MC Profile – MC Elkay – (UK)
With a residency at Resonate in Aberystwyth, Nu:Motive in Bristol and also hosting at a long list of other events across the UK, we absolutely fell in love with Elkay the first time we saw him perform. He’s strictly from the ‘smiles for miles’ MC camp, with a fun but equally as serious delivery style and an infectious smile that just gets the whole crowd bouncing, we thought it was about time this dude had the INSIDE DNB treatment.
With a very warm heart and an intrinsic love for seeing people having a good time, this MC is definitely one to watch.
Elkay! Welcome in!
HI! Nice to meet you 😊
Tell us. How did this crazy MC journey start?
The whole kind of love for it started about 11 years ago at my first festival which was Nostock festival. I didn’t really know what drum and bass was at the time, and hadn’t really deep dived into the world of electronic music, but I went to the festival and went down to The Cubicles on the Friday night and Drumsound and Bassline Smith were playing. I was like ‘What is this?’ The lights and the sound and the whole thing. Ever since then it’s just been a huge love for the scene.
With the MCing it was probably 2013, again at Nostock. It was the last day of the festival, Sunday night and second to last set of the night, and there was this MC on stage and really, it was the first time I’d seen an MC do their thing. I saw the stage and the spotlight and I was just thinking. ‘this guy is killing it’ and I instantly loved it.
A few months later I saw that that same MC and the DJ that was with him were playing in my hometown of Malvern and I couldn’t believe it. I went to the gig and the MC was standing outside having a smoke and we got chatting. I put a video up previously on YouTube from the festival and it got a load of views, and the guy told me how much that video had helped him grow his following and he bought me a drink. That guy was Trafic MC, and we became really good friends after that.
I started MCing a bit myself a few months further on from that, just spitting bars and having fun wit my mates. Chatting shit really but having so much fun with it. A few years down the line I saw an ad for a gig in Hereford with Trafic, Hazard and Eksman and the promotor had put out a post asking for another MC. Trafic mentioned me in the comments and said I was good and next thing you know, the promotor is contacting me asking me if I’m available. So we did the gig, it went really well and I got to perform. Trafic went on next and then it turns out that Eksman was running late.
Trafic had been flat out for a couple of hours and was knackered and they needed someone ASAP to spit over DJ Hazard. Trafic put me forward and that was it. I was MCing with DJ Hazard! This was about the third gig I’d ever done. It was insane. The crowd got really involved and it went really, really well. After that things just went mad and bookings just started flooding in. It was crazy.
Amazing! We wanted to ask you how you plucked up the balls in the early days to get up in front of a crowd and put yourself out there front of stage, but it sounds like you kind of just have to throw yourself into it?
I never really had a chance to think about it. It was just go or not, and it was go. You just have to throw yourself into it. You can’t not. I was like ‘fuck it’, what happens, happens and it just went off. I followed the whole Trafic vibe and went with ‘smiles for miles’ and energy and passion rather than going in hard and spitting hard bars down. I’ve got a lot of inspiration from Trafic.
There is two distinct styles when it comes to MCing isn’t there? The going in hard, technical style and then the more kind of ‘go with the flow’ style?
Definitely. There are so many different aspects to it, but I love the going in hard, I love the energy and ‘POW’, you get that part when the tune hits and the energy is sick, but at the same time I also love letting it build up and when the track drops it’s just ‘BOOM’, and that’s when I like to just let it go. Let the tune go, and everyone is powered by the bass and it’s all they can think about, and at that point, I just wanna be in the crowd, you know? I’m raving with them at that point. I like to MC as if I’m there listening to it, and sometimes the tune is so sick that you just have to let it go and let the people embrace it. It just the power music can have.
That’s interesting, because it doesn’t always work like that does it?
No, not always. Some MCs will just go and do and do everything they can to squeeze those bars in, but me personally, if it’s a tune that needs to be listened to then I want to listen to it too. The productions these days, it’s unbelievable. These 17 and 18 year old producers that are coming up with sounds that have never been heard before, it’s unreal. You’ve got these tracks that are lovely and melodic but are grotty at the same time.
Absolutely. If there’s one thing we could say about your particular style on the mic, it would be that you can just feel the fun. We can see that you’re having a blast up on stage. We (I) love the eye contact element when an MCs going off, and that is really apparent when you’re working. There’s a lot of crowd contact.
That’s great to hear! I see everyone, and as soon as I clock someone, because a lot of people are on their phones or chatting to their mates or what have you, as soon as I see that one person I’ll try and make a little comment, or try and converse with them in some way. If you’re at one of my gigs and you’re down the front, you’re gonna get spoken to. I just love it. Getting down on the level and getting everyone involved.
Do you think there is more or less pressure as an MC given that you’re front facing, as opposed to the DJ who is often tucked away doing their thing with the technology?
That’s a tough question. Without the DJ obviously I wouldn’t be there, and in the early days I used to think a lot about whether people liked what I was doing and how I was coming across, but soon you kind of realise that people’s opinions don’t really matter (or the negative ones anyway) and that you’re going to get hate. I had a lot of hate on Twitter at the start, bad comments and people just being negative, and that hit hard, but then I moved to Bristol with Trafic and he made me realise that what I was doing was good. The thing is, out of a hundred people who are dancing to what you’re doing and enjoying it, very few of them will turn around and tell you that, but that one person who gives you hate, it sticks with you, and it took me a while to get through that. I turned the hate into something positive, because people were still talking about me either way. Being front of house can create a lot of pressure, with everyone watching you, but you get into it and it becomes fun.
With that said, what do you consider to be good qualities that an MC requires to deliver something worthwhile? Somebody you would like to see perform yourself?
That’s a really inteesting question. I mean, I love the hosting style of someone like Dynamite, where he’ll step back a bit and let the music breathe, but I also love the Eksman’s and the Shotta’s and the Evil B’s with the hard hitting bars and the energy. For me, Evil B stands far above the rest for his constant and really high level of word play, and it’s the same with Trafic. His use of wordplay is insane, with lots of double and triple entendres, the ones that really sit there and make you scratch your head, and by the time you’ve thought about it he’s already moved on to the next one. That’s what I really love, is the word play. Not too much, beacuse you can get bamboozled and then it doesn;t make sense, but adding in little sly ones that go over a lot of peoples heads, they’re the ones that I like.
So, do you do a lot of stuff on the fly, or do you pre-practice your lyrics?
Well, I have a certain amount of stuff that I’ve written down that I keep locked in my head that I can draw on, where I know when to come in, and I know that I can bring that bar in and I know what I’m doing, but the chatting and the talking and the bits where the music goes quiet, that’s all off the top of my head. I don’t even think about it, it just flows! The long ones, the 32 bars and the 64 bars, I know I can fit them over certain tunes and they’ll flow but the chatting, which is a big part of what I do, the involvement with the crowd, that just rolls off the top.
One great example was when somebody found a wallet on the floor in Bristol during a Katalyst set and handed it up to me, and I took a quick look inside to get the owners name (which was Andrew) and I just freestyled about this guys wallet and you could see the crowd thinking WTF, and they are the ones I really find fun. Completely ad-libbed stuff. Within about ten minutes this kid came up to collect his wallet buzzing about the bars I’d used and as he grabbed it the crowd cheered. It made something pretty boring turn into something that everybody got involved in. That was really fun.
If somebody in the crowd brings something weird up or there’s a sign in the crowd I’ll always try and bring in something slow to incorporate it into the set. I love playing around and having fun like that.
Sounds like such a blast! And such good fun, but what would you say is the best bit of the job?
That’s tough, but it’s probably meeting the ravers. Meeting these beautiful people and knowing that I’ve played a part in making them happy, making them dance and making them groove, especially when they come up to me and say that. It’s something I will never take for granted, even if it’s just a quick comment when someone’s walking past. That feeling is probably what I’d say is the best.
That’s interesting, because when we’re out raving we like to be the ones saying that to the DJ or the MC or even the promotor. It’s a mutual reciprocation.
Definitely. When someone comes up and says that I’ll make a special point of talking to them, and I’ll usually recognise them from being in the crowd and I’ll make a point of telling them that. like “you were the one doing such and such” or whatever. I’ll always add them on the socials and get them involved. I love that. It’s making those connections and sometimes even relationships.
What about equipment then. How does that work? I’m guessing you have your own Mic that goes everywhere with you?
I take me own Mic everywhere, which is one that Trafc gave me a long time ago. It’s a Sure SM-58 that goes everywhere with me, though a lot of places will have their own Mic and sometimes even wireless Mics that allow you to run around the stage.
And what about any on stage nightmares you’ve had? Any of those ‘ah, fuck, get me out of here, this has gone pear shaped” kind of moments?
I was at a Resonate open air event (in Aberystwyth) and the decks went down, just like completely died, so I kind of looked around and just explained what had happened, and then someone in the crowd shouted “Beatbox!”, so I gave that a go and it was the shittest beat boxing ever, so I thought “no, fuck that” and I went into some double time acapella stuff and everybody was getting involved ready for the decks coming back on, so you kind of find a way to get out of those nightmares.
Other times though you’ll get people who’ve had too much to drink or start throwing stuff, or try and jump over the barriers and even start being wiered to people at the front. They’re the things that I see all the time and you just have to keep focussed and remember that these people are maybe not in a good place, and then maybe talk to security or grab them some water. Sometimes I’ll call them out and in front of the whole crowd and warn them that’s not how we do things, but usually it’s just people just getting a bit carried away.
Do you have an agent then, or what? How does the booking thing work?
Well, I don’t have an agent for bookings really, as most of it’s word of mouth in terms of bookings. I’m looking forward to maybe going abroad but for now I’m just getting my name out there and building up the bookings. I also produce my own music as well, so what I’m looking at next is trying to work with other producers and getting my lyrics on some tracks (as well as the tracks of my own that I’m making). I’m currently working with ENME from Carmarthen who is part of the Union Sounds crew (BIG UP THE WEST WALES COLLECTIVE) on some stuff, but that’s really where I’m looking at heading next.
Well look, we’ll hit the rave just because we know that Elkay is on the set, and we absolutely love what you do, so we wish you the absolute best of luck with the whole thing and look forward to seeing you out and about reel soon!
FIND OUT MORE HERE:
elkay (@logan_elkay) | Instagram profile
Stream Elkay music | Listen to songs, albums, playlists for free on SoundCloud
Stream ENME music | Listen to songs, albums, playlists for free on SoundCloud
