Since Wiley dropped his epic Zip Files it was unclear on what is next move would be. For the last month or so he has been literally living on uStream, traveling up and down the country, recording, buying trainers and screaming at his manager on the phone.
Essential listening is his Rinse FM set recently with JJ, his first since December and he was sounding 10x better then he was then. Some amazing new beats played as well, but the likes of Deeco, Blizzard, DJ Q and Wiley himself.
One of my personal highlights from his now defunct Ustream show is one of the few instances he actually saved the footage. It calls for unity among the top acts in the scene.
The plot thickens, the label is run by 17 and 18 year old Quann and Louis both active users on the Grime Forum, and I briefly spoke with Quann about this amazing coming together.
What are both of your backgrounds, where are you from, how long have you been into the music?
I am from Skegness and Louis is from Peterborough, we have both been into Grime for a long time, I picked up from around "Tredding On Thin Ice" times in 2004.
How did you come together to start up Launchpad?
Me and Louis met via commenting on Wiley's Facebook, and both planned to go to Wiley's Electric Boogaloo video. Louis didn't make it in the end, but we came up with the idea to online to start up a label to shed some light on unheard characters, hence the name Launchpad.
We kept in contact with Wiley because Louis is a motions designer for Roll Deep & SBTV. After Wiley decided to delete his Twitter & Ustream accounts he phoned Louis asking if he wanted to release a track this weekend to see if the Grime fans would buy it. We got the distribution sorted that night and Logan premiered it for us on Monday.
Going forward have the plans for the label entirely changed now that you have such a high profile start? Would you use the premiering on Monday, for sale on Sunday formula again?
We are both going to University soon, so we are going to see how this goes, we know normally things take ages to come out, so it will be a fresh air to get something out quickly. We have approached a few other artists, but it is best not to say anything until things are all confirmed. (You would only have to wait a week to get the track anyway!)
What has it been like working with Wiley?
We suggested October for the release and he said this Sunday or not at all, he stressed that, so we had to make it happen. Maybe there will be stuff in the future, neither of us our tied to each other.
Quann had to shoot off, but look out for him and Louis - Launchpad Records
Wiley - Radio Kid is out this Sunday
Finally our value pack EP 'Quality Street' is out now featuring a track each from Terror Danjah, SRC, Royal T and Mr Mitch. You can buy that here or here now, vinyl will be begin surfacing towards the end of the week.
We also done a very short run on some Butterz T Shirts, you can buy them over here, they are going pretty quickly, and we are not going to do them again for a while, so grab em up, free shipping and you get a free mixtape with it.
I have been furiously uploading music forthcoming from the label over on our Youtube channel recently, so check them out below, there is a lot to look forward to.
Bigups
