best shit outta ireland since barrys tea

sons phonetic, mook on the pro keeping it dusty, promoters book these cunts n get em off the dole

The KING

I’m a fan of street wear, hot clothes which look cutting edge and have innovative design and King Apparel is have been running tings with there garms for around 8 years. Maybe its being from London, the same city as the brand, sharing the same views and opinions as them. And if it is that then it comes across, something which must be hard to do, to capture a feeling and a vibe, and put it into clothing. I caught up with Tim who helped set up and now also helps to run, with his mate Paul, King Apparel.

The only reason that I’m aware of King Apparel is through the music scene, whether it be I’ve seen the logo sponsoring an event, or seeing  someone at a rave rocking the hard garms you so consistently bring out, so that being said how important is music to

the brand, and to you as a individual?

Music is central to the brand and everything we do. We emerged at the same time as the grime scene in the same area of East London and King really grew together with the emergence of that scene. At the same time my background in skate and snowboard so there was also an underlying punk sort of element to what I liked. The grime scene and punk scene are very similar in many ways and I think that’s why we like them so much. Obviously there are strong connections from Grime to Dubstep and we were big into that before it became more main stream. That’s how we were able to work with the likes of Plastician, Joker, Wretch32, Plan B etc you know 6-7 years ago before they all became household names. They are still very loyal to King as well which is wicked for everyone involved.

There’s more street wear brands out there than ever before, competition has got to be hard as ever, what is it that makes King stand out from the rest in your opinions?

Well there are a lot of brand names, but not really as many brands as you think. The majority of new labels coming through are t-shirt brands and the reality is, there is a huge gulf between a t-shirt brand and a comprehensive clothing brand. So I think what you’ll see over the next year is many of these won’t carry through and one or two that really go for it and have something different will develop into full fledged brands. It’s not just about your brand, what you make or how well it is designed, but business acumen, organization, commitment, sacrifice, and hard work all comes into it. Just one of these lacking and it won’t happen. I guess what separates us from many is that we have spent eight years showing all the characteristics that I just mentioned and built a solid foundation on this. We live and breath the culture we represent so would hope that people into the same stuff as us will feel amped on wearing what we make.

What was it that made you think you could start a successful clothing brand, when did push come to shove?

There wasn’t just one single thing, we had an idea and went with it. We took it day by day and as more challenges and hurdles presented themselves that we needed to get over to achieve our goals we made sure that we overcame them. After a while you reflect on what you have done and suddenly you are closer to actually having a brand and something tangible that people really recognise. We just followed what we wanted to do and had an unbridled commitment and motivation to achieve that. We still do to be honest.

Being around for a relatively short period, you managed to open a shop in the prime location of Covent Garden, where you had Skandals (Rewd Adams) Hunger Pains launch about 18 months ago, and I think Guru (R.I.P.) and Solar passed thru there too, any future plans for more of this sort of thing?

The shop was actually an 8 month pop-up store concept which finished last year. The idea was to be able to showcase the brand and what we do to a wider audience on a daily face to face basis. A large part of this included the instores and also the weekly DJ sets. As you say we had Skandal and Guru did insane sets as well as Virus Syndicate, DJ IQ, The Last Skeptic, Plastician, Alex Nut, P Money, Pyrelli and many more performing at the store. It really was sick having that medium to show what we do and like. We would love to do something like that again and give artists a permanent platform in Central London to perform on a regular basis, but we got in a lot of trouble with local residents for the road blocks we caused ha ha, plus the costs on stores round there now have gone through the roof, so its not as practical as it may seem. We may get a party together later this summer though – hold tight for that. If people like what we do then they should check out the site as we have an online store plus a host of stuff to download, stream etc.

www.king-apparel.com

And then there was INC

A face on the scene for a good few years now ,INC seems to be standing out at the minute as an individual with a promising path ahead. Known for being a battle mc on the London scene and supporting major acts such as Datsik, Necro, Rusko, Plastician, Caspa, Hatcha, Ghetto, Devlin,Virus Syndicate, Andy C, Foreign Beggars, The Pharcyde, Stenchman, Jehst, Skepta, JME, Jammer, DMZ, Datsik,Logan D, Klashnekoff, Sukh Night, GDC, (thats a fucking lot) and the legendary Taskforce. With animal delivery and wordplay which i can easily describe as frightingly vile (in other words SICK) im looking forward to hearing and seeing more. I caught up with him so as he could give us a little round up of whats been and whats to come.

Now a lot of people will be aware of you from being a battle champ in the JumpOff league, whats your feelings on the current leagues like dont flop and End of the Weak which you placed in a couple of years ago?


Yea i used to do a few of the battles like JumpOff, Lyric Pad, Battlescars but they all seemed to die and i lost interest and now this whole new scene has popped up. I used to watch some of the Dont Flop ones and to be honest i think its pretty appalling, i cant watch them anymore. Its like Cuthbert and the gang have discovered rap i just cant do it. Apart from Tenchoo and the Liverpool guy Oshea who is probably the funniest person alive i cant cosign it. As for EOW i love that stuff. I think what Snuff and those guys have brought to the table is QUALITY. I'd probably look to enter again 'cause its a lot of fun to enter.

EOW Acapella Round Video

How do you feel that the majority of the battles are pre prepared as opposed from on the spot improvised?

Even when the battles used to be 'freestyle' everyone had some lines to fall back on. I don't really care if its all written if its still good, but it can become a bit boring when there's no spontaneity involved.



Now it could be seen that you've moved away from the hip hop side of things to the grime/dub step, why is this?



UK Hip Hop seemed to die out a while ago, it became boring for me a few years ago listening to same shit, people moaning about shit i couldn't give a fuck about. Grime brought a bit of life back into music for me. I also started a night in Leeds called Vagabondz back in 2007 which catered a lot for the dub step fans so this in a way forced me to listen to more of it.  Over the last 2 years I've been doing a lot of radio both pirate and Internet streams with hightzlive.co.uk and dubstepfm.co.uk which are run by my DJ, Jacko. You can catch his sets on Friday 10-12pm and Saturday 12pm-2am.

INC Fire in the booth video

What currently has been your favourite / most memorable moment for you while doing this music ting?

Playing in Croatia at Outlook Festival 2008,2009 and 2010 were all amazing times.
Any time playing abroad are the best gigs for some reason. I played a show in Slovenia a month ago which was also one for the books, the crowds in Europe have no inhibitions and just go sick.

Whats should people be expecting to see from you, any releases/ gigs coming up?

Release wise i've got an album coming out with Higher Elements and Brisk which is mainly grime with a bit of dub step. That's got features from Byron, Illaman, Rowdy, Marvill and Shatterstar from Sheffield with production mainly from Higher Elements but there'll probably be a couple others in there too from Red Skull, Diverse Concepts, Formula (LDZ), and Whisker Twister from Israel. Ive got a feature on Dilligence's album which features everyone big in UK hip hop and a couple things coming out with Ral Dukes from the Squid Ninjas.



Follow INC and find out about future ish at
http://www.facebook.com/pages/INC-Music/157382577640185
and for good measure heres the soundcloud
http://soundcloud.com/inc-music

FIRST OF MANY

As firstly an artist, and secondly a music enthusiast, primarily music which surrounds me in my hometown of London, England, I have seen and been lucky enough to meet certain individuals who deserve a mention. I have been to countless nights out which have deserved a review. So for my own need to push and promote this around me has come the birth of this blog. Not here to be boring but to be informative and real, i am harry and your welcome.

                                            www.myspace.com/dutyharry