To celebrate the release of What Do You Call It? From Grassroots To The Golden Era of UK Rap, we got author David Kane to interview the book’s cover designer, Trevor Jackson…

“Trevor Jackson is a man of many musical lives: designer, DJ, producer, and record label visionary. I first came across him through Output, the label he founded that soundtracked the afterparties of my misspent youth with records from LCD Soundsystem and The Rapture. It wasn’t until later that I connected the dots to his hip-hop roots.

“As a student, I devoured Lewis Parker mixtapes without realising Trevor’s fingerprints were all over them. That breadcrumb trail eventually led me further back to his production work as the Underdog and the boundary-pushing Bite It! Recordings. As Trevor would admit, not necessarily all the music he released on Bite It! stands up today but the cover art certainly does—windows into a world lesser travelled. And it’s this commitment to originality that led us to approach him to design the cover for What Do You Call it?”

If you go back to when you were a teenager and first discovered this new thing called hip-hop, what were your entry points?

I remember the big, life-changing things, were really ultra-commercial stuff from Top of the Pops. It was “Rapper’s Delight”. It was Kurtis Blow’s “The Breaks” and “Christmas Rapping”. The cultural change is probably “Buffalo Gals”. Before that, it was these big-selling pop records, which must have been around ‘79. I didn’t know about Enjoy Records (back then), and it wasn’t John Peel or Radio One. I saw them on Top of the Pops. They were the entry point records for me.

It was a borrowed culture at first.

Right. Pre-hip-hop, electro was massively important. I was growing up going to clubs from the age of 14, and I was really into Kraftwerk, the Human League, Soft Cell, and then hearing samples from some of those records in Mantronix. The first concert I ever went to was Human League in 81. And they’re all about the future. I was excited and interested in science fiction and comic books, and electro fitted so well into that.

And “Planet Rock” was inspired by Kraftwerk, so there was a connection. (If you look at) the Soulsonic Force video for “Planet Rock” they dressed like superheroes from another planet. This was pre-RUN-D.M.C., which changed everything. Before that, people dressed up, the artwork and the robot dancing, everything was futuristic. My mate brought me the first RUN-D.M.C. album, an import copy from City Sounds in Holborn. I remember it’s the first import record I ever had, and that was a game changer.

You mentioned Duck Rock, a record I look at in the book. How do you think Malcolm McLaren fits into the UK hip-hop story?

Duck Rock was a massively important record. What fascinates me is the link between punk, alternative, new wave, and hip-hop. In New York, hip-hop blew up because it was embraced by the downtown scene, by all the new artists in the art galleries, and those cultures mixed. And that’s how hip-hop started to explode. And Malcolm had money behind him from a big label, and he had an opportunity to (do something big).

The record has been criticised for exploiting artists and, to a degree, hip-hop.

I don’t think it exploited hip-hop. He (McLaren) was genuinely fascinated and excited by it. And, maybe not so much now, but you’ve got to remember, for decades, London was one of the most important places in the world because of the diversity of cultures. London would take the sound from somewhere else and make it its own.

NME, Sounds, The Face magazine, and more. People wanted to get interviewed in British magazines because record labels knew that once you were big in London, you could be big everywhere.

When did it become a community for you? What clubs started to flesh out that experience?

I think that the whole London fashion scene was massively important for hip-hop. They were some of the first clubs that supported hip-hop in London, like The Titanic, run by Tom Dixon, the designer, who was in a band called Funkapolitan. That whole scene is overlooked because people think about Tim Westwood doing Spats, but those fashion clubs were really important.

They turned into warehouse parties and were massively fundamental in supporting young rappers like Dizzy Heights and Newtrament. These were links in the chain between Wild Bunch in Bristol and what Greg Wilson was up to in Manchester, really exciting things that were going on in UK nightlife.

I didn’t go to Covent Garden to do graffiti and breakdancing. That wasn’t my thing. I was going to clubs. I remember being at the Camden Palace and seeing Afrika Bambaataa and maybe Wizz Kid or Grand Mixer DXT, and they were cutting up Prince’s “When Doves Cry” into Tears for Fears “Shout”.

Then there was the Def Jam 87 Tour, one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to. And there was the UK Fresh Festival from Morgan Khan’s Street Sounds, 20,000 kids going mad to Mantronix at Wembley Arena.

Morgan Khan seemed a bit of a cad, but his label Street Sounds was pretty innovative, right?

He was definitely a cad. He was really important, as they were putting out compilations of tracks that were only available on imports. If you were a kid living in Newcastle, you couldn’t get those records, and you’d spend £1.99 on a compilation instead of £30 or £40 on eight 12 inches. So that was what Morgan Khan’s Street Sounds did.

An early version of the book cover art featured a scan of Bionic, who you said was one of your favourite MCs. Was London Posse the tipping point for a British perspective of hip-hop?

Bionic was definitely a turning point for the culture where both he and Rodney, were like, “Fuck it, we’re going to rap with UK accents.” But the thing is, you have to remember that when you’re young, you’re not always that interested in where you come from. For me, New York was like the most incredible place on the fucking planet.

I didn’t have much interest in UK hip-hop at the beginning. We had Wee Papa Girls, Derek B, and Cookie Crew, who I like, but it was hard for UK rappers to break through because people were excited about American records, and most of the British records weren’t as good.

So, it had less to do with the actual accent or identity and more to do with the quality.

Well, you could say DJs weren’t supportive at the beginning. Westwood didn’t play much UK rap. Mike Pearce on Mike Allen didn’t play that much UK hip-hop. So maybe that was holding it back. I don’t entirely remember. It wasn’t until London Posse and the Mighty Ethnicz from Ladbroke Grove started making records I got excited. I did a record with Mighty Ethnicz, which was a shit record, but they were one of my favourite rap groups.

UK hip-hop became its own subculture within hip-hop. Simon Harris’s label (Music of Life) particularly embraced it, and the whole thing became Britcore. It was a very white scene.

London Posse, MC Mellow, Cookie Crew and Caveman, who came a bit later, there were some great UK hip-hop records. But it was a very small scene with no money and people didn’t support each other.

What inspired your transition from designing record covers to making music as the Underdog?

I had a career designing records from 88, and I was living at home with my parents. I was like 17, 18 or something, and I could afford to do work for not much money. And I built up my career doing that, and I started working with quite big labels, and I started doing record sleeves for Eric B & Rakim.

I had a very good relationship with Jon Baker at Gee Street. So I was doing a lot of house music stuff for Champion, Stereo MCs and other important bands. And then it got to a period around 92/93, when I was getting really busy but I was just losing interest in what I was doing. But I was learning loads, I was with the Stereo MCs in the studio and saw how they made music, and they made music just with an 808-type drum machine triggering a bell delay, which is like pre samplers. And I got really excited by doing that. I got myself a sampler at home and I started experimenting with music.

I was also working in a record shop with Richard Russell from XL in Edgware in north London, where I lived, and The Brotherhood would come in every Sunday. One of the guys got chatting and he said, “I’m in a rap crew.” And I offered to produce for them. That was the first record on on Bite It! I didn’t pack in designing record sleeves, that was keeping me going financially. But I didn’t have any creative interest in it anymore. And I put it into making records and putting records out.

So that was also the catalyst for starting your label, Bite It!?

Yes. Because I just didn’t think any of the UK hip-hop labels—not the artists or rappers being released—were very good. I think the artwork was shit. The records were pressed badly and weren’t produced very well. So that’s why I started my label, because I wanted to do something which had the quality of American releases.

I understand that the press really picked up on the Jewish aspect of The Brotherhood.

The first record that they did was Descendants Of The Holocaust. There was a rise of anti-semitism within hip hop, and they wanted to directly oppose that. It was basically a crew of people; Laurence Shylock was a rapper. There was by Diablo, who is a producer/DJ. There was Aston Harvey, who went on to do The Freestylers. He was part of the Brotherhood originally.

Okay, it was friends, but those Daniel, DJ Crystl, who became a massively important jungle producer. And we went to the studio and we started just putting music together, and I released the first record and the press were really into it and they were on TV, did interviews. It was a bit of a gimmick for the for the media, but it was a tough record and it got embraced by the Britcore fast rap UK rap scene. People were really into it. And that was the start of my production career and the start of running Bite It!

Then I started to do some remixing work and my big one was for House of Pain. But the thing that was my calling card was the fact that everyone else was in the UK was sampling James Brown, American funk records or rare groove records. I was sampling weird European jazz rock fusion, electronic records. Fucking strange shit. My Brotherhood album is full of samples of from King Crimson, Soft Machine, Robert Wyatt. I wanted to sample British or European records for the hip-hop i was making.

How did you meet Lewis Parker?

That came a lot later, towards the end of Bite It! I used to get sent demo tapes all the time. Lewis sent me a demo, or maybe I heard B Boy Antiks, and we got on really well so I released Rise. I was being managed by Marc Picken at the time, who also looked after Massive Attack. Mushroom was a big fan of Lewis and I knew he had so much potential that I didn’t want to get in the way. So he signed with Massive Attack’s label, Melankolic.

Ten years before Kanye West did “Diamonds From Sierra Leone”, Lewis was sampling Shirley Bassey. Lewis was a fucking genius at finding samples and loops. I’ve got tapes of his old demos somewhere that are just amazing.

Talking of Massive Attack. How do you see the relationship between trip-hop and British rap music? Is there even a relationship?

Undoubtedly. I think one the best British rappers of all time is Tricky. His verse on “Five Man Army” from Blue Lines, is one of the best British hip-hop tracks of all time. It was a time when UK hip-hop found its own voice. Trip-hop was UK hip-hop with singers on top of it.

Finally, can you explain your thinking behind the cover design for What Do You Call It?

I wanted to create something which wasn’t a cliche. When I had my own label it was important to try to do something innovative because hip-hop is normally full of cliches. I wanted to do something which was intelligent. As much as I’m happy to see how UK hip-hop has grown, i’m also disappointed that the vast majority is so base level. Sex, money and violence is really fucking boring.

Because for me, rap is one of the most important creative cultures i’ve experienced in my life and I wanted to convey it in a smart and innovative way. I tried to strike a happy medium between something dynamic and have a deeper meaning.