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Shut Up and Dance: the Hackney rap duo who raved against racism | Music


In British dance music history, the likes of Shoom, Spectrum and the Haçienda are often held up as the defining clubs from the scene’s formative years in the late 1980s. But for Carl “Smiley” Hyman and Philip “PJ” Johnson, better known as pioneering duo Shut Up and Dance, the aforementioned clubs paled in comparison to Dungeons on Lea Bridge Road in east London.

“You’re never gonna find a spot like that again,” PJ insists. “There were all these tunnels, each with their own sound system, all linked together like some sewage system. By the end of the night there’d be sweat dripping from the ceiling.”

Like Dungeons, Shut Up and Dance are an underground institution whose legacy has been shamefully overlooked. Describing themselves as a “fast hip-hop group”, the duo’s technique of sampling early Def Jam imports, accelerating the breakbeats and rapping over the top laid the groundwork for breakbeat house, hardcore and later jungle. “We knew the rave scene was going on but we were too busy trying to be Hackney’s answer to Public Enemy,” says Smiley. “Then that scene began playing our music and we were thrown into it.”

“We thought we were going in a straight line down the motorway, then all of a sudden we were doing a left,” PJ adds.

The duo were born and raised in Stoke Newington, and their music can be traced back to the reggae sound systems that dominated Hackney and elsewhere from the 1950s onwards. They decided to form one of their own with Smiley’s brother, known as Daddy Earl, and childhood friend Kevin Ford, who would later become drum’n’bass icon DJ Hype. “It was called Heatwave and was what was known as a youth sound system,” Smiley recalls, a term that set those keen to incorporate fresh sounds such as hip-hop and house apart from older, more traditional troupes.

Heatwave whetted the pair’s appetite for sampling and production. Unable to land a record deal, they decided to launch their own label, Shut Up and Dance Records, to release debut single 5, 6, 7, 8 in 1989. A now-legendary UK hip-hop track, 500 white label pressings immediately sold out, and it also received regular pirate radio airplay.

The cover to the album Black Men United.
The cover of album Black Men United

“We both had nine-to-fives at the time, and decided: right, we’re gonna leave our jobs at this time of this month, put our money together and put out a single,” Smiley recalls. “Luckily it was a hit. We started with a bang, there was no warm-up.”

This momentum was carried forward into Shut Up and Dance’s debut album Dance Before the Police Come the following year. Released in the final months of Thatcher’s reign, the title alludes to the UK government’s draconian approach towards raves, which culminated in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. “We were just dancing, for God’s sake, there was no one fighting, no one rowing, no one dying – nothing like that,” Smiley laments. “But Thatcher and her friends seemed to be hell-bent on stopping people from having a good time.”

If it wasn’t the authorities shutting down raves, it was racist door policies preventing PJ and Smiley from doing what they loved. “We were into hip-hop and most of the places to hear it were up the West End,” PJ recalls. “So we’d be in this queue for an hour, hour and a half sometimes, get to the door and they’d say ‘you’re not coming in’ with no explanation. So when we started making music we knew we had to talk about that.”

The anger and frustration they felt is present throughout Dance Before the Police Come, right down to the album artwork, which features a bare-chested PJ and Smiley adopting a battle stance while wielding nunchucks and machetes. West End bouncers are referred to on the polemic White White World (“racism is a serious thing / the colour of my skin means they won’t let me in”), while further politically charged social commentary comes in a Sam Cooke-inspired civil rights call-to-arms (A Change Soon Come) and a critique of the social issues that plagued their neighbourhood (This Town Needs a Sheriff). This year marks the album’s 30th anniversary, and its themes are no less relevant today.

“Hearing Public Enemy definitely made us look at things differently – I still to this day say I’m a child of Public Enemy,” says Smiley. “But we were mainly writing about what was going on in our manor. For example, Hackney was going through a bit of a crack epidemic at this time – we were seeing it crush people. So we decided to talk about that in This Town Needs a Sheriff and Green Man, which refers to the local pub where all the crackheads used to buy their crack. If anything, there was too much to write about in Hackney – our rap books were looking more like Bibles!”

Shut Up and Dance.
PJ and Smiley from Shut Up and Dance

Shut Up and Dance are critical of the depoliticisation of British dance music (“from the late 90s everyone just started shutting up”) but praise the recent spike in support for movements such as Black Lives Matter. “The whole world is out protesting, from Brazil to Germany,” says PJ. “There’s always strength in unity and that’s what we need right now. We need to look at each other as human beings and stop judging each other based on the colour of our skin – it’s pathetic.”

Dance Before the Police Come is set apart from the hip-hop of the time by high-energy, instrumental cuts where the beat takes centre stage. Tracks such as the Eurythmics-sampling Lamborghini and the eerie breaks of Derek Went Mad were far closer to the hardcore sound that would sweep the nation in the ensuing years. “We weren’t sounding like any other UK rap thing at the time,” Smiley says. “We were trying to make rap music that you could dance to – hence the name Shut Up and Dance.”

Overlooked by the British hip-hop community while being revered by the nascent rave scene, Shut Up and Dance gradually shifted away from vocal-led hip-hop to more club-focused dance tracks. Their music became a staple at raves and clubs, including Dungeons, and they even scored a UK No 2 hit with Raving I’m Raving, a Walking In Memphis-sampling hardcore anthem with a subtle anti-ecstasy message.

Raving I’m Raving reached No 2 in the UK

They also produced Reggae Owes Me Money, the debut album from the Ragga Twins, another Hackney-based duo who had found a home on Shut Up and Dance Records. They didn’t know it at the time, but the album’s fusion of house, breakbeats, MC-style vocals and reggae basslines was the first iteration of what would become jungle. “We weren’t fans of the term jungle at all,” Smiley says. “It goes back to not getting into clubs in the 80s, a lot of the time they’d say ‘no jungle bunnies’ – that was a common thing to be told. We’d be at loggerheads with the Ragga Twins over it: come on man, call it something else.”

PJ and Smiley continued to make innovative music throughout the 90s and beyond, including producing Nicolette’s majestic, jazz-infused debut album Now Is Early, and later releasing UK garage as Hackney Soldiers. This year was supposed to produce a series of reissues as well as new music and a film about their careers, 2 Facety Boys From Hackney, all of which have been postponed during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Even as they’re caught in limbo, Shut Up and Dance’s influence continues to permeate British dance music. It begs the question as to why their name isn’t held in the same regard as globally renowned figures from jungle and drum‘n’bass. “Well, we were never really into playing the music industry game, in fact we went against the system,” Smiley says. “But yeah, anyone that knows, they know.”



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