It was a Complex Mag affair last week during the recording of Alia Loren's Radar Radio show. Everyone's favourite news anchor, Brandon "Jinx" Jenkins was in town with some of the team from Los Angeles and NYC—they hit London to learn more about this thing called grime. Alia Loren threw a special Complex x Radar segment in her show, mixing like she's been bossing it for years (she started last summer), and brought with her some of the deftest emcees around: Novelist, Jammz, Rocks FOE, Big Zuu, Snowy, Mez, Jay Amo and more. "Being a presenter and DJ on Radar Radio, and having only been mixing for 6 months, it brings a lot of pressure to be a good DJ really quickly," says Alia. "If I'm not doing uni work, then I'm spending most of my time in the practice room."
From peeping her grime tweets to seeing her live in the mix, it's clear Miss Loren lives and breathes this stuff. "Being able to mix tracks that I'm loving at the time and getting dubs or exclusives from my favourite producers and thinking 'OMG! This is nuts!'—there's literally nothing like it," she adds. "I've always wanted to mix for MCs on my show, so big up Jack Dat for spending hours with me in the practice room going back-to-back and teaching me everything I know." And she's learnt from one of the best: Jack Dat was named one of the grime DJs to watch out for in 2016. If you missed the Complex x Radar set yesterday (Alia's show is every Tuesday 2-4pm), listen back to the entire thing below and check out Bloaw's crisp shots on the flip.
Full list of MCs: Novelist, Jammz, Mez, Snowy, Big Zuu, Capo Lee, Ets, Jay Amo, Nico Lindsay, Rocks FOE, Arkay, Ayywax, Jon E Clayface, Vision Crew, Ezro, Tuckz, Goldie, Pascal, Whackye, Tyzz.
