Dan Rankin (aka Trials)

And they're talking about things that are familiar to me, like situations that I'm very, very acquainted with, like whether it be like there's police in the streets or my cousins do this or this is what it looks like.

I'm like, yeah, I've been in that kind of area before.

Tell me more about it.

And the beats.

just sounded hard, and I loved turning them up.

I just put my headphones on, and I would get lost in liner notes.

Anything I'd get my hands on, I would read that back to front and try and find out who did what.

I'd get a Parliament Funkadelic record, and who's B. Collins, and what has he done?

Bootsy Collins.

And then I'd be on a trip.

Okay, and what has this guy done?

Yeah.

They'd informed all of my production, so I'd start sampling jazz records or, you know, P-Funk or anything I'd get my hands on because I just loved listening to Sun Little or all these interesting little textures that I'd never heard before, which just dripped and bled soul all through it.

And I'd never really heard that music before until I got thrown into the hard wave of NWA, and that was scary and satisfying at the same time.

Now, as I hinted at in the introduction, you got yourself a pair of turntables, the hard way.

The hardest way possible.

Tell me it is how you managed to get hold of a couple of turntables and a mic.

Yeah, I wouldn't recommend this.

I was driving a car, passenger seat in the front, and my brother was driving, my older brother was driving the car, my younger brother in the back, leaving a little T-junction, and there was just a very overzealous driver coming our way, way too fast.

We smash, my brother and I...