Urban Blues Project

"When Prescription came out, people were like, "Oh yeah, this is some cool shit. But we're going to keep playing this 'Percolator' stuff." But then we were getting momentum, and eventually it went somewhere. But it wasn't until the 2000s when people looked back, like, "That shit is fucking amazing. What the fuck, wait a minute… Prescription?" And people started really wanting to understand what it was all about. Did that shit 26 years ago [laughs]. When you're pioneering and being innovative, you've got to get used to that. You're leading the people to a certain degree. You're in front of it. People ain't going to always understand you. It's OK to be the weird kid on the block."

"I first heard house music on the radio and fell in love with the sounds it created. I could hear influences of Disco in a lot of the songs and like that it had smooth melodies over 4/4 beats. Then my brother Henry and my cousin Victor would go to the local undergrounds and bring new music to me that I loved. By that time I already had my own turntables. I was 11 years old and the year was 1991. My cousin Victor dj at the time and they both would take me record shopping and it opened a whole new world for me.

The name ReelSoul came about when I made my first track “Take me to a Place” with my friend Damon Montelongo and my cousin Steven Romero. When this track made it big I became instantly on demand for remix work. The labels would put me as “ReelSoul”. From that point on the name stood."

"‘Dangly Panther’ reminds me of my stag (bachelor) party 12 years ago. We hired a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere in Wales for about 15 of us, set up decks and sound system and didn’t leave for three days. It was like a cross between Human Traffic, Withnail And I and Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas. On the last day, after very little sleep, I decided to climb onto a high beam that crossed the ceiling of the barn and lay across it, balancing carefully to avoid falling, observing the scenes below. Someone commented that I looked like a dangly panther and for some reason that stuck with me for when I needed to come up with a title for my next release. I quite often get asked where that name comes from and there you have it."

"I’ve been in this industry since 1989, I’ve experienced so many amazing moments in club music history and made even more amazing friends along the way. Looking back on things, I honestly believe that I was in the right place at the right time. There will never be a time like the early developing stages of underground club music, the evolution and branching out. When I was a kid I dreamt about making music, so having any production of mine released commercially would definitely count as one of my proudest moments."

"In the very early days, we were inspired by all sorts of things. From Philly Sound, to electro like Cybotron and Kraftwerk, to Chicago house to the NJ sound coming from Movin and the Zanz, Rush, Steely Dan, Run DMC, man. I could go on, so much music. It was a real melting pot back then, people didn’t do just one thing, so we just got inspired by everything really… To be honest, vocals and live instruments were always moving to both of us so it was just something we tried to do right from the beginning." - Brian Tappert

"You're only influenced by what you hear. And if you're listening to the same stuff that everyone else is, you're going to do the same stuff. If you don't get out of the realm, if you have the same plug-ins, or think "I like this song, so I'm going to do something that sounds like this song," you end up with things that sound similar to one another." - Osunlade

"In 1995, Frankie Knuckles and I, we were both signed to Virgin Records at that time. Frankie was signed to Virgin America, and if I’m not wrong, I was signed to Virgin UK at that time. Anyway, someone from the American division said “Look, we want Grant Nelson to do remix of the track”. Frankie Knuckles was walking with a diva, and I was like “Wow, this is great!”, so I did it. And there was something as I was doing the remixes as well, different about… I can’t really tell what it is, no clue… something that kinda switched in my own mind. And I thought “Wow, I feel like something has changed.” I kinda matured as a producer and remixer during this part doing this project. Anyway, the record went out, Frankie told me “Man, I really liked the remix. You killed it!” and it was amazing to hear that from someone like that! Years later, I think maybe 5 or 6 years later, I was with a friend of mine, Brian Tappert from Jazz-N-Groove and Traxsource. We were in my studio, in London, and we were having a conversation about this similar kind of topic, like “When you think you got your break?”, and all that and more. We were having this chat and just said to me “Bro, you know when you got your break” and I was like “What are you talking about?” and he’s like “Come here!”. He took me into the studio and pull out a copy of my remix of Frankie Knuckles. He played it and it started at a loop with Diva vocals which says “since then I have been blessed”. And he just played it while looking to me. I was like “Oh my God, I mean, it’s true since then I have been blessed!” Since that record came out, that changed everything for me. It was a pretty powerful moment as well. I even told Frankie about that and he loved that as well." - Grant Nelson

"It sounds crazy, but I always had older people around me. I was one of the youngest in my crew of guys that I came up with, and they got into it, and that got me into it. Also, that’s another genre of music that was kind of around us, it was in the air, it was big. It was underground, but there were records that managed to cross over into mainstream radio. You heard it, it wasn’t like some thing that came out of nowhere, it evolved from disco, and I’m a disco kid, and all disco is sped up soul music. They call music disco’s revenge because they tried to kill disco off in ’79 [The “disco sucks” demolition night when thousands of, mostly white, people burned disco records in a huge bonfire at Comiskey Park in Chicago before a White Sox game], house music became the way for people to express themselves all over again.

It was sonically a little different, but it all came from a foundation of soul and disco music. And then I got a chance to experience the Paradise Garage [the legendary New York dance music club where house music evangelist Larry Levan DJ’ed] when I was 16 years old. They didn’t serve liquor, so I was able to get in as a member. It was magical for me, that was probably my first real club experience. I got to hear the best sound system, and the best DJ in the world, which was Larry Levan. Also, Larry played hip hop in the club." - DJ Spinna

“I think my mission as a songwriter has been to add value to the universe, and the best way to do that was to write about things that are inspirational and uplifting. We have a responsibility to be citizens of the planet, and this is our little contribution. The gift that the Creator has given to us, we’re sharing it with the universe.” - Kevin Hedge (Blaze)

"People will always need to hear somebody’s voice. You can only go but so far with an instrumental. But if you can hear somebody sing a lyric that relates right to what you’re going through… You’ve been hurt and somebody says, “Hey, I’ve been hurt too and it’s all right you’ll be fine.” If somebody says that in a lyric? You will need that, it will be like food to you. So Soulful will always be here and we’ll always have an audience." - Josh Milan (Blaze)

"When I started doing house, I didn't know I was into doing house. I started because it was therapeutic – I lost my girlfriend years ago, someone killed her. Behind [legendary NJ club where KC would become resident] Zanzibar, of all things – this guy raped her, and killed her, and left her behind the club. But she loved house music. I was devastated, I was really, really wrecked.

She was always behind me, a beautiful woman, and I didn't know what to do with myself – but I thought to myself, “well, she loved house music, let me get more into house,” and I listened to what was going on. My friend said, “You should get more into making house music, I think you'd be really good at it” - because at that point I'd only been producing hip hop – and I thought “well, Tracy really loved house, but I don't really know how to do house.” So I said, “Let me play with some things, we'll see” - and the first track I made was “Get It Off”.

Now “Get It Off” was short for “get it off of my mind” because of her, and I put all these parts in it that had to do with what I was going through because of her – like there's a part that goes “You! Are! So! Vicious!” and I was talking to the guy that did that to her, and “now is the time, now is the time” was like “now is the time to get this off my mind”. And there was “get it off, get it off, set it loose”, and also a big scratch through the middle of the records which is what my life felt like when they killed her: it changed my entire groove, it changed my being."