DefTex. I think what was interesting for me coming back into hip hop around 2001, was that I had fallen out of it for a few years and Simon (Specifik) brought me back into it around when you guys came down to Exeter; 2002 that might have been, and you were a full band. I was like, ‘Wow, this is it.’ I will never forget you guys walking in – especially The Anthropologist – I think you might have as well – were wearing wellies and farmer clobber and you had these signs that said, ‘Farmers on strike’ or something. I can’t remember what they said.
Haha yeah, we had different signs, but one of them was just, ‘Make Some Noise’ and ‘Everybody Say Ow’.
Right. And it was like, ‘This is great. What’s going on here?’ Because the month before was the first gig that me and Simon ever did together, supporting Task Force. And that felt like a very serious vibe. And then the following month, you’ve got DefTex, full band, farming it up, I was like, ‘This is this is fucking brilliant.’
Yeah, hip hop.
I bought ‘Serene Bug’ after that because I hadn’t heard the whole album until you guys came to Exeter. I remember even now, I like the design of it, I love the way that it’s this kind of white rough matte cover and then you’ve got these cool little photos of you guys on the back. And I was like, ‘Oh, so they've got all the band members on this album sleeve.’ So, it communicated that this isn’t just, you know, you and Anthro and some backing musicians. You’re a collective of musicians.
Yeah. Yeah, it was a collaborative thing. That’s what I like about the ChromePlus project, as a step back to that whole process of how we did the DefTex album, even though essentially ‘Serene Bug’ was really the four of us. So, myself, Anthro, Sure D and my brother Archie. But, you know, because we had this live element too, it made sense to get them involved on the album as well, you know, then we could transcend from not just the studio stuff when we were playing live, and it worked.
It was a really good time in this country for music at that point. And, you know, I think Junior Disprol said it, and you said it, that was a Renaissance time in UK hip hop. I know you guys were signed, but there were a lot of artists that weren’t signed, that for the first time, pulled a bit of money together to put out their own stuff, a decade or more later than your 10 Records experience. It was a turning point.
Definitely, and big shouts to Alistair at Son Records, because he was so passionate about that label, it was a complete labour of love. He never really made any money, even though he sold quite a few copies of things. It’s just the way things were, I suppose. You know what I mean? It was just a lot of costs that he was having to pay for bands in studios, it’s not like now where you can literally do everything from your home, but that for all of that stuff released on Son, was all from studio time, from the Lost Island stuff to Pitman. And it’s not cheap, is it? You know, for ‘Serene Bug’, he put us in Blows Yard near London Bridge with Jamie Finch, where they did The Cinematic Orchestra and Roots Manuva’s stuff. I think Ty recorded there; it wasn’t cheap. Even though he sold quite a lot of albums, I don’t think he ever really recouped.
So, fast forward to 2025 … would you be able to let readers know what’s happening next or is there a secret project on the way, or anything else in the pipeline?
Me and JB have just finished one new song, which is gonna be on the forthcoming B-Line EP I believe.
Ah, nice! I'm looking forward to hearing your new track, and this new B-Line EP!
So, me and Bill (Illinspired) are still very much in the process of getting some music made. We have three tracks as good as done, they’re past the demo stage and in the mixing stage.
Nice!
Also, what me and Bill have been talking about is re-working, rebranding almost, our live show, and we’re coming up with some good ideas. It’s gonna be more visual. Some sort of comedy elements in there, it’s gonna be more scripted and more a theatrical kind of performance. What I what I was saying to Bill was, the number of times we’ve done these shows and I’ve got awkward silence moments. I’ve still got bits in between tracks when I’m standing there going, ‘Don't know what to say,’ and I thought, ‘What do I say?’ so you say, “Just play the next beat.” I don’t want that. I want it to be running seamlessly all the way through the set.
I hear that, that would be dope.
We’re hoping that we get a few decent bookings this summer, we’ve got our first gig in March 2025 supporting DJ Yoda in Norwich. That’s going to be like our pilot, to reignite the Chrome and Illinspired show, and then hopefully with performances coming off the back of that, we should have an album by summertime, I reckon.
Sounds good. Sounds good.
Yeah, the new Chrome and Illinspired on its way, finally.
Ace, ace. That's what we want to hear!
Chrome is a DJ, emcee, and producer, founding member of DefTex, Chrome and Illinspired, and ChromePlus. Chrome holds a deep discography spanning four decades, ranging from solo work to guest appearances and continues to be highly active in the UK hip hop fraternity.
Follow Chrome:
Instagram: @chromeplusmusic @chromeandillinspired
Bandcamp: Chrome.bandcamp.com