Goldie

British graffiti writer, drum and bass / jungle artist, DJ, actor and TV personality. Born: 19 September 1965 in Walsall, England, UK. The first superstar produced by the breakbeat jungle movement, Goldie popularised drum’n’bass as a form of musical expression just as relevant for living-room contemplation as techno had become by the early 1990s. Though he hardly developed the style, and his later reliance on engineers like and to capture his sound puts into question his true musical importance, Goldie became one of the first personalities in British dance music, his gold teeth and b-boy attitude placing him leagues away from the faceless bedroom boffins who had become the norm in intelligent dance music. After spending several years working on his production skills at , he founded the label, which released seminal dark yet intelligent singles by , , , , , , and , amongst others. He released one of jungle’s first and best full-length albums with "" , which put him squarely at the top of the drum’n’bass heap –at least in the minds of critics and mainstream listeners– though his follow-up album, "" , displayed an ambitious, personal side of Goldie hardly in keeping with jungle’s producer mentality. A native of Walsall, England, Goldie was born to a Scottish-Jamaican couple and put up for adoption. He bounced around child-care homes and several sets of foster parents during his childhood years, and became fascinated with the rise of hip-hop, breakdancing, and graffiti art. His nickname stems from “Goldielocks”, an earlier nickname given to him during his B-boy days due to his blonde dreadlocks which was subsequently shortened when he no longer wore dreadlocks, and then adopted as his graffiti ’tag’. By 1986, he was involved with breakdancing and graffiti forming his own crews around around his home of Wolverhampton, Birmingham and the West Midlands.; Whilst living on the Heat Town Estate in Wolverhampton in the 1980’s, Goldie used the multiple labyrinth and concrete ‘jungle’ of walls, stairwells, and underpasses as his own personal canvases and gallery, producing hundreds of paintings know as ‘burners’ or ‘pieces’ , often working at night to avoid detection from police and local residents. Goldie’s reputation as a pioneer of aerosol art soon soon spread attracting visitors nationwide, forming a community which lead to the formation of a crew known as the ‘United Graffiti Federation’, of which Goldie and were ‘presidents’, forming networks with the established and acting as mentors to burgeoning and up-and-coming graffiti writers. After making several trips nationwide for all-day breakdancing, graffiti and hip hop events , Goldie appeared in the English documentary on graffiti art called “Bombing”. He also spent time in New York and Miami , but returned to England by 1988. For a time, Goldie worked at the Try 1 shop in Walsall , then moved to London. He began hanging out with two fellow heads from the British hip-hop scene, and , and by 1991 he’d been introduced to the breakbeat culture that birthed jungle; at the seminal club night ‘Rage’, DJs and pitched ancient breakbeats up to 45 rpm, blending their creations with the popular rave music of the time. Goldie was hooked on the sound of raw breakbeat techno, and he gradually switched his allegiance to jungle from the British hip-hop scene that later generated trip-hop. Through his girlfriend , Goldie hooked up with and , two influential figures in the emerging drum’n’bass scene. The duo’s and recordings as were fostering an increasingly artistic attitude to the music, and Goldie learned much about breakbeat production and engineering at their studios. He recorded his first single as , then debuted on as with two singles at the tale-end of the breakbeat hardcore scene, “Killa Muffin” and “Menace” . The single "" under name , broke him into the jungle scene, which besides pioneering the crucial jungle concept of time-stretching , evinced the growing separation between the uplifting rave/hardcore scene and its emerging dark side, more reliant on breakbeats. The name was later taken for his influential label, which released material from a legion of crucial jungle artists: , , , , , , , , and , amongst others. Later singles such as "" and remixes for ’s spread Goldie’s fame, and in 1994 he signed a contract with offshoot . His first major-label single was "" , from his debut album "" . He gained additional fame in early 1996, when an American tour supporting sparked a relationship between the two and led to a brief engagement period before they called off a wedding. Goldie resurfaced with a high-profile follow-up, "" , with another epic two-disc set including one track, “Mother” that in itself broke the 70-minute barrier. The album tanked with critics and fans, leading to a return to the underground later that year with the "" EP . Save for a handful of mix albums ), two studio efforts credited to , and "" ), and “Sine Tempus” , a soundtrack to an unreleased film directed by the man himself, Goldie’s career over the next two decades became less and less music-focused. He turned his hand to acting, appearing in ’s film “Snatch” , the James Bond film “The World Is Not Enough” , and the perennial soap opera ‘Eastenders’. He also appeared on a number of reality TV shows, including ‘Maestro’, where he learned how to conduct a symphony orchestra, and ‘Goldie’s Band: By Royal Appointment’, where he put together a band of unknowns to perform at Buckingham Palace. He was awarded an MBE on the Queen’s 2016 Honours list for services to music and young people. A career-spanning compilation, “The Alchemist” , was released by Rhino Records. Goldie’s third solo studio album and first in nearly two decades, "" , was released on through . Guest vocalists on the album included , , , and , the latter of which he had discovered while making ‘Goldie’s Band’ TV show.