IN CONVERSATION: Evil Ed
Continuing on from Junior Disprol last week, the next full-length ‘in conversation’ from HEADZ-zINe follows. This week, I am delighted to present Evil Ed, a cornerstone of UK hip hop music in the UK. His production spans four decades, and he moves from strength to strength with his label Hidden Identity Productions. The article below was originally published in HEADZ-zINe 2.2 last year.
IN CONVERSATION
So, we started talking, and like Ed and I do when we talk, it immediately turns to records …. We pick up midway through talking about the variety of Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel releases during the 1980s …
(Evil Ed) … Yeah, I didn’t understand about label politics and all that in those days.
(Adam) That’s it. And you see the compilation albums, they’ve got all the wrong names on and everything. It’s crazy, crazy.
So yeah, ‘Fastest Man Alive’, kind of broke it down a little bit, but it was still a bit baffling, wasn’t it? Back then, you’re like, what’s going on?
Yeah. That nailed it for me, though, I love The Source, that album is so good.
I’m with you, reading things people have said over the years, they’re like, “Oh, it sounded dated for 1986,” but it’s an amazing album.
I mean I think it’s exactly for the time because that DMX sound, the programming is incredible on that album.
Maybe it was a bit too smooth for some people, like with the harmonies and stuff? What else was coming out in ’86, Ultras and all that stuff? So people were like, “Oh, this is the old school trying to …” you know.
Yeah. There was that transition in ’86 wasn’t there, you’ve still got heavy drum machine, but with lots of little samples creeping in, like all the Beauty And The Beat stuff. The one that I didn't quite get at the time, but I’ve been listening to a lot recently, is the Ba-Dop-Boom-Bang LP.
Oh yeah, I only got the vinyl recently. I never had it at the time and I found it about a year ago. That’s got some gems on it, that album.
Right. It’s really good, and at the time I didn’t really get it. I thought it was a bit boring and I didn’t listen to it, but it’s a complex album.
Yeah, I think we’re going back to some of these we missed. They’re brilliant recordings. On The Strength was a bit later, wasn’t it? Like, ’88, ’89 kind of time.
Yeah, I remember seeing the cover and thinking, oh, man, it
looks a bit old-fashioned now and that, you know, we’ve got Public Enemy and EPMD; I was like, nah. But it’s one of those LPs you’ve got to have.
Yeah, think I’ve got it. I got the other two and I’ve got the ‘Gold’ 12”. The instrumental was brilliant on that. So, going back to Conrad, I don’t think many people knew about the Triple Element record, the Aylesbury thing with (Silver) Bullet. I mean I didn’t know him (Conrad) back then, but I remember that Triple Element record. That’s after Bullet moved out of Leighton Buzzard and I last saw him on my doorstep in early ’88, then he disappeared. In those days no one had mobiles, we didn’t know where anyone was. And it was rumoured he’d moved to Aylesbury, down with the Aylesbury crew, which was Conrad and a few others. And then I walked into Bluebird Records where I used to get my imports and ‘What’s Dat Sound’ was playing in there and I was like, “That’s Bullet!” That’s Richard on the record. It’s funny when you first hear someone you know on a bit of plastic, you know?
I had that feeling when I heard Rola on ‘Enough Of That’.
Bullet actually did it like, wow, this is just a trip. And like, this wasn’t the best record, you know, the production wasn’t standing up to what I was buying, like Demon Boyz. If you listen to that track, ‘What’s Dat Sound’ the production’s a bit wack, really. But now, going back and hearing it again it’s a significant tune, really. MC Conrad and Silver Bullet on one track; they both did well. There was another guy called Mark Cheeseman. I think his name was MC Chill but I can’t be sure; not the MC Chill (a UK rapper known on the scene in the late 80s/early 90s). Mark lived in Linslade, which is part of Leighton Buzzard. If you remember, in ’88 people were trying to get a name for themselves, the aim was to get a record out, get a record deal, actually not just get a record out, get a deal, get some money and get the clothes they wanted, people wanted the whole lifestyle.
That’s it.
You know what I mean? They wanted to be like the rappers they were seeing from the states, and so Mark Cheeseman aka MC Chill, he was actually a pretty good rapper, I think he was trying to get a deal. And so it was him and Bullet in Leighton Buzzard.
Anyone else?
Mistima, who later joined my crew Hidden Identity. So there was Mistima, Bullet and MC Chill. Richard had just started calling himself Silver Bullet by ’88. So, everyone was trying to get on the radio, trying to get a record deal, and there was me. I was rapping in ’88 as well, and we had a guy who did human beatbox, called Seb. He used to rap a bit too. His rapping wasn’t very good, but he was quite a good beatbox and he’s on that BBC documentary ‘The Lowdown’ with the guys with the S1W army gear on. That’s another weird story because we didn’t know them. None of us knew those Tring guys and Seb obviously did somehow.
That is amazing footage.
So Seb used to do beatbox, and I’d rap, that’s how I won the Dave Pearce phone-in competition. I think I did it off the top of my head, I used to be able to just freestyle back then, or I kind of rehearsed raps in my head, a bit like Biggie. So yeah, we won this thing on Dave Pearce’s ‘Fresh Start To The Week’. But, back to Bullet, there were a few of us in Leighton Buzzard making hip hop; rapping, beatboxing, DJing. Bullet lived a few doors down from a kid I knew from youth club and he was a year older than me. We met in summer ’85. Bullet was a really dope human beatbox as well as a rapper. In ’85 he was calling himself MC D and I was DJ Clear Cut. I was a DJ and a rapper back then. Bullet was the first person that that I heard on a record, you know, that’s why I was so ambitious to have a record out after hearing Triple Element and then ‘Bring Forth The Guillotine’. I remember the first time I heard that, I turned on the TV and I was just sitting in the lounge with my mum and the video for ‘Bring Forth The Guillotine’ came on, you know with the ‘Evil Dead’ theme, running through the woods.
Oh, right, yeah.
Horror, that’s another thing, horror films, Bullet was so up on his horror he kind of got me into horror films as well by showing me ‘Re-Animator’ when I was about 12 and telling me it was a snuff film! I was kind of traumatised. It’s a gore fest, isn’t it? And it’s comedy, though, looking back, you know, like, why was I scared of that at the time?
I was mad into horror flicks as well, and same, when the film ‘Re-Animator’ came out it was like that was next level gore. We would go down the video shop every day and it was always rented. We’d be like, “Oh, when are we going to be able to get hold of it?”
It’s almost like Stockholm Syndrome is, isn’t it? Where you’re not into it, and you’re a bit scared of it – my mate’s brother forced me to watch ‘The House That Bled To Death’ where they’re having the kids’ party. I was eight; then Bullet showed me ‘Re-Animator’ and my friends uncle had a banned copy of ‘Cannibal Holocaust’. So I was watching that when I was like 13 on school lunch breaks. I think that’s where my love of horror came from, I was like grossed out, disturbed and having nightmares; then I became a horror fan. And I saw ‘The Thing’, I think that was the turning point, it’s just so obvious now how it follows on from ‘Star Wars’, the cantina scene, the same effects, people behind them making the aliens and the gore. I loved that cantina scene out of ‘Star Wars’.
That is an incredible link you observed in the cantina scenes.
I wouldn’t really say I’m a fan of modern horror, but I love all those old ones; monster movies, basically – and gore. Real ones, not CGI.
They do have a sort of charm to them as well, though, don’t they? I watched ‘Xtro’ the other day and it really blew me away; I didn't realise that Harry Bromley Davenport who wrote and directed it also did all the music, so I had to track down the soundtrack on vinyl, it was only released in the UK in 1983, great music.
Oh really? Wow, I went back to some of them too. They’re just brilliant. So Bullet was really into the horror stuff. So yeah, I was watching ‘Bring Forth The Guillotine’ and I was like, “That’s Richard!” He used to come round our house for lunch a lot, my mum just used to let everyone come round. My mum taught all the kids that were struggling at school, she was a teacher. A lot of people from like, you could say broken homes, one-parent families, which wasn’t so common in those days in the ’80s.
True.
I got on with all these kids who were classed as naughty. They weren’t naughty kids, you know, they were labelled naughty kids, some of them were quite violent and they had a lot going on at home, understandably. But I was friends with all these kids that were coming around. I guess my parents were quite liberal, and my dad would give people lifts everywhere like he took me and Bullet and our other friend Neil to UK Fresh ’86, Neil was only twelve and you had to be older to get in. They didn’t ask for ID or anything, but his mum wouldn’t have let him go without an adult there. His mum was quite strict, so was Bullet’s mum, so it was cool, my dad took us … you know, they’d imagine we were going to some scary hip hop thing in London. So yeah, Bullet on telly.
So is that what triggered you to really want to make music then? Or were you already? I mean, you were already doing stuff by then anyway, weren’t you?
Yeah, that was definitely a spark. Richard can do it, I can. And probably a bit like, “Oh, Richard’s made it without any of us,” you know, he’s got his own thing going on now, his own crew. It’s just that drive, isn’t it? And you’re like, even if you’re not talented, like back then, I was still really learning to scratch and I couldn’t. My rapping wasn’t great and I didn’t know how to produce or anything. But you just have it in your head that you want to do it and you’ve seen someone you know do it and get success. So it’s a bit of arrogance maybe, or just feeling left out, like I want to do it. I want to be part of it.
Yeah, and that’s the beauty of hip hop, isn’t it? It's like you just get involved and you do it as well. Certainly back then, everyone did something, some practice of elements.
Yeah, I just love doing it. I got to a certain point where, you know, I realised early on that I couldn’t do graff; I could draw, I could sketch but, my heart wasn’t really into that. I would go and tag and I’d do a few throw ups and stuff, but I wasn’t skilled enough to do it properly, but I did all the stuff people did back then, like stealing spray cans, and I'm going out at night, even during the day, like down alleys tagging up. And so I took part in all that, but I wasn’t very good at it, I’m not that good at art and I couldn’t break, but the music was my focus, and just wanting to be a DJ first before production. I didn’t really understand what production was, I thought it was all just done on turntables and drum machines, I didn’t really know about engineering and producing and constructing tracks. Still though I went on Dave Pearce’s show and recorded a session over a Cool C instrumental.
That’s crazy, tell me about that.
I recorded it about five or six in the afternoon, then the show went out at like eight or something. So I went down with my dad on the train. I was like 15. But Dave was away in New York, so I didn’t get to meet him. George Kay was standing in for him that week. So two weeks prior to that I won the rap competition, I think the rap was about night clubs not letting people in with trainers on, although I’d never been to a nightclub at 15, haha. But I wrote a rap about it anyway or I just came out with this freestyle about it. So we were getting together a session for the following week because if you won the competition then the following week you went on there and recorded a session. I offered the session to Bullet, for him to rap and Seb to beatbox and I was going to DJ on it and I was practicing scratching an Anquette record, she had an acapella on her 12”.
So I was cutting that up, then Seb and me had an argument and I had an issue with some of Bullet's mates that came to my house and were disrespectful and so Seb and Bullet went off with another DJ. They did the session, Seb had to go with them and do the beatbox as he’d won the phone in with me, but they just put him on for like 2 seconds of beatbox, so he didn’t even get to do it properly. They kind of used him basically to get on there. So I rang Dave Pearce and I was like, “Dave, you know, it was me rapping on the thing.”
Fair play for ringing up Dave!
That was Bullet’s second session as well, because he’d done one previously with Mistima. It’s a great session, they rapped over the instrumental of ‘Rebel Without A Pause’; it had just come out. It was the biggest track, wasn’t it? They dropped anti-drugs lyrics over the top of that. So I rang Dave, and I’m like: “Dave, it was me rapping on the phone in,” and he was like, “Oh, yeah, of course. Come and do a session. It’s only right that you come on the radio and rap as well.” So that’s when I hooked up with Mistima again.
Right.
Everything fell into place, everything aligned. Mistima helped me write the rap, but for some reason couldn’t make it to Radio London with me. So I went up there and there was another emcee on too, but all her DJ had was Ultimate Breaks & Beats, and I had a few records I’d taken, so we ended up rapping over ‘Play It Cool’ by Cash Money and Marvelous, and Cool C’s ‘C Is Cool’ instrumentals. I was super nervous but went in the booth, headphones on, proper radio recording, and I'd done that before because me and Seb had gone on our local station, Chiltern Radio. There was a DJ called Tony West who had a drive time show, five to seven or something like that, and he’d play Madonna or whatever was in the charts. He liked a bit of hip hop, and he’d always try and slip one track into his show every evening, like a bit of Derek B. So I did a live thing on there where Seb was beatboxing and I was rapping a freestyle over the top of it. Again. It’s all lost, sadly.
Wow.
We also recorded drops for his show, so for months after this guy on Chilton Radio, like, the biggest local station in Luton, Dunstable, Leighton Buzzard, you’d hear radio drops of me rapping, “The best in the west is the Tony West test”, it was for this quiz he ran.
That’s awesome, man.
I’m not that good at art and I couldn’t break, but the music was my focus and just wanting to be a DJ first before production.
We did another drop over James Brown, the ‘Funky Drummer’ bonus beats that was on Urban Records, but they wouldn't play it because of copyright.
Oh, the ‘Bonus Beats Reprise’ that Danny Krivit put together, yeah. So you got on the radio in the eighties though, man! I mean, the closest we ever got, me and Rola did like you did on your local radio. Rola and I rapped over the instrumental of ‘Movin’ On’ by Gang Starr, you got on the UK release, you know, with the bonus 12”, and I think they thought it was our beat, because they rang us up desperate to get us on for a session, then they totally ignored us – but they did play the demo twice the same night!
What station was that?
DevonAir, and the mad thing was like about two years later they even had a Jingle that went “We don’t play rap!” It was like, they suddenly changed their tune once they became Gemini FM.
Ha.
But we really thought, “We’re going to make it.” Did you feel like after you’d done that session, your phone was not going to stop ringing with record deals?
Yeah, I think so. It was such a buzz doing it. So then yeah, there’s something else happened around that time. I can’t quite place when exactly, but in ’88 there was another rap battle with me and Seb beatboxing, and Bullet and another DJ, I think we had a battle in this venue, which was just this big room. We had the decks, I was mixing and scratching, but with my rapping, we totally lost, like, my rapping was shit. Like I couldn’t battle. I don’t know why we even agreed to do it. So I should have got the message then to maybe stop rapping, but it was a few years after in ’94 that I actually stopped.
So have you got any on tape? Did you did you stop rapping before you put your first record out, or do you have raps on that first record?
No, I'm on the Hidden Identity EP, which I wish I’d never recorded, I had Beijing flu as it was called then, you know, before Covid and bird flu and all that, it was Beijing flu, and I was absolutely knocked up.
Oh shit, right.
Right. I felt so rough. But you know we had this studio time and I was like, I gotta do it and Terry from the label (Pure Rudeness) and Mistima said, “Ed, you’ve got to do the rap,” because when we recorded that EP, Misti was so chaotic, he had pages and pages of raps, old ones, recent ones. He was still writing and just putting them all together, putting lines together in the studio. So he said, “Have you got anything you could just put on this track?” I didn’t want to do it. They were like, “No, Ed, you’ve got to be on there, man. You’ve got to do your verse.” So I did it and I just wished I didn’t do it.
But it’s part of the history, though, man, it’s all good.
It’s part of the history and after that I gave up rapping! And we did one live show at The Tivoli in Buckley, which is a famous venue, apparently. And we got heckled. And I think we would have got heckled whatever, because we were from out of town. We could have been the best thing since sliced bread and we would have got things thrown at us and heckled there. But the thing is, Mistima retaliated and he was doing this kind of football chant. Heckling the audience and nearly got bloody killed there.
Hah that’s mad.
I was gonna rap live as well and do my verse, but didn’t even get round to it because of all this chaos. So then after that I was feeling a bit nervous about it; I’m not really an emcee. I thought I like being behind the scenes, I don’t want to be on stage rapping, I’ll leave it to the people who are really good at it, so that was a turning point for knocking it on the head.
Right, right, right.
So yeah, I was hanging out with Mistima in ’88. When Run-D.M.C.’s ‘Run’s House/Beats To The Rhyme’ 12" came out, he came round the day I got that record. I won it on a radio competition naming a bunch of tracks that they played off the Ultimate Breaks & Beats albums.
We used to listen to a pirate station, Jive FM from Luton which was the predecessor of Pressure FM with DJ Nappa when he was DJ Kool C. His show was amazing. He’s such a big influence, such an underrated artist as well. His new album is amazing.
I went to Bluebird Records in Luton, as the prize was an import 12” of your choice. They were like £4.99 in those days, which is probably like £20 or £25 now, and the ‘Run’s House/Beats To The Rhyme’ 12” had just dropped. It was a no-brainer, it came home with me.
So I met Nigel (Lone Disciple) at school when I was around eleven years old. We both did AS-level maths and dropped out of it; me and Nigel would just sit together in the class. Nigel was wicked at drawing and sketches so he would be sketching all lesson, and I’d be coming up with ideas for music projects. Then we decided we wanted to record something. So me and him we were walking home from school one day in ’89 and coming up with names, you know, going through hundreds of different names for a rap group. I said “Hidden Identity”; “Yeah. Let’s go with that one, that’s got a ring to it.” We found out later there was a Scottish rapper called Hidden Identity.
Oh, really? Right.
When we were making the ‘Blunted Buskers’ EP, something came on the TV at Terry’s house with someone called Hidden Identity, a Scottish rapper. He was on the news for some reason, or on some current affairs programme. We’re like, well, it’s too late now. So I don’t know if he’s still going, maybe he's he changed his name, he might have gone on to be one of the bigger name Scottish rappers. There’s a Scottish rapper called East Born which I’ve always found odd because I live in Eastbourne. But it’s spelled differently, East Born.
Really. That’s funny. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, so he might have seen that we were doing a record and changed his name after that, but we kept ours. So yeah, we were coming home from school, came up with the name, and then pretty much started recording. I used to borrow a 4-track tape recorder from the school music department. I used to be able to take it home at weekends and so we just recorded what we could while I had it there at home. We’d use those Simon Harris breakbeats. You know those albums, they had all the little scratchy bits, like early battle tools, but they also had loops; great loops. I had my Casio SK-5 which was like a little sampling keyboard, a cheap budget one, like a toy basically. It had pre-programmed sounds like a dog barking, but you could record just a few seconds crap quality of a sample via the built in mic (which was rubbish), or from the output of your DJ mixer. I’d have the breakbeat on the 4-track and I’d have to play a sample over it on beat, and if I messed it up one time, I’d have to go all the way back to the top and start all over again. So I was there for like for four or five minutes, just hitting the key pad of the sampler in time; some of them were slightly off and I just had to keep some of those otherwise I would never finish it.
And also when we recorded vocals, I would sometimes put a delay effect on the SK-5 and play that live over the vocals. So when you hear the old demo tapes, there’s lots of that going on as well, really harsh sounding. But in a way, it sounded like some kind of Marley Marl ’85 type delay, echo effects and stuff.
Mad, I know the sound you mean.
We just had to work with what we had, we couldn’t release them. Some guy in I think Switzerland or Germany got in touch with me a few years ago and said he wanted to hear the Hidden Identity demos with a view to putting them out, but the quality’s just not there. The tapes are decaying over time as well.
But those dudes don’t care about absolute quality, they put out our Def Defiance stuff from 1990, and they’re not great quality, but they love all that stuff over there!
Your demos are still better quality than ours, they’re just not for public consumption. Maybe as time goes on there will be a novelty thing to have them on vinyl.
That’s it. I mean, people love that nostalgia thing, but also, you know, there’s an argument to preserve this stuff, it’s history and documents the processes.
It’s been 30 years since that first record, the one and the only Hidden Identity record, I mean. There should have been a second one and we got to the demo stage with that, it’s frustrating and quite upsetting because we could have made a second EP, but there were other things, you know, life stuff.
I get it.
Even the first one nearly never happened. It was just like when we actually got it on vinyl, I was exhausted at that point, and by the time it came out we’d kind of split up as a crew even when it dropped, which was why we didn’t promote it properly. Relationships were a bit fraught. But going back to ’89, we put out two demo tapes, me and Lone Disciple. I’d love to hear them now, but they’re gone. I’ve got a feeling I may have just found them so cringy, like 20 years ago or something. They must be out there ’cause we sent them to Hip Hop Connection. We sent them to labels, a lot of labels. Then they sent them back, we were so gutted, man; to get your tape sent back with a rejection letter from Music Of Life or Kold Sweat or whatever.
I know the feeling, we got a rejection letter from Westwood in 1990!
Hip Hop Connection put it in the Demo Blaster section and we got a favourable review. They just said, “Oh the emcee needs to be tighter, his delivery’s a bit off,” which was true. So a lot of those demos, some of the lines would be a bit off. I think it was just due to lack of time. Each track was a mission to make, even in like 1990 when we first started recording, trying to get Gary to get one track made. He was so talented, we had to get him to record. I’d be like, “You gotta do it, Gary. Come on, man.” I’ve seen people comment now on some of the old Hidden Identity tracks on YouTube, “This guy’s voice is incredible.” I mean he could have been up there with Hijack. We were just like 15, 16-year-old stoners with no money, in the sticks, didn’t have any of the connections.
Yeah, yeah, again, so familiar.
Early 1990 was when I got into smoking as well. And this is before Cypress Hill and Redman even came out. So when that all dropped, we were there recording and doing the blunted thing before it even came out on record. So in ’91, we were like, we’re already here, we’re well up for that. We’re doing it. We’re at Gary’s already rapping about smoking spliffs and stuff, we were kind of ahead of the curve in a way, ‘The Greenbelt Chronicles’, on the front (cover), there’s Gary, I’m eating an apple, and the other two are smoking spliffs, that was early 1990 that came out. So we sent that out to labels and got a much better response. Still no deal; but a much more favourable response and constructive criticism. I was just sampling instrumentals from other hip hop records and then adding other bits.
So you’d slipped into the producer role then?
I didn’t see myself really as a producer back then. I saw myself as a DJ, I couldn’t really find breaks, so to speak, but had the odd few records I could sample, I was making a few beats back then. And like I said, using the Simon Harris breakbeats and playing samples over the top by hand in time to the drum break. I think like in ’92 we had an Amiga computer. You know, there’s the Commodore Amiga with a music programme on there, like a Cubase type thing and with the sampler on there, it took forever to figure out. It was all glitchy sounding, but we finally got it. We’re like, we can actually sample something better quality now than this Casio keyboard, so I started chopping loops. We were still kind of dated in terms of our equipment even for then, you know, because this was like ‘92 and I guess people were buying Akai samplers at that point, people who had money, who were older than us, I was 19 in ’92.
Yeah, the Akai 950 came out in ’91, didn’t it?
The one on the cover of ‘Talkin’ All That Jazz’, think it was the 900?
That’s it. That’s the one we had.
But jumping forwards, you know, one of the biggest tracks I did 20 years ago with Jehst was called ‘Weed’, that’s one of my most streamed tracks. I stopped smoking in ’93, but may have started again a little bit at that point, the odd spliff, but I wasn’t heavily on it like in the nineties. But I was like this is their lyrics, their track, it’s hip hop and people love that, I’m going to put it out.
Tell me more about that.
The label didn’t want to put that track on the 12”, but I pushed for it and it came out as a B-side, and on the CD of the album it’s a bonus track. It’s not even on The Enthusiast vinyl. The label guy at the time had a young kid who was like five years old, he didn’t really want him learning about weed and stuff. But back to late summer ’93, Terry from Pure Rudeness sent tapes out to a few DJs and radio stations, the ‘Return Of Da Red Eye’ censored version got played on BBC Radio Wales first, and we we’re like, “Wow, we’re on BBC Radio,” then 279 played it on Choice FM, which was much more credible. A little while after, Max and Dave picked up on it and they played ‘Red Eye’ and ‘Big Hed 4 Da Dred’ on Kiss.
Nice, nice, nice.
Like, “Wow, Max and Dave are playing our tracks and bigging us up.” So that was late ’93, just off a cassette tape before the vinyl dropped in May ’94.
Wow. Awesome.
So 30 years, ties in nicely with this zine.
Exactly!
That dropped and I went around London with Terry. We just took it round record shops ourselves, you know, like people did back then, and some of the shops were like, “Oh, if it had instrumentals on it, we’d be able to sell it easier,” or, “If it wasn’t UK hip hop it might sell,” they weren’t even giving us any money. It was all sale or return. Liberty Grooves were great though. I think they took a whole box, it came out at the same time as the Gutter Snypes EP, which I bought in there. I didn’t really know any of those guys like Whirlwind D or any of them back then.
So that was a bit disappointing that people weren’t really excited about it in the shops, but then I really wanted to put a record out again after ’94. Setbacks though have always been due to money for me. Even now, with the label, it’s money holding everything back. I’m not from money. So I’ve had to go out and earn it. And then I spend a lot on collecting records. I’ve always bought records by people I know, and I know so many people on the scene I'm buying people’s records every week, even now.
I want their records in my collection. So unless it’s something really wack, I gotta have it. And since I first started buying records in early ’85, I’ve had a list as long as my arm where I’ve never been able to get on top of it or afford them all. I’ve had to prioritise. I spent about 20 years just catching up on records that I didn’t have as teenager and buying clean copies of them as well, where I could afford them. So a lot of records I have two or three copies, some battered from the eighties. I love them so much. It’s my history as well. And I know when I go, it won’t mean anything to anyone else.
Absolutely. It’s like a curation process of everything, it’s just that journey through things.
Yeah, it’s like a museum now. I love looking at them as well as the music, like I’ve got a copy of something where I just sit there and look at it, it’s a piece of art. It’s beautiful.
Yeah, and you can just feel more connected to the music as well. Memories.
Yeah, you can feel them by picking them up, the memories. Now my ambition all along – being a vinyl junkie – was to put a record out. So after ours dropped in ’94, I thought that was it. I thought I’d be making records after that forever. Then it was like five years of being in the wilderness before I had anything else out on wax, which was with Jehst. So I got the S950, but didn’t have a mixing desk, I was just using the main output. But that was my first proper production, I was like, “Wow, I’m gonna actually have something on record again and produce.”
Such a good feeling. So how did you how did you hook up with Jehst?
So he knew about Hidden Identity. He’s a lot younger than me, and he was in living in Huddersfield, where I was living at the time. But prior to that, I saw him on stage in ‘96 as a kid. You know Dave, Ruf Beats?
Yep, indeed.
Dave Ruf was on stage at this new venue that opened in Manchester, and says, “I’m gonna bring on The Jester.” Jehst was called The Jester then, and this kid comes on stage, he’s probably like, 14 or something. Then I’m like, “Wow, this guy, this guy is fucking incredible.” That always stuck in my mind. I thought, yeah, we’re going to hear him on some records or something down the line.
So you worked with many people on ‘The Enthusiast’ too, what’s been happening for you since then?
So the label (Hidden Identity Productions) was started in 2002. And then we had the 2008 financial crash or whatever they called it, but what really sparked off me putting out vinyl again was when my friend Joey died – Joey Deez from Village Live Records. And yeah, he was really supportive of the 45s I put out, he had test presses of those. And then when he died, I put the third one out as a tribute to him, one of the beats was an instrumental of a remix I did for his label with another beat on the other side that I know he liked.
That’s a great tribute, man.
You should see the amount of albums him and Doug put out on Village Live in the space of less than five years. I think I have a whole shelf of albums, full albums, you know; that inspired me to put out albums, I haven’t put out an album on my label before, only EPs and 7”s. So I pressed Black Opal (‘The Undiscovered Self’), which was 2021. First time I’d put anything out like that, it that came out real nice, I’m still sitting on boxes of them, but I love that album. I think it’s great and there’s a lot worse stuff that sells by the box, which is weird. What I love about Black Opal, it reminds me of the political stuff from the ’80s about Black Britain, you know, Katch 22, stuff like that. The cover of the Black Opal album is a shot from the Brixton riots; so that was the first album, I thought I’d sell a lot more than I did. I’m still sitting on boxes.
They’ll go gradually. Music like Black Opal is timeless.
Yeah, they will. Then I put out the Triple Darkness album, their third album, which was an honour to put out because they just have so many fans, and these are all artists that I’ve been individually working on producing for over the last ten years, Ray Vendetta and Tesla’s Ghost and Cyrus Malachi, slightly different line up to the previous two albums, and they got Ramson Badbones on there.
Dope.
They wanted me to do it, and I really had to put it out, and it was a mission. I did T-shirts, all kinds of stuff. And it was so expensive, the first test press came back too quiet, luckily I didn’t have to pay for the re-cut. But that slowed everything down.
Right, especially when you’re trying to time it right.
We got there, double vinyl, only a hundred with white vinyl, the gatefold sleeve looks incredible. Sounds really nice.
Amazing, congratulations, I need to see that. So what else is coming up?
Well, lately I’ve been releasing stuff just on digipack CD and cassette, so I’ve been putting out The Colony who are my people for like 20 years now, they’re sort of my hip hop family. The third installment of their current trilogy will be out in October and then their proper album will be out next year. Some of the solo releases I put out recently by Nomad and Kakarot (from the Crew DSOTM), are like mini albums, seven tracks. I’m producing some tracks for Nomad as well. Then there’s gonna be more from me and Bad FX and more of just my Evil Ed stuff. I won’t say just now what’s gonna drop, but I’m gonna drop some bigger projects later this year and going into next year.
Great, great. Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time, that was a dope conversation. Peace Ed.
Thanks, you too.
This article was originally written and published in 2024, when ‘The Enthusiast’ album turned 20 and the ‘Blunted Bumpkin Buskers’ EP turned 30, each being respectively released in 2004 and 1994, and Evil Ed continues to be one of the hardest-working artists in UK hip hop. Ed has always maintained an ethos to work with talented people he knows and support them as much as possible. Ed’s unique production style results in some of the most insightful and sonically rich hip hop from the UK. From Mistima, Lone Disciple, through Jehst, Yungun, The Colony, Junior Disprol and Asaviour to Black Opal, Triple Darkness and beyond, Evil Ed’s contribution to hip hop deserves greater recognition.
Follow Evil Ed and Hidden Identity Productions on Instagram:
@evil_ed_the_enthusiast
@hidden_identity_productions
Loved this! Your interviews always take me ages to read cos there's so many bits and pieces I missed. Spent this morning listening to Ba-Dop-Boom-Bang, watching the whole of Lowdown (only seen clips previously) and currently half way through the Hidden Identity EP which I love! Can't believe I missed it at the time, would have been right up my street. Gonna hunt down that release from The Colony (who I loved in the 2000s, glad they're still going) and will prob listen to The Enthusiast again as not heard it in years.