MC Duke: a True Pioneer of British Hip Hop
April 2024 will be remembered as a difficult month for hip hop culture. First, the great multi-percussionist, experimental musician and producer Keith Leblanc, famed for his work with Sugar Hill (among many others), producer, musician and DMX programmer of Malcolm X’s posthumous ‘No Sell Out’, passed away on 4th April aged 69. Second, the legendary, beautiful and most positive of souls, Patti Astor, known to hip hop fans primarily as Virginia in Wild Style and co-founder of The Fun Gallery, left us on 9th April aged 74. But for me, and perhaps for the entirety of the British hip hop fraternity, the toughest was MC Duke leaving us on 21st April, aged only 58.
I had shied away from writing pieces on both Patti and Keith. Whilst I knew Patti, I didn’t know her well, we’d talked very much but never met, and Keith even less so. But with MC Duke, it hits harder; although I’d met him only once in 1990, the impact his work and presence brought to the UK hip hop scene.
The Conversation have commissioned me to write an article on MC Duke, which I duly completed today. However, ahead of its publication (likely to be next week), I wanted to write something more closer to home; many of you will know The Conversation’s global reach and desire to bring scholarly work to a broader and, at times, lay audience, so my article for them does exactly that. Here, I wanted to sink a little deeper into why I believe MC Duke is one of the most significant figures in UK hip hop history.
MC Duke was crucial to the development of hip hop in the British Isles throughout the latter eighties, bringing a strong sense of the evolving representations in hip hop culture to a broader audience. MC Duke followed other pioneering British artists such as Newtrament, Faze One, Fission and Derek B – all of whom had released records prior to MC Duke. But it was MC Duke’s embracing of hip hop’s visual tropes as much as his sound that placed him as a forerunner of a new wave of artist. MC Duke challenged the ideas of establishment and monarchy, embodied contemporaneous US hip hop practices and addressed racial tensions and issues of cultural identity with clarity.
MC Duke’s first release, ‘Jus-Dis’ landed in 1987 on Hard As Hell! Rap’s Next Generation, a compilation released on Simon Harris’ Music Of Life label – a staple label for homegrown British talent. ‘Jus-Dis’ presents Duke’s battle rap attitude through the dis song whilst his lyrics and wordplay on the song title (‘jus-dis’ = just dis/justice) also present social commentary on the nation state: “There ain’t no law, there’s only jus-dis”. In essence, Duke sees oppression from the nation state through the lens of the dis.
Duke also brought the idea of the dis to live British audiences throughout the UK by accelerating his wrangle with Overlord X as part of his stage routine. I’d seen Overlord X at Plymouth Academy at the Ice Cream Promotions all-dayer in 1989, and X duly called out MC Duke (who was not present nor on the bill). In greater than equal measure, MC Duke retorted through the crown engagement at his own show at The Lemon Grove in Exeter a few months later in early 1990. My crew and I were fortunate enough to be the support act, which I wrote about in Hip Hop in The Sticks:
M.C. Duke moved to the front of the stage, his great presence increasing, and proceeded to ask the crowd a question, did they know who he had beef with? Collective, over-lapping harmonious and supervening cries en-sued, “Overlord X!”
“That’s right,” Duke said; pensive, menacing.
D.J. Leader One lifted a finger off the vinyl, the powerful voice of Jesse Jackson signalled only one thing at that moment, ‘I’m Riffin’’. As the beat dropped the crowd exploded, knowing this was certain to be Duke’s closing track. Duke stood, leg thumping, mic tilted skywards, his free hand pointing straight up in the air, “I need freedom, ‘cause I’m riffin’, riffin’, RIFFIN!’” he bawled.
MC Duke’s first proper single release, ‘Miracles’, the next year, visually presented MC Duke and his DJ, DJ Leader 1, for the first time to audiences. The record sleeve depicts Duke donning a bright red goose jacket, a black leather cap, Cazal-style shades, gold rope chain and a name-belt buckle – all highly sought after attire in the hip hop world. These representations of fashion linked the US image of rap with an emerging British one. In the US, rap pioneers T La Rock and Kool Moe Dee had previously used similar accessories on their debut solo album covers to denote a sense of identity. In the UK, graffiti writers and breakdancers particularly were sporting name-belt buckles.
Sonically, ‘Miracles’ heavily samples The Jackson Sister’s ‘I Believe In Miracles’ which was a mainstay of the rare groove scene which developed in London during the early 1980s. Additionally, MC Duke’s follow-up single, ‘I’m Riffin (English Rasta)’ heavily samples ‘Funky Like A Train’ by Equals, again a core record from many rare groove playlists, and furthermore, ‘Got To Get Your Own’ by Rueben Wilson - the title track and namesake of a impactful Charly Records Rare Groove compilation from 1987 - was used on Duke’s track of almost the same name (‘Gotta Get Your Own’).
With the inclusion of Run’s “Who’s house …?” vocal sample taken from Run-D.M.C.’s ‘Run’s House’ and Chuck D’s “… making miracles …” lifted from Public Enemy’s ‘Bring The Noise’, ‘Miracles’ starts to brings together a transatlantic idea of hip hop. which, through ‘Miracles’ knitted the sensibility of London’s rare groove scene with the toughness of late eighties US rap.
The introduction to ‘I’m Riffin (English Rasta)’ is sampled from the powerful speech by Jesse Jackson on ‘Introduction (Complete)’, which immediately frames MC Duke’s ensuing lyrics with a sense of Black identity and history, as he raps, “Known to speak about men of freedom, Look for books on King and read ‘em”. Duke returns the narrative to the sense of the everyman, “We cover and smother another brother, Throw him away just like a used rubber”, twice referring to the system as at the heart of Black-on-Black crime.
Duke’s evanescent pseudonym as the English Rasta also makes comment on the presence of Jamaican culture in Britain, in particular the second-generation who grew up through an evolving Black British identity. M.C. Duke and DJ Leader 1’s debut album Organised Rhyme challenges the British class system, the aristocracy, colonialism and imperialism. Duke claims their associated visual tropes and brings them into a rap frame fusing tweed suits, hunting boots, Bentley cars and stately homes with the African medallions and chunky gold jewellery of hip hop.
In 1990, Duke expanded the idea of the aristocracy as a producer and performer on the album The Royal Family, a collective of artists from the Music Of Life camp, including the likes of Lady Tame and Doc Savage. This album resonates with coexisting US label-related collectives such as Marley Marl’s Juice Crew manifest through label compilation In Control, Volume 1 and The 45 King’s Flavor Unit on The 45 King Presents The Flavor Unit.
Again, this enforces the transatlantic approach to hip hop that Duke maintained. His nod to the US hip hop scene expands further; on the remix of ‘I’m Riffin (English Rasta)’, MC Duke rolls off a series of shout outs at the outro. Here, he vocalises his dues to his dancers, Billy and Double S, much in the same way Big Daddy Kane envelops Scoob Lover and Scrap Lover in his Long Live The Kane LP. As a dancer before turning an emcee, Duke recognised the importance of the dance element of hip hop culture as he verbalises on ‘Jus-Dis’: “… on the scene in ‘84 / when I was a breaker and much, much more …”.
MC Duke embodied the entirety of hip hop culture and his intentions remain clear – he bridged the gap between US hip hop history and a new British trajectory of rap, forging the route for those that followed.
Rest in Peace, Beats, and Power, MC Duke.