Reach The Xenith

Yesterday I introduced you to my Kaptin Selects showcase at Focus Wales. Today and for the rest of the week I’m going to be concentrating on the conference, which starts this evening, up in Wrexham. If you’re there, one act you can’t miss is Xenith on Saturday night, Ty Pawb at 8pm. Even if you’re not there, stick around as you’ll be hearing a lot more about these guys in future so it’s good to get the lowdown now. 

In the relatively compact but ever expanding world of Welsh hip hop, it would not be over the top to call these guys a ‘super-group’. They performed one of their first shows at last year’s Kaptin Selects, but between them they’ve got more experience than most in the business. I think the best way to introduce them to you is by highlighting each member individually.

Dregz

I could tell you many stories about the hilarious scrapes we’ve gotten into over the years, or the times that he’s helped me level up in life, but I’ll save those stories for another time. I first met Dregz in the late 80s, he was the first Welsh rapper I’d met and at the time he was going under the name Rez-Q. Rez Q was from Cardiff but the rest of his group Best Shot were from the valleys, and they had a couple of great tapes in circulation. The crew split in the early 90s but when a BBC show called Dance Energy held a nationwide competition to find new talent, two members Rez Q and Rapster T, hooked up with a Cardiff group called Brand X (who were part of a wider crew called The Underdogs, we’ll get on to them shortly) to re-record a Best Shot track called Bring On The Sunshine, under the name Best Shot Posse. They won the whole competition, signed a recording contract with a major label, East West Records, went on a nationwide tour, played the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party, released a couple of singles then sadly imploded before they had the chance to blow up. 

Bummed out by the whole affair, Rez Q changed his name to Funki Dregz and started a new crew called Potato Skinz, who were one of the few Cardiff hip-hop groups performing regularly throughout the 90s. They had a bunch of shows, I went to Stuttgart with them twice (see the picture below), and with various different members (I’ll mention a few shortly) continued well into the noughties at least. At the end of the 90s Dregz was also in a funk outfit called Quattro who were the house band at possibly my favourite club of all time, The Toucan. He was also the resident compere, and in fact he got me my first DJ residency there in 99. 

I moved back to Cardiff in 2000 and together with Dregz plus another rapper and HHC journalist Ruffstylz we started a Hip-hop night at the Toucan called Higher Learning, which became a hub for the scene and lasted well over 12 years as a regular event. Dregz and I were also doing hip hop workshops across Wales and the UK, and at one point he got his own radio show on BBC Radio Wales, though you might find he doesn’t talk too favourably about his former employer at the live show. 

I’m realising it would take far too long to list all his achievements and I want you to carry on reading about the other members, but nowadays many people in the music scene in Wales know him for heading up Radio Platfform, an important youth music initiative down at the Wales Millennium Centre. Some of the young artists aren’t even aware that he’s one of the dopest rappers in the country, but many are soon to find out! 

Potato Skinz in Stuttgart 1999

Johnny B

Like most people who were involved in hip hop during the early years in Wales. Johnny started as a b-boy. He was the youngest member of a well known St Mellons crew called Street Snakes, alongside his older brother. Eventually though he picked up the mic and started rapping, becoming part of a groundbreaking youth initiative, and a very important group in the history of Welsh music and street dance, called The Underdogs. I probably saw him perform a few times in the 90s, with either DJ Jaffa, Steady Jay or DJ Keltech but he properly came to my attention in 1999 with his ‘Am I Still Hip-hop?’ album. The album was fresh and exciting, it didn’t sound like anybody else out there. I’m not sure if that’s why he felt the need to ask the question “Am I Still Hip-hop?”, to be honest neither Johnny B or Potato Skinz fitted into a neat box of what many around them considered to be hip-hop, but that’s what made them stand out, and there’s no question that both most certainly were. 

It was actually one of my birthday parties at the Toucan Club that first laid the seeds for Higher Learning (I missed the whole thing due to my appendix bursting). Keltech & Johnny B headlined then and they would be our first headliners when we kick started the night properly. Keltech was an awesome DJ and producer, and Johnny was an electric performer with an individual rhyme style that reminded me of E40 but with a Cardiff accent, even though he’d never heard E40 at the time. Keltech & Johnny B’s later music such as the Rhyme Hungry EP or The Name (featuring a rare recording of yours truly), did really well. Their music was different but also accessible to a wide audience. Johnny was certainly more cheeky chappie than bad boy and there was a great sense of humour and fun to everything he did. He still hasn’t lost that twinkle in his eye and his ‘verbal gymnastics’ are still on point. 

Evil C

I’ve mentioned both Underdogs and Potato Skinz, well Evil C was a member of both. Again, I’m bound to have seen him during the Underdog days but didn’t meet him til around 1995 when I’m pretty sure Potato Skinz were performing at a huge event that used to happen in Cardiff called the Big Weekend. I don’t remember much from that year except that I ended up in a fight, and Evil C managed to stop a whole gang from jumping me. You don’t mess with Evil C, he’s now a bouncer in Peppermint Lounge so that still stands. He was also dangerous on the mic. A freestyle master, he was very handy to have around in an MC battle back then too. I think he might have been the first person to get me up on stage in Stuttgart but we also performed together a number of times when I joined the Potato Skinz in 2000 (I had been an original member but never really rapped back then). He’s a real presence on stage and for all my lighthearted comments about his ferocity, there are many reasons that he commands total respect.

DJ Jaffa

I could write a whole book on DJ Jaffa. Sadly he won’t be at Focus Wales this year but he will be there in spirit and many of the beats you’ll hear will be his productions. He’s another dude who has been there from the beginning, starting out as a b-boy in 82/83 before being inspired by his friends DJ Easygroove (who later became a rave legend) and Bristol’s Wild Bunch (seminal Bristol crew whose members went on to form Massive Attack) to take up DJing in 1985. He played the first proper hip hop jam in Cardiff and is arguably still the most important and hardest working DJ in the city today. He signed to Jive Records (A Tribe Called Quest, KRS One, DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, etc) in the late 80s releasing a couple of tunes with MC Eric (later to find global stardom with Technotronic), before opening up his house along with Berta (sadly no longer with us) and her brother 4Dee (also playing Focus Wales, see yesterday’s post) to the local St Mellons youngsters who had no youth centre in the area, and starting the Underdogs which ran for a number of years and as I’ve already mentioned, was seminal to the scene. 

Since then he’s been a member of many groups, including pioneering Welsh language hip hop crew Tystion, Manchild, Erban Poets (whose award winning music came out on Rounda Records, a label that Jaffa ran with Little Miss), Kidz With Toyz and many others. As I said, I could write a book on him but two of my favourite facts are that he once DJed for 70s hours, longer than any other UK DJ (and totally smashed it from the bits I caught) and he recorded scratches for a tune from the Simpsons. There’s plenty more but in short, DJ Jaffa is a total legend. You’ll have to go see Xenith again when he’s with them.

Aisha Kigs

I don’t know much about Aisha except that she’s a great singer and one of the RNB artists you should 100% be keeping an eye on in future. She’s not a member of the group but will be joining them for a number of tunes (previously you might have seem them with Asha Jane, another dope Welsh singer to watch). She’s also got her own sets at Focus Wales, both on Friday: Old No. 7 Bar from 5:45pm and Room 2 of Penny Black at 7:45pm.

So hopefully see you at 8pm on on Saturday night at Ty Pawb for Xenith. If not then do catch them another time and keep an eye out for their debut single due out on Bard Picasso soon. You can follow their Instagram at @xenith_uk