Soundtrack To My Life: Trevor Nelson

An urban legend of a different kind.

trevor nelson
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trevor nelson

Trevor Nelson is like that cool uncle everyone wish they had growing up.

An early champion of R&B powerhouses like Mary J. Blige, Lauryn Hill and Lil Mo, as well as Brit-soul legends like Mica Paris and Jamiroquai​, in the '90s, Nelson quickly become the go-to guy for all things R&B and soul in the UK, in the same way that David Rodigan did with reggae. From the illegal days of Kiss FM through to hosting his own show on MTV Base and presenting across the BBC, Nelson has never been out of work in all his 30 years as a top music tastemaker and, at 51, he can still flex with the youngsters.

Complex caught up with Trevor Nelson recently to talk about everything from being a soul boy in a reggae-heavy Hackney to interviewing Mariah Carey, Kano, and grime music being "the blacker form of hip-hop." The DJ also gives us a rundown of his all-time favourite jams.


30! It's flown by, man. I still don't really see myself as a DJ, though. I'm not born to DJ; I felt I was born to buy music and maybe broadcast on radio. But DJing was never at the top of my list. I've never really put myself out there like that, but I do like putting parties on: I like promoting and the excitement of not knowing what's gonna work or not, and getting the right crowd in. My first gig was actually at my school disco, when I was in sixth form. I went to an all-boys school and, obviously, there were no girls there so we had to ask girls to come along. But I was shy, back then. I didn't want to ask a girl to dance, so I put my hand up to be the DJ because I knew had the most records [laughs].  



"Being a soul boy in Hackney, you had to be a really strong individual to wear some of the clothes we wore [laughs]."


So that obsession with records led to you randomly DJing and you started to build up?


Yeah. I had a little soundsystem in college, where I met a group of like-minded people. I was brought up in Hackney, which was a very reggae-dominated area, and every party was a reggae party; they'd play a couple of soul tunes, but it was a necessity thing. Music in those days was really tribal. You could tell what music someone was into by the way they dressed. It was as simple as that and we all played the game, you know? Being a soul boy in Hackney, you had to be a really strong individual to wear some of the clothes we wore [laughs], so there was a real team mentality. Everyone was making tapes for each other, and I was making little compilation tapes and people were copying them and selling them. So that's what made me think I should start doing some little gigs. 

Your daughter's also in the industry, known to most as the music producer Shy One. What do you think of her work? 


[Laughs] She's quite unique. I'm not all over Mali's music; I am because she's my daughter, obviously, but my daughter's a really complex girl. She's got great taste in music, she makes unusual music, and she's always coming round and going into my record collection—​it's all hers when I'm gone, anyway [laughs]. She really just reminds me of me. I never was brave enough to produce, I wasn't musical like that, but she learnt keyboard quite early. I didn't go in the studio, ever, even though I ran a label and did A&R. "Alternative" would be a great way of describing her music, though. I can't keep up with her! 



"Grime was always meant to be underground. I don't know why everyone's putting so much pressure on it to go overground because, by nature, it's underground."


She's made the odd grime tune in her time, and you've done your bit for the scene too. What are your thoughts on the current hurrah around grime? 


I'm a good guy to talk about grime because I'm not a grime guy. And I know you are [laughs]. I remember when I was on MTV, we did MTV Base for 12 years, and The Lick was essentially an R&B show with a bit of hip-hop. Then, all of a sudden, grime came about. Channel U was putting anybody's tunes on so I remember the guys at Base weren't really into grime—maybe because the videos weren't million-dollar videos. It was all a bit difficult to make sense of, but Channel U were good at what they did. I remember doing a one-on-one with Dizzee on Base. I did one with Kano and Chipmunk, too, and it was a big deal for all three of them because we always had big American stars like Mariah and all that. I thought it was important that we at least covered grime, so I put these guys as leading characters in the scene.

Kano has always been my favourite MC and I hate the fact that he's never realised his full potential, sales-wise. He never quite became a household name in this country, but he's legendary in the grime scene. Later down the line, I joined 1Xtra because of what was happening with grime. I knew something was happening in Britain and I waited ages for more British music to be big and for something to happen. On 1Xtra, I knew I was going to get fed all that on the daytime show so I could support it; the stuff that looks like it might sell. The problem was everyone cashed in. Everyone wanted to make a quick dollar. With the garage scene, it ate itself up because everyone started trying to get singles deals and just make one-hit-wonders and that kinda happened with grime a little bit. They all started doing the same thing, getting a pop verse or an indie-sounding verse on a grime tune and get it in the top 10 and then no one bought the album. 

There's still a scene out there, but grime was always meant to be underground. I don't know why everyone's putting so much pressure on it to go overground because, by nature, it's underground. It's caught in a dilemma. People keep saying, "He's getting dropped from this label, he's getting dropped from that label." But to be honest, most people who like grime don't pay for it. And that's the problem. It's got a massive fanbase, but you ask anyone who's got a collection of grime: "How many of those tunes did you buy?" Tunes keep on under-performing because the crowd that support them don't like buying the music. On radio, you've got to make a specific type of tune for it to be popular. Skepta does that well and Wiley does that well, the odd Stormzy tune too. But it's difficult for the A&R to know what to do with grime. If you sign them to a major, you're under major pressure from your boss to deliver sales and you end up getting a grime artist and watering them down. Then people like you go nuts [laughs]. Most people who buy grime don't really, truly understand the game. They don't know how hard it is to sell. Even though it's universally black and white, grime is the blacker form of hip-hop. It's more urban than hip-hop. But, it's still got a lot of life in it.

Soundtrack To My Life...

 

The Jackson 5 – "I Want You Back"

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"The Jackson 5 Greatest Hits was bought for me by my uncle, when I was 7 or something, and it was the first album I owned. It had all the hits on there—all the early Motown hits like 'ABC', 'Never Can't Say Goodbye', all those sort of tunes—but 'I Want You Back' was my favourite. My sister had a portable record player and it was the only record we had, so every day after primary school we would go and play this album and dance 'til we sweated [laughs]. The fact of the matter is, I still play this record today; it still goes down if you play it at the right time with the right crowd. It's just a great, great song."

Earth, Wind & Fire – "Fantasy"

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"The first album that I ever bought was Roy Ayres' Lifeline album. That was the first album I went and spent money on. It was shrink-wrapped in Our Price Records, and when I got home and opened the album up, it was a country & western record. I was gutted! I went back to the store, there was none left and so I took Earth, Wind & Fire's Greatest Hits instead. 'Fanstasy' is my tune to this day! I think it's just a really great song."

Level 42 – "Starchild"

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"Level 42, originally, were a great jazz-funk group and they had an album called The Early Tapes which was legendary on our scene. I actually went and followed them a little bit, saw them in concert. Their first full album has this song on it and I just couldn't get enough of the bassline; Mark King the bass player and this guy called Paul Williams are my two favourite bass players in the UK. I played 'Starchild' on my BBC Radio 2 show recently, and it's still special to me. Although Level 42 ended up being a mainstream, almost a pop-rock band, their early days were special."

Stevie Wonder – "Do I Do"

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"I was gonna choose Stevie Wonder 'As', but I always say that and people always expect that. I know it sounds weird but 'As' is my favourite Stevie song. 'Do I Do' is the one I get the most enjoyment from playing at parties, though. They just love that song; people smile so big when they hear that tune. Obviously Ja Rule sampled it for 'Livin' It Up' later on, but I love that Stevie can just do anything. Just look at his history of music: he can do pop, soul, R&B, and he's still worth seeing in concert."

Maceo & The Macks – "Across The Tracks"

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"All the James Brown songs and albums that I've got—and I love James BrownI've always found this is the one tune that takes the roof off the most. The only song of his that is universally loved is 'Sex Machine', but DJs don't really play it. The production on this is phat for a funk tune: the horns, the signature intro—it still sounds great today. That whole Soul II Soul era, we would go to house parties and hear this tune on repeat! Every time I play it, I think back to those days of pirate radio."

Jamiroquai – "When You Gonna Learn"

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"When I was on Kiss, when we got legal, I got given a cassette of this guy. I didn't know who he was and it had this tune on it. We were at Kiss HQ one day, I was downstairs in the basement, and the guy who ran the promotionswho would later become Jay's manager, a guy called Kevin—said he had something he thought I'd really appreciate. So I listened to it when we were downstairs and I said, 'Yeah, this is right up my street. I love it.' This white guy with greasy hair was also there, eating a burger, and he jumped up and said, 'That's me!' I literally said: 'Fuck off! That isn't you!' He said it was and I just couldn't believe it. It just didn't sound like some white kid. But I played it a lot on Kiss FM, and everyone wanted to know who he was. He later got signed and got a massive record deal."

Roy Ayers – "Running Away"

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"Roy Ayres, along with George Benson, were my first two jazz/funk heroes. Every album of theirs I could find, I bought. I must have over thirty or so. The first tune I heard of Roy Ayres that really got me into clubbing music, was 'Running Away'. It's why I bought that Lifeline album. 'Running Away' is just an epic, epic, epic, epic tune. Greg Edwards was on Soul Spectrum on Capital Radio in those days, Robbie Vincent was on Radio London, and it was the sort of music you'd hear on those shows. It just made me want to go clubbing, even though I was about 13 when I heard it [laughs]. Roy Ayres, for me, is the unsung hero of my music collection without a doubt. He didn't write incredibly brilliant songs, but the vibe was tight and so was his band."

Mary J. Blige – "Be Happy"

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"Mary's first album, What's The 411?, was brilliant, I thoughtquite timeless. The next album, My Life, for a lot of people, was better: better music, better samples, just chilled-out. And then on this song she samples a Curtis Mayfield song, 'You're So Good To Me'. It's just a beautiful, beautiful tune. It's emotional too! It's like a wave coming in and out of shore, that kind of dreamy music to get completely lost in. Most of Mary's music is like that, when she gets it right. But she doesn't always get it right."

Lauryn Hill – "To Zion"

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"This is possibly my favourite Lauryn Hill song of all time. 'To Zion' is an absolute killer! It's just so real... Listen, I've got kids. I know to have a career and to have kids is not easy. Especially, in showbusiness and the media. Lauryn, as much as she's an enigma, she wrote a song about how she felt and every baby mother out there relates to this song. It's an amazing, amazing song and it's for women more than anything, but as a man, I can appreciate it too. The fact that she had Carlos Santana on the tune playing a wicked guitar part was also epic. I'll play this tune in clubs, at the end of the night, and people put their hands in the air and get lost in it. The only person that could test Mary J. Blige is Lauryn, in terms of that kind of music. But she's also an incredible rapper."

A Tribe Called Quest – "Electric Relaxation"

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"I haven't put any hip-hop tune in this list, which is terrible. For me, hip-hop isan album genre: from Nas through to N.W.A., they made classic albums but none of their singles made me go 'Wow!' A Tribe Called Quest, on the other hand, they had 'Electric Relaxation' from their Low End Theory​ album that I absolutely loved! And that album is a flawless album. A Tribe are, by far, my favourite hip-hop band of all time. They're just really musical, and Phife and Q-Tip complemented each other brilliantly. They had intricate flows and it was just interesting to listen to. You always wanted to hear what they were rapping about, and I can't say that about every rap group or every rapper."

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