EW: Tell me about your background as a dj, I assume you were doing this before dub step came along? 
JN: I started playing Baltimore Club for years and years before any of this. Started back in 92, my junior year of high school. Baltimore Club/Breaks is picking up speed all round North America now. I used to play it for years, but after a while I just lost my love for the sound. I still think its cool; it just stopped hitting me in the same way. Now for me, its dubstep, all dubstep. It all started about five years ago.

EW: I read your roots are from the Caribbean and that you also grew up in the UK; has that background influenced you in your path towards playing dubstep?  
JN: My parents are from Trinidad and I was actually born in Southampton, England. Moved to the ‘States when I was young, about two or three.  In terms of how that influenced me, I guess it’s more of a Caribbean influence than a UK influence. Ultimately, I think a lot of the UK style in the sound originally comes from a Caribbean influence. Not to say the U.K. wasn’t creative on their own, but a lot of reggae, roots and dub culture originally come from the Caribbean, mostly Jamaica. But as I’m sure you know, a lot of Jamaicans, a lot of West Indians in general, made the trip overseas, and started up various things over there.
 
EW: Can you describe Baltimore? It seems like a laid back place but also a place that has got character, as it’s influencing a lot of music right now.  
JN: Baltimore is my home man. I love it; I’m unofficially the mayor of the city. Baltimore, in my mind is the biggest city and small town in America. Baltimore is called Charm City, there are certain things that can only happen there. Like people selling water bottles at streetlights, I’ve never seen that anywhere else. Baltimore’s got this quirky charm to it, it just it’s own place.

EW: How did you originally get exposed to Dubstep?
JN: Well, I listened to some old UK Garage, two-step back in the day. In June of  ‘02, I started getting into some similar sounding records. I first heard it live and loud at a club night in Baltimore called Starscape, where they had a lot of top UK DJ’s coming through, like (Dubstep pioneer) Benny Ill. The one guy that came thru and just blew me away -- Hatcha. He had all these exclusive Big Apple releases (Big Apple was among the first record stores in London to support the sound and eventually had its own record label imprint) and the sounds that he had just blew me away. That night I went home and just realized ‘that’s the sound I wanna represent’. Then it just went from there, I started playing it and getting connected with the right people, [they started] sending me tunes. For the past two years, it’s been great; dubstep has opened a lot of doors for me. I would’ve never imagined touring across North America, seeing my face on posters here in Toronto, being on a BBC documentary. I just never would’ve imagined that.
 
EW: Tell me about dubstep in Baltimore and in the States in general.
JN: Well I was the first to play all dubstep in the states. It’s small but growing everywhere man. People are getting it in these small pockets across North America…Dallas, San Francisco, NYC, Baltimore, Chicago, Houston, L.A….it’s spreading.

EW: It seems to me, the interesting thing about dubstep, as you said, as that in every city, there are people who are taking it upon themselves to proliferate the music.
JN: Exactly, it sort of crazy actually.  Years ago, Kode 9 referenced dubstep music as a virus. And if you think about it, what’s a virus? A virus is an organism that grows and at the same time mutates. And that’s a brilliant definition. Cause the sound its self is growing, but at the same time, is changing.

Like the flu, it’s a virus. Depending on who you are, where you are, your mood at the time, you can get a different strand of the flu, it might knock you out for a day or a week, and you get different symptoms. What I’m trying to say is that a listener’s connection to dubstep is determined by where they are. For me, as I’ve been doing it for so long, my connection to dubstep is a lot deeper than someone that has only been into it for a year. My understanding of what dubstep is, is gonna be different than theirs, although we’ve both been hit by the same virus.
 
EW: Wow man, that’s deep. What are your musical influences outside of dubstep?
JN: My father was in a steel drum band when we first moved to the States. When I was growing up, I was all into that: Soca, Calypso. Every Saturday I’d listen to Mighty Sparrow over and over again. People don’t realize how much of a musical legend that guy is. I also listened to a lot of old r&b - Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Ohio Players; all that old school stuff. But my guilty pleasure is eighties music. I can go on about that stuff forever. Wham, hair bands like G&R, Motley Crüe. I can go on forever about that stuff.

EW: You incorporate it into your sets at all? I know you like to play around with different sounds.
JN: Last night I actually opened with “Pinball Number Count” by the Pointer Sisters - the Sesame Street tune. I played some Dennis brown. I closed my set with “Electric Avenue”…. totally turned the crowd into a kindergarten class. I even mixed in some original Phil Collinns - "In the Air Tonight".

EW: How would you describe dubstep’s presence as a musical genre at the moment?
JN: It’s a funny thing. I really believe dubstep is both a culture, and a counter-culture.  There’s no such thing as an original dubstep person; it’s so young. In my opinion, everyone that likes dubstep has come to dubstep from somewhere else. Its almost like we’re immigrants that have found a place to call our own and have just decided to flourish there. It’s a lot like Toronto. You have Asians, Caribbeans, French people, Africans - people from all over the world, and all nationalities come here, live and thrive together.

There are people that have come from techno, house, trance, jungle; drum and bass is a huge part too. But, the common mind frame is that people have come upon the sound and everyone involved has decided to take a different path, and keep an open mind.

In terms of a counter culture -  it’s very much like a small thing in all these different places still. It’s really a bunch of small communities. It’s not really a style or aesthetic that’s common…you’re not going to pull up to club playing dubstep and see a Ferrari. All you really need is some big speakers, decks/mixer, dubs and let the bass do the work.

EW: The relationship between grime and dubstep: is there one?  
JN: I think the relationship is in the lineage of where they came from. But it terms of the dances, the sound, they’re really entirely different.

Grime is all about the mc, dubstep is the opposite and is really music and bass driven. That said, when Skream made “Midnight Request Line”, that had cross over appeal and grime heads were all over it making remixes and playing it at grime parties.  But there are examples of artists that straddle both. Plasticman, will say his music is grime, but dubstep heads feel it. Same with Mark One, dubstep fans have accepted his sound and will play it, even though it’s not really dubstep.

EW: You played exclusively dubplates last night? Why, given that there are all these digital options?
JN: I like the feel - when you have a dubplate, there’s a weight to it, a smell to it...almost like fresh fruit. The aesthetic quality just creates interest. When you see a dj pull out a dubplate with some illegible handwriting on it, it piques your curiosity. With dubplates, there is more of an accuracy of the sound. CDs, Final Scratch, etc., sound clean and precise, but they don’t sound right. With a dubplate, dubplates sound right. You get a warmer, real sound. When you hear that crackle before the beat, you know its something real. You want that grit that CD’s or Final Scratch can’t provide.

EW: How the hell do you describe dubstep to someone that’s never heard it?
JN: Dubstep: bass, pace, and space. Bass; that gives you the beats, pace cause it’s going at 138 - 142 bpm and space, because the bass is so loud it allows the music to breathe and stand on its own. Dubstep is the future, without any sense of the past. Its now, without that past.

Years ago, there was a Supreme Court justice, named Potter Stewart. Someone asked him about pornography, and his answer was "I don’t know what pornography is, but I know it when I see it."  The same theory applies to dubstep. You can’t really define what it is, but you know it when you hear it. You know when you hear sixteen intro bars, and than a bass drop just hits you in the gut, a snare that slaps you in the face, that’s dubstep.

EW: Can you tell me about three producers in the scene that you’re feeling and let me know what you think each brings to the scene?
JN: Three? I can’t do that - I’ll give you five. Anything by DMZ (Digital Mystikz) and Loefah because when they got moving in 2003, no one really knew who they were. A few months later, myself, Hatcha and Kode 9 were playing their tunes on radio and the next thing you know, people really started grasping on to their sound. They really brought more of the dub element. Their sound represented a shift in what we call dubstep now.

Skream -  The stuff that he comes up with, you listen to it and some of the stuff your like ‘damn, I could've made this’ and other stuff your like ‘damn, how the hell did he think of this’. And the thing about him is that he’s so prolific, and at a high quality. He makes so much stuff, and everything he makes is good. His music seems to connect with people instantly. Even his old tunes, you can play that stuff now, and people are still blown away. The man is a genius.

Other producers I’m really into right now. Scuba, his stuff really hits you in a different way. It’s not really complex in terms of arrangement, but his sound is just hard head bop beats. Especially the stuff he does with rock guitars is just killer. Speaking of rock guitars, the other dude I got to mention is Distance. The man can do no wrong.  I love his concept of what he thinks is music. A year and a half ago, no one would’ve thought of bringing heavy rock guitar into a genre called dubstep. And I know there are tons of other guys, but I got to say my last one is Vex’D. When you first hear their stuff, you think its just some industrial business.  But than you actually listen to their stuff, and its like ‘you know what, everyone can get into this’. They’re not typical dubstep, but they do things that you wouldn’t even thought possible. No matter what you like about dubstep, you’ll like Vex’D. They’re almost post-modern dubstep. The frequencies they come up with, are just dangerous, they’ll harm pregnant women and young infants.
 
EW: Tell me about your relationship with the number five.
JN: Well a couple years ago, I was doing my radio on gourmetbeats.com.  I was playing a big tune, and I said ‘five for the reload” implying if I got five people hitting me back, I’d rewind the tune. But no, the next thing I knew, people were hitting me up on the chat, typing the number "five" I was like ‘what the hell?’ and because we have a lot of international listeners, people started typing in ‘cinqo’, ‘cinque’, ‘cinq’, the Roman numeral V; and I was like ‘you know what, if that’s what you guys wanna do, that’s cool’. And then earlier this year, when I went to play DMZ in London, one of my friends drew up the number five on a piece of paper, and by then, a lot of the people over there already knew about the five thing. I dropped a huge tune, grabbed the piece of paper from my buddy next to me and started waving it at the crowd.  And the next thing you know, the whole crowds fired up, doing it too, just going nuts yelling “five, five, five!” Everyone just jumped on it. And its funny now, cause I’ll go to other venues and watch other djs and see people throwing their hands in the air like that (five), not even calling “reload”. I mean its blatantly one of my things, and honestly its one the coolest mistakes of all time. It’s right up there with chewing gum and Listerine. Its one of the mistakes that just seems to work and people run with them.

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