Record Shop Stories meets... DJ BobaFatt
Known for his top-notch 6 Music mixes and Soho Radio show, BobaFatt has also spent 20 years working in record shops in London and Bath. From Banksy to Chuck D, he's got record shop stories aplenty
Welcome, or welcome back to Record Shop Stories. It’s great to have you here. This week’s post is chock-full of great stories from my fascinating recent chat with DJ BobaFatt, and is too long for email… so read on it on the website or app to enjoy the full version.
I considered making this piece available only to paid subscribers. Interviews like this are a labour of love for me. But they also take a lot of time to pull together, for sure. If you enjoy what I do here on Record Shop Stories, and would feel good for supporting independent music journalism for less than the cost of a beer each month… I would be hugely grateful for your support, thank you.👇
OK, on with the interview…
DJ BobaFatt is a legend of the UK DJ scene, known especially for his regular BBC 6 Music mixes for the Huey Morgan show on Saturday mornings. He’s cooked up some incredible tribute mixes covering anyone from De La Soul, Massive Attack, Gang Starr and the Beastie Boys (his latest, for the 30th anniversary of Ill Communication).
But he’s also been playing out as a DJ for more than 30 years, sharing his love of all things hip-hop, soul, funk, broken beat, jazz, reggae, jungle and more… sounds that you can regularly hear on his excellent fortnightly show for Soho Radio.
BobaFatt (Bobby) has also worked in loads of independent and major record shops, and is now label manager for First Word Records, home to artists like Children of Zeus, Amanda Whiting and Souleance.
In this wide-ranging interview, Bobby shares his own record shop stories, including the time Banksy painted his record shop in Bath, and meeting the likes of Chuck D and Paul McCartney in his time at Rough Trade and HMV. He also shares some of his current favourite record shops and artists to check out. It’s a must-read, top to bottom.
Check out Bobafatt’s mixes and work at linktr.ee/bobafatt – there’s awesome listening for days…
Bobby, it’s great to meet you. I’ve just been listening to your recent Beastie Boys mix on the way back from North Wales. It’s ace. I was introducing my youngest lad to the Beasties…
Thanks man. It’s always a solid dopamine hit when these things go out. It’s cool to know you’ve reached so many people.
The nicest thing is I got some good messages about it from some of the people I knew back when Ill Communication came out. One of my mates messaged me and said ‘Oh, my son Stan heard the mix and has been listening to Beastie Boys all day since. He’s been on Spotify checking out their stuff.’
For me, that’s like, ‘Job done’. That’s worth the crazy process of making these things, if that’s the result.
Yeah, I was going to ask about that. You’re being asked to pay tribute to these landmark albums or artists in a half-hour mix slot for 6 Music. How do you go about doing that?
I’d like to say ‘Oh, I just hit record and it’s done in 27 minutes.’ But that’d be a big fat lie. That’s not how I do it. Firstly, there’s a whole bunch of research before I begin.
Then it’s a mixed multimedia process. It’s all mixed in Serato, really. So there isn’t actually much physical vinyl involved. I mean, I’ve got a lot of it, I’m surrounded by the stuff, which I really realise every time I move house! But I generally get the tunes together through my own collection and then by looking online to find more MP3s and stuff.
Then I’ll do the mix and try to work out how to chop it down to make it fit into 27 minutes, which is how long they have to be for the show. It’s always a bit of a challenge because I want to play everything!
The last bit’s ripping interview clips off YouTube and stuff, then lacing them together into the final edit. It takes a lot of time!
How did you get into doing the 6 Music Block Party mixes?
I approached Huey Morgan’s producer because I’d done a few ad-hoc bits for them before. Mid-pandemic, I obviously wasn’t gigging, so I asked if they wanted me to do some mixes for the show. And they were like, ‘Oh, yeah, definitely.’ And it’s just kind of grown off the back of that. Now I do one a month, so it’s pretty regular.
Absolutely - you’re a fixture on the Huey show now. You’ve also got a fortnightly radio show on Soho Radio, right? How long have you been doing that?
I’ve been doing that for about six years. I’d had regular radio slots before – I was on hip-hop station Itch FM for about five years, every Sunday night, and when I was at Rough Trade, we used to do a show on Resonance FM and on NTS Radio every couple of weeks. But I was late getting into the radio thing, really. I’ve DJed since I was a kid, in my bedroom, and started playing out in ’92. But I only started DJing on radio about ten or eleven years ago.
I’ve realised that, after years of playing live gigs, I kinda prefer radio. There are no drunken requests, no toilet queues, haha. I can just curate shows how I please, play exactly what I want, how I want to play it. I much prefer it to playing out now. I mean, I started off doing mixtapes in my bedroom. So it’s kinda like going back to that, really. I’ve always loved radio though - you’re never alone with a radio I think.
It doesn’t pay anything, though. I’m doing it for the #exposure. A labour of love really, in every sense. You know, maybe there’ll be something more definitive down the line with the BBC or someone, we’ll see.
So I guess you can afford to be fairly picky about the DJ gigs you take on now?
Yeah, I’m lucky to be able to do that. I play at the [London] Jazz Cafe quite a lot and now get offered some pretty nice things elsewhere. I’m playing a festival in Croatia this summer for Hospital Records, and also at [Gilles Peterson’s] ‘We Out Here’ festival in August.
You said something on Instagram recently about how you still get really nervous before DJ sets. I guess that feeling never goes away?
Yeah, I still get stressed out… my own personal anxieties, I guess. In the lead up, and on the way to the gig, my stomach will be churning. But the second I hit play, it’s all fine – I just go into autopilot… superhero mode. It’s like something in my head says to me I just can’t fuck up. It’s weird – the bigger the crowd is, the easier it feels for some reason… I don’t know why!
Apart from your DJing, I wanted to chat with you because you've worked in loads of record shops over the years. I think your first job was in Woolies, wasn’t it?
Yep, Woolies in Basingstoke, haha! One of the things I remember about it was that Liz Hurley – she’s from Basingstoke – used to sit outside with her mates, smoking fags, dressed as a punk in the 80s. And then she became known as this posh, elite actress…
I worked there when I was 16, in college. I was near the record department, but I didn’t really work in it to be honest. I was kind of shuffling… the pic ’n’ mix. There is a connection to mixing, I guess, but it was definitely pic ’n’ mix! I consumed an unhealthy amount of sweets in that job, but obviously used to buy tunes there, too, as a kid.
I was moonlighting at another record shop nearby, ‘Sight, Sound & Motion Records’. They sold jungle and a little bit of hip-hop. Marvellous Cain [early 90s jungle DJ & producer] ran it and I used to go in there, be quite annoying and just hang around a lot. He was the first person to let me have a go on Technics turntables!
It got to the point where I’d turn up and sometimes they just wouldn’t be there. I knew the bloke who ran the clothes shop downstairs, Revolution Clothing, and I used to go upstairs and kind of open up myself. I’d go behind the counter and practice having a mix on the Technics decks in there, cos I didn’t have them at home. Then people would start coming in, and I thought, ‘Oh, shit, I better sell some records!’ So that’s basically how I ended up working there.
So that was your introduction to selling vinyl in Basingstoke... But I think you properly started working in record shops in Bath, right?
Yeah, a mate of mine from Basingstoke had moved over there to set up a techno record label with someone. Basingstoke was just one of those places… there was nothing really going on there creatively. Two nightclubs. It was once voted the ‘eighth most boring town in Europe’, which always stuck in my head. My DJing was never going to pop off there, so I went to Bath and just thought ‘This is nice…’.
But yeah, I worked in ten or so different record shops over 20 years. When I closed my own shop in Bath – which I’ll come back to – I worked in HMV for a bit. I was on the specialties floor, and I really liked that because it was all jazz, world music, classical… all stuff I knew nothing about at the time. It was a real learning curve. And no-one ever went up there! It was super quiet. I worked with this guy Dave Forde, who was a latin-jazz DJ from Bath, and it was just generally very mellow.
I thought working for HMV would be horrific. But it was a part of the shop that was fairly desolate, so I was just listening, finding new music, and record shopping for myself every day.
Which other record shops did you work in, in Bath?
I was in ‘Replay Records’ for a bit, which was close to my shop. Technically we were rivals for a spell I guess, but I never stopped shopping in there, and was always cool with them. That was fun, again a small indie. For a few months it was Nashers Music Store, which was above where I opened my shop. That was a secondhand shop. Nasher passed away a few years ago, but I always got on really well with him. Almost a surrogate father figure really. And his shop was just a treasure trove, so much stuff. People were always dropping collections off there. I remember Richard Ashcroft coming in once… and Daddy G passing through my shop once. People like that. There was always something going on – it was quite a Bohemian, hippie part of town.
You mentioned you opened your own record shop in Bath. What’s the story with that?
I used to go into Stardust, then renamed Plugged, on Walcot Street in Bath. I knew the owner, Mikey, quite well, and one day he said he was selling up. I told Luke, who I was living with at the time, working on this techno stuff, and he was keen for us to take it on. And we had another mate in Bristol, Jim, who used to put on a lot of techno nights in Bristol. He was a big player in that free party world.
So we rounded up and scrounged a few grand each to set it up. We didn’t really know what we were doing, though… I ran it with them for a while, but after four or five years, they tapped out and I took it on on my own. At first, it was called ‘Subway Records’, then it became ‘Groovement’ records, named after a Ty record of the same name. The shop was in a basement. Plus, you know, it was “groovy”, ha.
‘Groovement’ was more hip-hop focused – all new stuff. We used to sell spray paint, too, and delved right into the graffiti thing. The shop was painted by Banksy when we first opened, before he was anything like the big deal he is now.
Hang on… Banksy painted your shop?
Yeah, inside. He did the hallway going down to the basement. And he painted the street sign for ‘Subway’ [Bobby produces the old Subway sign].
This is all I've got left, now. So Banksy painted that, with the wiggly lines. I tried to get it authenticated, and they wouldn’t do it because it was a commercial venture kind of thing.
But it is Banksy. I know it’s Banksy because I hung around with him for a week, made him tea and went to the pub with him. I don’t know him now, unfortunately.
![Some of Banksy's handiwork in Subway Records...](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F30a99ad8-304f-4580-8328-12ac7f52be29_876x960.jpeg)
![Some of Banksy's handiwork in Subway Records...](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa0705b5f-e5c4-445b-9dd3-cca9140a42ab_680x960.jpeg)
![Some of Banksy's handiwork in Subway Records...](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3c2c32cd-a469-4558-87f3-8831de46636e_960x720.jpeg)
![Some of Banksy's handiwork in Subway Records...](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ecb7aca-5024-4aaf-b0dc-dc8ddedadd79_960x588.jpeg)
So did Banksy do that as a commission job? Or did you just invite him to paint it?
He was mates with Jim, my partner from Bristol – they knew each other through doing free parties and stuff. So Jim just asked him. It was cheap too! I wish I could have taken the walls with me when I left, but there was just no way.
The landlord of the shop, who’s passed away since, was a really posh art dealer as well. A nice guy, but I remember when we first did it, he was so sniffy about it, so unimpressed. But I found out later that he tried to get the walls valued after we left. So he changed his tune. Suddenly Banksy was becoming quite a big deal…
And when it was Subway Records, there was also a branch in Bristol – in Stokes Croft. Banksy painted the outside of that one. That’s still there I think – it’s quite a famous piece.
So how come you closed ‘Groovement’? It sounds like a fun time.
I was there for seven or eight years in all, and basically made no money whatsoever! I was DJing four or five nights a week, and that was my wage, that fed me. I even had a cleaning job at the same time. So I was running the record shop, cleaning offices for two hours a night, then going to DJ. All a bit mad. I made just enough to keep the shop open, basically.
Fair enough. So what did you do after you closed Groovement?
I worked at Fopp in Bath – that was cool. They had two branches for a while actually, but there was one massive shop that I worked in for about two years. It had a real Empire Records kind of vibe to it – just a big, fun shop. And then Fopp bought Music Zone, and I got promoted to be assistant manager of this Music Zone in Redhill, on the outskirts of London. Problem was that Fopp hadn’t read the small print about how much debt they’d accumulated. So I was literally in the moving van, coming to London from Bath, with all my stuff, and got a phone call saying it had gone into liquidation. So I’d literally just moved to London, and didn’t have a job... That was about 17 years ago I think.
That sucks – coming to London without a job is not cool. What did you do?
I worked at Notting Hill Soul & Dance Exchange for about a month, which I thought would be really good fun. It wasn’t. All the people who worked there seemed pretty jaded, y’know. People would come in, desperately selling their collections for whatever reason. And they’d be like, ‘I’ll give you a tenner for this’ box or bag full of tunes. Then I’d watch how much they marked them up. It felt pretty soul destroying.
I didn’t stick it out long. Then I got a job at HMV’s flagship store on Oxford Street in about 2007, where I worked in the soul and dance department for a couple of years. HMV was nuts – there were about 150 people on the payroll. So it was kinda like a village. I’ve still got a lot of good mates from that time.
![HMV's Nipper painting from the Oxford St staff entrance; Bobby meeting Paul McCartney in store](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2a22cafb-782f-4fb1-a30c-9df7e8cc1124_1440x1440.jpeg)
![HMV's Nipper painting from the Oxford St staff entrance; Bobby meeting Paul McCartney in store](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa9705d87-a9db-47e0-a896-a729675dabcc_414x422.jpeg)
It was interesting working there, though. I met Paul McCartney, and Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino signed the Death Proof soundtrack for me and I remember him being really conscientious – worried that the ink was going to smudge. As he handed it to me he was like, ‘You know, it’s really great, man, that people are still buying vinyl.’ Haha.
I remember meeting Annie Lennox. The Mighty Boosh lot came in to do an in-store. The blood-curdling screams from teenage girls when someone like the Jonas Brothers did a signing. Vic and Bob came in – I remember seeing Bob Mortimer walk in the side entrance carrying a Sainsbury’s bag; that sticks in my mind for some reason. Madness did a great in-store one time. That was my favourite. The whole shop was jumping.
Lots of famous customers - Michael Parkinson, Dale Winton, Kirsty Wark, various Eastenders. Amy Winehouse coming in, asking if she could use the toilet.
Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver used to come in. They were probably the rudest people I’d ever met. We used to call them ‘the charm school duo’. They’d just come in, throw whatever it was on the counter and not say a word. Yeah, I’ve got beef with them to this day!
![Behind the counter in East London’s Rough Trade East - the final stop on Bobby’s record shop journey Behind the counter in East London’s Rough Trade East - the final stop on Bobby’s record shop journey](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9f98f268-cebe-4893-b399-5eefc8ad35d3_1129x677.heic)
So after HMV, you moved to Rough Trade East, I think?
Yeah, I went from the flagship of the biggest major record store to the biggest indie in the country, I guess. And I worked there for seven, eight years.
I got to meet so many people in Rough Trade. It’s such a huge part of the independent music industry. Pretty much everyone from the Britpop era did an in-store event at some point: Liam Gallagher, Supergrass, Thom Yorke.
Bobby Gillespie used to shop there all the time. Andy Weatherall and Trevor Jackson used to come in every couple of days. I served Anne Hathaway once.. Who else? Bjork used to come in quite a lot. I sold her a Drexciya record once. We’d have to chaperone artists at these signing events sometimes - I remember having to do it for Kendrick Lamar once, that was pretty wild.
We had a lot of lock-ins there, too. The coffee shop bit is also a bar. So when the shop closed for the day, we basically had a free bar, a huge shop and a wicked sound system. So we’d sit in there ’til late, many times, you know, especially after the in-stores and signings with the artists. Got drunk with Jason Momoa and John Lydon - separate occasions I should add...
![Rough Trade days, with Chuck D, Jason Momoa, DJ Shadow, and John Lydon](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff302fec8-e176-4f0c-a082-645b1a2b36be_727x727.jpeg)
![Rough Trade days, with Chuck D, Jason Momoa, DJ Shadow, and John Lydon](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Feb025157-a8f7-4088-ad10-c71b2d58142b_1080x997.jpeg)
![Rough Trade days, with Chuck D, Jason Momoa, DJ Shadow, and John Lydon](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F830dda5d-e03a-4fb8-91a9-dcbd4554d5c6_640x640.jpeg)
![Rough Trade days, with Chuck D, Jason Momoa, DJ Shadow, and John Lydon](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffd601ef3-fd93-4a82-9911-f133547862a2_768x768.jpeg)
And Public Enemy did an in-store – that was amazing! Chuck D sneaks behind the counter. You’re not gonna stop him, are you? And he’s staring at these ‘Rough Trade’ headphones and says to me, ‘Y’know, the way you guys have branded yourselves is really amazing.’ So yeah, Chuck D’s talking to me about Rough Trade branding, and I’m thinking, ‘This is not how I thought this conversation would go down. We should be talking about the state of the world!’ Haha.
When you were working there, you ended up going to work at Rough Trade New York too, right?
I did, but only for a couple of weeks and that was a weird time for me. My brother had passed away a few weeks before, so I nearly didn’t go. But people told me I should…
I ended up just kind of wandering the city a bit. I didn’t do so much work in the shop to be honest.
![Rough Trade New York, back in its Williamsburg days](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3e5bde84-e7d5-4c58-abff-876bc44afd83_2048x1536.jpeg)
![Rough Trade New York, back in its Williamsburg days](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9d5e0acb-f1be-479a-bbb5-99a0415ea0a8_1327x1327.jpeg)
![Rough Trade New York, back in its Williamsburg days](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fff1d7001-b1cb-4422-955f-751e8ca017e2_2048x1379.jpeg)
Rough Trade NYC was great, though. This was when they were in Brooklyn. They’re in the Rockefeller Center now, which is very different – tourist central. But back then they were in Williamsburg, so it was very hipster. It was a big ol’ shop, and again had some amazing in-stores – Charles Bradley played there on the opening night, RIP. And I remember Blondie playing there, too, which was pretty cool.
What are your own favourite digging spots these days?
I don’t go out record shopping as much as I should these days, if I’m honest. It’s the reality of physical space, and because of the way I DJ – that’s changed a lot. Especially with dance music and stuff. Do you buy a £10 twelve-inch or a 99p MP3 track? And £10 is probably cheap nowadays to be honest. That’s been a real game changer…
But when I do go record shopping, ‘Stranger Than Paradise’ in Hackney is a favourite. It’s run by Noreen McShane, who was actually my boss at Rough Trade, and still a good friend. She’s got stories for days. She left Rough Trade, and ‘Stranger Than Paradise’ is her baby. It’s a tiny shop, but it’s really nicely curated.
‘Love Vinyl’ in Hoxton is another cool one, not that I’ve been for a while. And I still check out ‘Sounds of the Universe’ and ‘Sister Ray’ in Soho when I’m down that way.
![Stranger Than Paradise, in Hackney, owned by Noreen McShane (right)](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F49afd49c-67ce-42c8-934a-36879587e44a_1440x1440.jpeg)
![Stranger Than Paradise, in Hackney, owned by Noreen McShane (right)](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff3cfacca-f909-43e6-96a5-dae3a608c772_1080x1080.jpeg)
What makes a great record shop, for you?
That’s easy. Community, curation and vibes.
When I had the shop in Bath, I always felt that certain independent record shops could be quite intimidating. That was never for me. Treat people like you want to be treated, y’know – you’re there to get to know them and guide them towards new things.
If you’re shopping online, you’re generally looking for something very specific. Whereas physical record shops are much more about… discovery. You just stumble across stuff that was previously unknown to you that you had no intention of buying. It’s a bit like going to a supermarket when you’re hungry intending to get one thing, but then you’re like, ‘Oh, I fancy that.’ You end up buying way too much stuff, and forgetting the thing you actually went in there for…
So it’s about the human connection thing for me.
You mentioned curating the stock, and it’s true that some shops put a lot more effort into it than others. What does good curation look like to you?
Well at Rough Trade, there would be meetings – arguments really – a couple of times a week. All about what we’re stocking, what we’re pushing, what we’re highlighting, and the reasons for doing that. A lot of it comes down to personal taste, of course – record shop people bartering with each other behind the counter about what’s good and what’s not.
And when the scramble’s over and you’re done with the squabbling, you’ve got your list. You’re like: ‘These are the ones – these are the ones that we’re saying are the big records this week.’ A lot of effort used to go into it!
These days, you’ve left the record shop counter behind. How come?
After doing the dance buying for a few years at Rough Trade, I ended up managing the social media, helping them grow their Twitter & Facebook, and set up the Instagram page. That kind of thing. There was no socials team then, it was just me, figuring it out. So I sort of segued off the shop floor and moved to managing all the online stuff.
It was more about mail order, answering customer service emails and e-commerce than what was physically selling in the shop. I got quite disassociated with the product as it were, and it got quite stressful and soul destroying if I’m honest. I’d worked in record shops for 20 years, and that was the point where I kind of tapped out, and wanted to do something else.
It’s a great innings! Thousands of records sold no doubt. But now you’ve moved over to the other side, as label manager for First Word Records. What does that involve, day to day?
A lot of grunt work, haha. We’re a very small team, so it’s effectively just me and Aly Gillani (DJ Gilla). It’s his baby, he set up the label 20 years ago.
I knew Aly from doing gigs and stuff with him. He was the first person to offer me work - initially doing freelance for social media because that’s what I’d ended up doing for Rough Trade. I was doing that for R&S, Greco-Roman, and a couple of other little labels. But First Word was the one that, sonically, most resonated with me in terms of hip-hop, soul, jazz, beats, broken beat...
Aly generally does the A&R stuff, but there’s always conversations between us about what we’re putting out and who we’re signing. But generally he’ll do that contracting element of it all and then I pick it up from there. I still run all the socials, plus get everything delivered to the distributor, do all the metadata, write press releases, make sure the artists are happy, chat to the designers, check in with the manufacturers. A lot of it is just poking people really!
First Word is 20 years old this year, so we’re doing lots of things to celebrate that. Loads of new stuff coming out, and a big artist showcase at the ‘We Out Here’ festival, which will be great.
I genuinely love what we do and the music we put out there. Like for example, Children of Zeus would still be one of my favourite artists, even if First Word was nothing to do with it. I know I’d be playing their music regardless.
You’ve got the French guys, Souleance, too. I’m a fan of their stuff. How do you pronounce it properly?
I always pronounced it like ‘soli-ans’. But then they did a shout-out for me once [to use on my radio show]. It was like, ‘This is Fulgeance from “Su-lans”, and you’re listening to BobaFatt’. And I was like, shit, I’ve been saying that wrong for ages! Anyway, yeah, we’ve got them, they’re great. And Amanda Whiting - she’s a terrific Welsh harpist, and a really lovely soul.
Then there’s Quiet Dawn. Another French guy. He’s lovely too. Don Leisure – he’s a real great beatmaker from Cardiff, and did stuff with Gruff Rhys, on the last album, as well as being half of Darkhouse Family. There’s Allysha Joy from Australia – she’s got an album out in summer that’s gonna be a big one for us. She’s super talented.
Who else we got? There’s Essa, a legendary UK hip-hop artist who used to go by the name Yungun. He's got a new album out soon. Takuya Kuroda, a Japanese trumpet player based in Brooklyn – he was on Blue Note, but is now with us. Ruby Wood, who’s also lead singer of Submotion Orchestra. Werkha is a wicked multi-instrumentalist from Manchester. We’ve just signed an artist called Royce Wood Junior, who’s amazing – got a real Prince vibe to his sound. Kaidi Tatham, who’s based in Belfast and is an absolute legend – a real pioneer in the broken beat world, works with Jazzy Jeff a lot, and won a couple Grammy’s recently with his work with him.
And then there’s a few people that kind of come and go – like Tall Black Guy, and 14KT. It’s not a massive roster, but it’s deeply curated. It crosses several genres, but you could stitch it all together like a mixtape – which is how we tend to look at it.
Sounds busy! How do you fit in DJing and radio shows?
I generally do the radio stuff in the evenings, and DJing at the weekend. I’m about to start work on the next [6 Music] Block Party thing. That’s prepped, so I’m probably going to dig into that this evening.
The next one to go out is actually already done – that’s Prince, for the 40th anniversary of Purple Rain. That one’s going out on air real soon (June 22nd).
After that, there’s a bunch more locked in the diary for the rest of the year, celebrating more classic albums.
All these anniversaries make me feel very old, haha. Every time I do one of them, people are like, ‘Surely this is a mistake?! Surely the 90s were only ten years ago?!’
Looking at your mixes on Mixcloud, you often use the name ‘Bobby and the Xennials’. And a lot of your mixes reference stuff from my own childhood and teenage years (I was born in ’77). How did the Xennial thing become part of your DJ persona?
I decided to do an 80s mix one day, just to remind myself of that time when I first started to buy records, and fall in love with this stuff. Back when it was all about ‘Top of the Pops’ and taping the Top 40 on Sunday nights, waiting for my favourite song, pause button poised...
And I had such a good time doing the mix. So then I looked into our age group, and we’re like this little subsection called Xennials [people born late 70s into early 80s]. We don’t really relate to millennials and don’t really relate to generation X so much. We’re the people in between who had an analogue childhood, but were there with the digital evolution and the birth of the internet.
Anyway, the mix was harking back to that feel-good nostalgia. And I got a really good response to the first one and had such a good time making it, I decided to do a bunch more. It just reminded me what made me fall in love with music as a kid, like listening to music in my headphones late at night, and listening to the radio…
I still love watching repeats of ‘Top of the Pops’, even the things that weren’t very cool. So, for these mixes, I’m not afraid to lean into pop music, because we all came from that before we became teenagers and started getting into cool shit. I’m not averse to a good catchy pop song even now. We were all listening to the Top 40 originally…
What were you really into in the 80s then?
The first gig I ever went to was Five Star and I had a great time. I was about twelve and thought they were amazing! I was a big Five Star fan. Then when I was a little older, a little bit cooler, I got into Bobby Brown.
There’s just something about a good hook and those 80s synths. It just makes you feel a certain way and it does take you back. Not that they were amazing times – there’s lots of horrible stuff about the 80s, personally and in the world generally, but, to me, the music was the good bit. Certainly people around our age group are always like, ‘Oh, this just feels good!’ Right?
So then this Xennial thing stuck and I made this imaginary band in my head called ‘Bobby and the Xennials’. It’s like a call sign to an unspoken-about generation, I guess.
It does seem like 80s music has had a renaissance, not just with Xennials, but younger people too. For someone in their 20s now, I guess the 80s are like the 60s were for people of our age…
Exactly. If you think about Back to the Future, y’know, Marty McFly went from 1985 to 1955, which is like someone travelling back to 1994 today. That’s mad! Back to the Future itself came out in ’85, so that’s nearly 40 years old as well. So for the generation now, listening to 80s music is like people of our age listening to rock ’n’ roll or whatever. They’re probably thinking ‘This shit sounds so old and weird.’ But to me it still sounds kinda fresh!
All that music makes me think about watching The Chart Show or something on ITV on a Saturday morning and then going to ‘Our Price’ in the afternoon to buy the records. That was the best Saturday for me. I wasn’t arsed about clothes shopping, I just wanted to go to the record shop. Occasionally I’d go to London, where there were loads of record shops, especially in the old ‘golden mile’ as they used to call it, around Soho and stuff - shops like Groove Records and Mr Bongos - and that was even more exciting…
That’s one of the things I love about doing the Block Party mixes for 6 Music, actually – the fact that they go out on a Saturday lunchtime gives me quite a buzz, because Saturdays have always been about listening to music, for me.
That reminds me, what’s your favourite mix been for the Block Party?
That’s hard because each time I do one, I think ‘that’s the best one’. And then I do another one and think ‘maybe that’s the best one!’
I really enjoyed doing the Massive Attack one. The De La Soul mix for 3 feet High and Rising was kinda weird, because Dave [aka Trugoy the Dove] died a couple of days after the mix went up. So that one sticks in my mind a bit…
I was really happy with the Madvillain one. The Tribe/Wu one came off nice, I think. I like the Nas one, and the Dilla one. There’s been quite a few! Done over 20 of them now.
Where can people listen back to those?
They’re only on BBC Sounds for a month after they’re aired, I don't know why. Some are on Mixcloud, and most are on Soundcloud or HearThis. So they’re in a few different places, but you can find them… I post ’em up after they’ve been on BBC Sounds. [All can be found through Bobby’s linktree]
You always do such a great job with them… I’d certainly like to see you get your own 6 Music show at some point…
Yeah man, thanks. If I get a late-night mix show on there, then that’s kind of bucket list achieved, really!
![BobaFatt with (L-R) Jazzy Jeff, DJ Koco, and Madlib & Mr Thing](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbda8a2cf-c9a0-4c41-99bc-3a52e5bc05c3_486x480.jpeg)
![BobaFatt with (L-R) Jazzy Jeff, DJ Koco, and Madlib & Mr Thing](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc6eaaf12-bc48-4c37-88fc-17afa3800b4c_397x531.jpeg)
![BobaFatt with (L-R) Jazzy Jeff, DJ Koco, and Madlib & Mr Thing](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F140e648d-69f4-459a-aba8-78ed4df316ac_445x445.jpeg)
Last question. Who are your favourite DJs and acts right now?
There’s loads of both! Lots of DJs inspire me for different reasons, but I’d say Jazzy Jeff was the one that really inspired me to start doing it, his ‘Live at Union Square’ mix particularly, and DJ Koco is my favourite on the planet in the past few years. From the UK, Mr Thing is probably my favourite, and is someone I’ve been lucky to play loads of gigs with over the past decade or so, and become a good friend.
Music wise, again there’s so much. In recent years, anything SAULT-related especially - from Cleo Sol to Little Simz; Inflo is a genius.
I’d say keep an eye out for a New York MC called Kumbaya, she’s been my fave on that front for the past few years.
My Soho Radio show is basically a curated mixtape of all my favourite new music, every fortnight on a Friday night. So lock in for that for more recommendations!
Thanks, will do! And I’m looking forward to that new Prince mix, when it’s out, too… Thanks for sharing your record shop stories!
‘Community, curation and vibes’! Says it all Rich. Great article.