- published: 24 Jul 2012
- views: 40496
Derek Boland (15 January 1965 – 15 November 2009), better known by his stage name Derek B, was a British rapper. His most commercially successful releases were "Goodgroove" and "Bad Young Brother" in 1988.
Born in Hammersmith, London, to Trinidadian nurse Jenny Boland, he was raised in Woodford. When he was 15, he started DJing in a mobile unit around London, before joining local pirate radio stations such as Kiss FM and LWR and finally starting his own station, WBLS (not to be confused with the radio station of the same name in New York).
He joined Simon Harris' Music of Life record label, as the closest thing they had to an A&R man. When a planned compilation of US hip hop called Def Beats 1 (Music of Life, 1986) ran short of tracks, Boland stepped in to record a track called "Rock the Beat". He co-produced the track with Harris, rapped on it under the pseudonym EZQ, and also did his own DJing under the Derek B name. "Rock the Beat" (Music of Life, 1987) was released as a single, and was followed by three more - the most successful of which were "Goodgroove" (Music of Life, 1988), and "Bad Young Brother", both of which reached #16 in the UK Singles Chart. Derek B's third and final UK chart entry was "We've Got The Juice", which peaked at #56.
Who's your brother, who's your sister
You just walked passed him
I think you missed her
As we're all migrating to the place where our father lives
'Cause we married in to a family of immigrants
My first allegiance is not to a flag, a country, or a man
My first allegiance is not to democracy or blood
It's to a king & a kingdom
There are two great lies that I've heard:
"the day you eat of the fruit of that tree, you will not surely die"
And that Jesus Christ was a white, middle-class republican
And if you wanna be saved you have to learn to be like Him
But nothing unifies like a common enemy
And we've got one, sure as hell
But he may be living in your house
He may be raising up your kids
He may be sleeping with your wife