UFO Info Week-End

Radio 1 identify Carnival as a very important event and they want to contribute to it by putting on a great

Radio 1 identify Carnival as a very important event and they want to contribute to it by putting on a great show that features top acts.”Before, I’d bring in the sound system, set up in the road at Notting Hill and just go for it. Hip-hop and reggae are generally under-represented in the UK media, so the new shows were intended to promote wider aspects of street-based music.When Westwood joined forces with Auntie it represented a meeting of two disparate cultures. But he talks of the union in glowing terms.”The set up here is incredible,” he enthuses. “The station isn’t profit- led so it’s all about music and programming ideas.

“I got to play when no one had arrived.” After helping to set up LWR he joined Kiss in its days as a pirate station before moving to Capital Radio.”I was just a street DJ who loved the music. In the early days, I managed to establish contact with DJs in New York, along with other artists and producers. That really set me on my way.”His move to Radio 1 surprised many observers, but the switch from Capital Radio was just one in a series of radical moves by the ailing BBC giant designed to attract a new, younger audience. like Blak Twang ["Red Letter"], talk about the trials and tribulations of their lives, which is something that you can relate to if you’re from the same background. And, The London Posse use local dialects to talk about what it’s like being stopped by the police and other everyday struggles that black youths face today.”Raised in West London, Westwood began his DJ career carrying record boxes for a local sound system. “This has been the bottom-line problem since day one.”There’s some great talent in the UK but there needs to be more financial support. It’s OK when you’re MC-ing at college but later on you need money for studio equipment Those [UK artists] who have been successful.

Yet in rap, the worldwide dominance of US artists has meant that few UK performers have made a significant impact at home, let alone overseas.Westwood, however, has tirelessly championed terminally underfunded UK artists – with varying levels of success.”American acts like Puffy, Busta Rhymes and Notorious B.I.G make a lot of money for UK companies but the money isn’t reinvested in UK artists,” Westwood explains. “It’s about not compromising – keeping it real – so when you tune in you know what’s going down.”While much of modern dance music can trace its roots back across the Atlantic, some forms, such as house music and drum’n'bass have managed to produce influential artists, producers and DJs all over the world, from Belgium to Bristol to the Balearics. But rap has enormous diversity and variety – if they can’t realise it for what it is it’s their loss.”Though hip-hop is older than most other popular dance music styles, it has retained an underground feel. It occasionally rears its head to attract mainstream popularity (in the late 1980s, the 30-second rap practically replaced the guitar solo in modern pop/dance music, while today, everything released by Sean Puffy’s Bad Boy label sells spectacularly), but these manifestations rarely reflect the hardcore flavour of hip-hop.”My show’s about raw uncut flava, that’s really the essence,” Westwood explains.

“It stems from racism because these events are mostly black.”At the end of the day if a venue doesn’t want a street audience then there’s not much you can do. When rap culture does make a rare appearance in the mainstream press, it’s almost exclusively depicted in negative terms. Indeed, anyone attempting to promote hip-hop events can detail the unwillingness of councils to grant late licences and will invariably dwell on the difficulties encountered when trying to persuade the police to sanction events.”That’s the basic fight which has always been there,” he sighs. Twelve years on he’s still trying to bring rap music to a wider audience – it’s no easy task. You can’t run a radio station in isolation from your audience, so now we can all come together to meet at street level.”Meeting at the Radio 1 offices, Westwood talks about the new project with palpable excitement. Tim Westwood’s name is synonymous with rap music. Westwood, who presents the Radio 1 Rap Show, tonight launches “Westwood” at The Temple; the first hip-hop event to gain a prime-time Saturday night residency at one of London’s A-list venues.

“In 12 years of DJing this is the first time that such a big and prestigious club has opened its doors, on a Saturday night, to rap music on a weekly basis,” says Westwood
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