The death of jungle and drum and bass vocalist Conrad Thompson, also known as MC Conrad, at the age of 52 on April 30 made the heartbeat of the global electronic music community skip—including in the Bay Area. Homages poured in from around the world, highlighting the importance and influence of his supreme duo with groundbreaking DJ LTJ Bukem. The two were foundational when it came to advancing drum and bass as an international movement. MC Conrad lent an accessible, welcoming voice to breakbeat culture, the UK equivalent to American hip-hop, and became one of its most beloved articulators.
He and Bukem weren’t the genre’s only luminaries. Roni Size won the Mercury Music Prize (now known as the Mercury Prize) in 1997, which floated all drum and bass boats. But MC Conrad played a major role in that uplift, not only hyping LTJ Bukem up, but also helping peers such as Size, Grooverider, Peshay, Goldie, and a slew of other producers gain access and tour their music around the globe. Listen, when you read about the global electronic music industry making $11.8 billion last year—that’s a fact, according to the IMS Business Report—understand that MC Conrad, way back in the day, had a hand in setting it all up.
Friends and family are determined to carry his support for fellow artists into the future. A GoFundMe has been set up to support the creation of a foundation that will “carry Conrad’s passion for mentoring young artists and advocating for their rights”—not to mention, ensure that the performer’s burial expenses are covered.
I spoke with Bay Area creatives about what Conrad meant to beatmakers around the world.
“I mourn the loss of a friend and a role model,” stated Mike Battaglia, DJ, journalist, tastemaker, and owner of the Haight Street record store Vinyl Dreams. “Conrad was a pioneering vocalist in a brand-new genre with no roadmap or rule book, and he immediately made a place for himself with his inimitable vocals, full of gravitas and energy.”
Mike Bee opened for Bukem and Conrad numerous times when they played in the Bay Area during those peak early drum and bass days in Northern California. He believes their partnership will go down in music history for its legendary fusion of sound and vocals. They shall live forever, and frankly, sound as “futuristic” today as they did in 1993. In particular, Bee mentioned their arrangements.
“I think, because of the accessibility of the Good Looking sound and Conrad’s smoothed-out vocals being in direct contrast to the much tougher prevailing sounds that were making Jungle a London T’ing, Bukem and Conrad, alongside folks like Fabio, undeniably grew the sound outside the confines of London,” he said. “Even Goldie’s signature tune ‘Inner City Life’ was a bit heavier on the synth pads than time-stretched breakbeats.”
Alain Grissette started booking bands for Jupiter in April 1993. The club’s Berkeley location, located right on the BART line, served as a lodestar that united the burgeoning DJ culture in the East Bay. A couple years later in 1996, Grissette would spin alongside a buddy of his, Yamu Myles—who was part of the early Mushroom Jazz sessions with Mark Farina—out on the Jupiter patio for a party the two created called Beatdown. It served as an incubator for both East Bay and San Francisco electronic music communities, free of the clique-ish energy that hovered over the mostly-white electronic music scene in the 415 at the time.
“As a kid who grew up on American hip-hop and NY/LA/OAK MC flows, hearing British rappers was always a bit odd, even funny … but Conrad was one of the first artists I heard who wasn’t using a ragga-style in jungle and created the signature MC compliment to the atmospheric drum & bass that LTJ Bukem and Good Looking Records were famous for,” Grissette told me.
“Glad to have caught him and LTJ at least three or four times here in the Bay, but I was in London in ’02 and tried hard to catch him and LTJ at some festival and couldn’t quite swing it, and that would have meant a lot, to catch those guys on their home turf. That ‘Bri’ish’ style that sounded so odd with US hip-hop was perfect for UK drum and bass and breaks, and he was the king of that shit,” he continued.
“Big loss, much love to a gifted super-influential icon of the scene,” Grissette concluded.
I was politely reminded by a former manager from back in the day at Open Mind Records on Divisidero Street that 1998’s Progression Sessions, featuring Bukem and Conrad, got as much play in record stores as it did at the former Borders Books at 400 Post Street, just off Union Square. While you grabbed a hot or iced cup of java and thumbed through the vast magazine section on the second floor, Progressions Sessions would be played in its entirety, served to customers through the store’s massive soundsystem alongside the “electronica” go-to of the day, Kruder & Dorfmeister’s K&D Sessions.
Not that drum and bass is latte-sipping music. With its keyboards, live vocals, and slow-motion breaks, it was just synonymous with the time, especially in Northern California.
As a hip-hop DJ during the “shiny suits” era, I lost a lot of love for that genre as it sought out thirsty ways to become mainstream. I made a conscious decision to stop playing commercial hip-hop gigs. I mean, you got paid, but lost tiny bits of your soul by evening’s end.
So I took a beat, though I continued to buy and play culture-makers like De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Dr. Octagon, The Roots, Pharcyde, Gang Starr, Souls of Mischief, and so on. I had simply had enough of the forced commerce stuff. When my promoter heard about my decision to leave the big gigs, dude told me that I would be back in a month and wished me luck “with that art stuff.”
See, I had been checking out this thing called drum and bass that was taking over SF. I would go to Rico’s Pizza on Thursday night for a little party called Eklektic. I would also go to this new bar in the Lower Haight called The Top, which is now Underground SF, where there was drum and bass most nights and happy hours to boot. I didn’t fully understand the beats, but I liked the way the crowd latched onto their energy and sensed that it was a wave moving forward.
And then it happened. Twice. Two things that made me fully convert to drum and bass:
1. Mike Battaglia aka Mike Bee was DJing a Saturday night at The Top, soul-controlling, as usual. Other DJs would miss their gigs to come hear him play and see what he was championing.
This is pre-internet like a mug. He had the night on lock.
He mixed Aaliyah’s “Try Again” into a drum and bass tune, as if to extend an olive branch to those who needed context. That was fire. In 30 seconds, I got it! He kept that dance floor energized for the rest of the night.
2. Hearing MC Conrad and LTJ Bukem for the first time.
Coming from hip-hop, one of my favorite producers was, and still is, Pete Rock. At the time, he had a duo with CL Smooth. Pete Rock would incorporate Les McCann jazz, Tom Scott and The California Dreamers’ obscure cut “Today,” and the Skull Snaps’ raw funk track “It’s A New Day.” His concoctions were dense arrangements, and CL Smooth had the capability to cut through and align his voice to those productions.
LTJ Bukem, or as anyone from the UK would politely and directly tell an American, “Oh, you mean Little Danny Bukem,” had just as strong of a hold on jazz, funk, and obscure soul tracks. However, he’d speed up the samples into his trademark liquid drum and bass constructions.
MC Conrad had the baritone, grandeur, and ingenuity to comprehend that his job was to guide as well as dazzle dancers with his emcee skills. He worked with, not against, Bukem’s sonic tapestry, with measured flow.
Granted, Conrad was always ahead of the music but, on the mic, he gave the impression that he was right next to you, experiencing the bass hits, amen breaks, and atmospheric melodies—even those classic Bukem mixing techniques. Man. Those moments when he would cut back and forth from each tune, filling in segments the way he heard them in his brain, communicating inner rhythms? Just exploding the dancefloor with joyous anxiety.
In those sets, Conrad always knew it was a marathon, not a sprint.
During his time with LTJ Bukem, I know for a fact that here in the Bay he made strangers who didn’t know a thing about electronic music go to Tower Records, Virgin, and HMV, and ask for Progression Sessions 1. That was the landmark 1998 album that made drum and bass popular in the US. And it was Conrad’s voice, identifiable and undeniable, that made that entire movement feel elevated.
To donate to MC Conrad’s foundation and burial expenses, go here.
