It’s Big Dada’s 10 year anniversary and it’s time to celebrate! UK’s best label for hip hop and grime is having a party and releasing a historic double CD compilation plus a DVD documenting a decade of music.
Big Dada Birthday Bash
The Big Dada Party takes place at Electrowerkz in London on Friday 16 November from 9pm until 6am. The performances feature Roots Manuva, Cadence Weapon and Wiley on the mic and possibly, the uber-smooth french hip hop team TTC! Still awaiting confirmation from TTC, so we shouldn’t get too excited but hot shizzle that would be wiiiikkid! Other confirmed acts include Mike Ladd, Diplo, Infinite Livez, Juice Aleem, XRABIT, Speech and many more! Still awaiting confirmation - Spank Rock djs! No matter what, it’s gonna be a great night…
Well Deep: Ten Years of Big Dada Recordings CD and DVD
A double CD compilation will be released separately from a DVD compilation, each spanning ten years of Big Dada artists.
Big Dada Compilation CD1
1. Movement - Roots Manuva (4:13)
2. The Tale (Radio Edit) - TY (3:37)
3. Night Night Theme - Infesticons (4:05)
4. Colossal Insight - Roots Manuva (3:45)
5. Dead Dogs Two - Clouddead (Boards of Canada mix) (5:00)
6. Wherever We Go - New Flesh (3:46)
7. Wait a Minute - TY (3:22)
8. Fader Party - Majesticons (2:25)
9. Percolator - Lotek HiFi (3:20)
10. Dans Le Club-TTC (3:57)
11. Witness (1 Hope) - Roots Manuva (4:14)
12. Diplo Rhythm- Diplo (4:53)
13. Sweet Talk - Spank Rock (4:11)
14. My Mistakes (xxxchange Mix) - Wiley (3:09)
15. Hard Times - Part 2 (4:38)
Big Dada Compilation CD 2
1. 50/50 - Wiley (2:18)
2. Stick & Move - New Flesh (3:30)
3. Worcestershire Sauce - Infinite Livez (3:03)
4. Super Pretzel - NMS (4:53)
5. Monkey Theme - Infesticons (4:15)
6. Slang Teacher - Gamma (3:44)
7. Now’s The Time - Diplo (3:08)
8. Supply & Demand - Busdriver (2:05)
9. Anti-Matter - King Geedorah feat MF Doom & Mr Fantastik (3:27)
10. Look For Me - Ty (4:14)
11. Killer Apps - Shadowless (4:12)
12. King Spitter - Big Juss (2:18)
13. Black Astronaut - Busdriver (4:00)
14. Can’t Believe - Lotek HiFi (4:01)
15. Closer - Ty (5:06)
16. Physics of a Bicycle - Clouddead (4:41)
“WELL DEEP” DVD
The DVD has over 30 video promos, a 32 minute label documentary (including interviews with Diplo, Roots Manuva, Wiley, Mike Ladd, Will Ashon, Ty, Juice Aleem + Infinite Livez) and extras.
Ten facts about Big Dada’s 10th Anniversary DVDs
1. “Well Deep” has every promo video Big Dada has ever released - around 30 of them.
2. That includes the classic school sports day video for “Witness (1 Hope)” - an idea dreamed up by Rodney Smith himself.
3. And the infamous money shot from Infinite Livez’ video “Adventures of the Lactacting Man” (the glamour models he’d hired nearly walked).
4. Plus the highly-influential proto-grime classic “Stick & Move” by New Flesh (ask More Fire), and Ty’s beachside buried-in-sand number for “Wait A Minute” (filmed on the glamorous Essex coast).
5. There’s also a thirty minute documentary featuring interviews with Roots Manuva, Ty, Diplo, Juice Aleem, Mike Ladd, Infinite Livez, TTC, Wiley etc.
6. System D128 (Diplo colloborator and the man behind the “H Is For Hollertronix” video mixtape) has made a half hour megamix of the videos.
7. He has also made a never-before-seen video for King Geedorah’s “The Final Hour”.
8. Big Dada promo video makers have gone on to make feature films (Kim Chapiron, the man behind TTC’s kung fu classic “(Je N’Arrive Pas A) Danser”), documentaries (Al Siddons - “Too Cold”), omelettes (who hasn’t?) and a shitload more promos. Many of them have also gone… m-a-a-a-a-a-d.
9. In the documentary Mike Ladd reveals a whole new meaning for the phrase “modelising”.
10. The DVD is packed with easter egg extras we can’t tell you about… They include Big Dada label manager Jamie Collinson dancing naked with 15 naked girls to TTC’s “Dans Le Club”.
Here’s a little music history straight out of the press release:
Big Dada was started when then-music journalist Will Ashon approached Peter Quicke (boss of Ninja Tune) and suggested a hip hop label to run alongside but independently of the venerable indie. Heavily influenced by the underground hip hop scenes that had grown up in LA in the early nineties and then New York in the mid-nineties, Ashon envisaged the label as a home for musical misfits and pioneers, for those who were more interested in producing something worthwhile than necessarily having a hit.
Whilst “underground hip hop” became shorthand for a kind of nostalgic belief in “real hip hop” and dusty samples, Big Dada continued to evolve. Ashon maintains, though, that the label has stayed true to its founding principles. “I always thought the basic principle of hip hop was to keep moving, to constantly be trying something new. To be fresher than everyone else!”
Certainly, few labels have operated such a broad-church policy to rap-based music, both in terms of style and geography. How many labels could claim to have had a consistent music policy over ten years while releasing artists as diverse as Wiley and cLOUDDEAD? How many labels could justify releasing French group TTC, Diplo’s early Brazilian experiments, some of the finest acts to come out of the UK (Roots Manuva, Ty, New Flesh, Infinite Livez), as well as some of the finest underground acts to emerge from the USA (Spank Rock, King Geedorah/MF Doom, Mike Ladd’s Infesticons project) in addition to some of the most wildly offbeat (Bigg Jus, Busdriver)?
“Hip hop has saturated the breadth of popular music and culture,” Ashon argues. “There can’t be any rules about what’s acceptable or authentic other than whether it moves you and excites you. That’s all we’ve ever tried to do.”
Big Dada Links
Big Dada
Diplo music
Spank Rock music
Roots Manuva
TTC
Infinite Livez
ESKI BOY! brrrrup!
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