4hero

Subscribe to DJ Mag TV: http://bit.ly/Oduqwo Clifford Joseph Price (born 19 September 1965), better known as Goldie, is a British electronic music artist, disc jockey, visual artist and actor. He is well known for his innovations in the jungle and drum and bass music genres. He previously gained exposure for his work as a graffiti artist. Goldie's acting credits include the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough, Guy Ritchie's Snatch (2000) and the British soap opera EastEnders. He has also appeared in a number of celebrity reality television shows, including Celebrity Big Brother 2, Strictly Come Dancing and Come Dine with Me. He is of Jamaican and Scottish heritage. He was put up for adoption and raised in child-care homes and by several foster parents. Price was a member of the breakdance crew Westside, based in the Whitmore Reans and Heath Town areas of Wolverhampton, in the 1980s. He later joined a breakdance crew called the Bboys, and made his name as a graffiti artist in the West Midlands. His artwork around Birmingham and Wolverhampton was featured heavily in Afrika Bambaataa's documentary Bombing. He took part in the largest ever British graffiti art battle alongside Bristol artist Robert "3D" Del Naja, who later formed Massive Attack. He is mentioned for his graffiti in the book Spraycan Art by Henry Chalfant and James Prigoff, which contained several samples of his art. He moved to the US due to graffiti projects and also started selling grills (gold teeth) in New York and Miami, he continued this business after his return to the UK in 1988. Contrary to popular belief, this is not where his nickname was derived from; it stems from an earlier nickname "Goldielocks" that was given to him during his B-boy days and subsequently shortened when he no longer had dreadlocks. Drum and bass By 1991, Price had become fascinated by the British breakbeat music scene when his girlfriend, DJ Kemistry, introduced him to the pioneering jungle and drum and bass producers Dennis "Dego" McFarlane and Mark "Marc Mac" Clair, known as 4hero. He went on to do some design and A&R; work for 4hero's Reinforced record label. In 1992 Price made his first album appearance by contribution of a short vocal piece to the track "Rufige" by Icelandic group Ajax Project. The track has since then been repeatedly misattributed to Price himself, perhaps due to subsequent use of the 'Rufige' moniker for his own ambitions. His releases Killa Muffin b/w Krisp Biscuit and the Dark Rider EP were released under the alias, Rufige Cru. Recently, he has used the alias Rufige Kru to release collaborations with other producers such as Heist. His track Terminator, released under the name Metalheadz in 1992, was a hit in the jungle scene and is noted for pioneering the use of timestretching. In 1993 he released Angel, another 12" on the Synthetic Hardcore Phonography label. 1994 saw him setting up his own record label, Metalheadz. Goldie next to a "Metalheadz" tattoo, 2001. His first studio album, Timeless, followed in 1995. Timeless entered the UK Albums Chart at number seven. The album fused the breakbeats and basslines common in jungle with orchestral textures and soul vocals by Diane Charlemagne. The album's title track was a 21-minute symphonic piece. "Inner City Life", a track taken from the album reached number 39 in the UK Singles Chart. Timeless helped popularise drum and bass as a form of musical expression. The music critic Simon Reynolds noted that Goldie's credentials as a musical innovator - and particularly as one of the key driving forces of innovation in the jungle/breakbeat scene - were exceptional. "Goldie revolutionised jungle not once but thrice," he noted in The Wire Magazine. "First there was Terminator (pioneering the use of time stretching), then Angel (fusing Diane Charlemagne's live vocal with David Byrne/Brian Eno samples to prove that hardcore could be more "conventionally" musical), now there's Timeless, a 22-minute hardcore symphony."

• published: 10 Mar 2015
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