"I moved to Austin for college and really loved it. It was a place where there was an arcade that was open 24 hours a day. There were buses going by, and a million people around. And I loved seeing cultures that I just didn’t see in Temple. Right around this time, I started looking into Public Enemy and I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X twice and, well, my eyes were opened quite a bit. There were black people in Temple, but, for instance, at my high school there was a big parking lot, and there was a divider that divided one third of the lot from the other two thirds, though not with any intention, I don’t think. It was just there. But most of the black people in my school parked on that small third, and everybody referred to that parking lot as “Africa.” That didn’t strike me as fucked up in high school, but after reading Malcolm X and listening to Public Enemy, I felt a real drive for there to be more justice and equality. For me, it’s very easy to feel spiritually connected to the underdog and the oppressed. Chuck D is a hero."

"I remember when I first heard Fear Of A Black Planet it was, again, one of those moments when you thought ‘this is something’. It was still at the relatively early stages of rap, but Chuck D was really onto something. The sound of the tracks – the rhythm units they were using with those tiny percussion sounds – was unlike anything I’d heard. That’s why I chose it. Jay-Z has made some great records, as has Dr. Dre but Fear Of A Black Planet changed things. We covered ‘911 Is A Joke’, which we got an enormous amount of flak for. Middle class white boys covering Public Enemy – what were they thinking? I can tell you the irony wasn’t lost on us. In fact, Flavor Flav loved our version, which was a huge thrill. Public Enemy were pioneers who went out on a limb and started something which has become the biggest paradigm shift in music that we have had in the last 25 years. You look at some of those songs and think about how many samples they contain – the list is enormous. But that sampling technology is something we’ve all used since. Public Enemy were inventors, as were others with the albums I’ve chosen. They moved music to a new place and that’s what turns me on."

"It's probably my third favourite rap album of all time. Again, I think it's a really overlooked record: I think it's so good because he was produced by The Bomb Squad. I remember being shocked by that at the time; for some reason I didn't think that Ice Cube and Public Enemy got on, so I was quite surprised that The Bomb Squad had produced it. But you could just tell that their production values were there straight away, and it would open up into some kind of expression, and then it would close back down, and you could hear all these things going on in the background. This was when Ice Cube was still kind of known as just being a rapper, and for me this was his peak. There are songs on there like 'The Nigga Ya Love To Hate' which is just amazing; the title track; and I think one of my favourite songs on there is 'Once Upon A Time In The Projects' which is just fucking brilliant. That was always the thing about Public Enemy: they always ruled because they had the best rapper in the world; Chuck D was the best rapper and everything bounced off that, and that's why this album is great - Ice Cube, here, is most connected and it feels so important that he gets his point across. He's not disconnected, he's not being arrogant, it's just pure aggression. I never see this listed as one of the best rap albums of all time, but for me it's just a brilliant record. It's up there with some of the Kool Keith stuff, it's up there with Public Enemy, it's up there with NWA. It's just brilliant. And it's really sad that he didn't go onto do more work with the Bomb Squad, because it was obviously a marriage made in the projects and it was fucking amazing. It's another lost classic that just doesn't get mentioned anymore."

"The first song I heard of theirs was called 'Funky' and the B-side of this was a song called 'Mentally Mad'. I was just listening to a mix show of theirs one night and they played all this new shit. I was like: 'Who the fuck is this?' I needed to know everything about this group from there; I knew this shit was ill. I discovered that they were from the Bronx and the more I listened, the more I realised that their beats were hard as fuck. I started reaching around and I found the 12"" single before the album came out and a few other songs. When the album eventually came out I was just mesmerised, especially with Kool Keith and his high-pitched rhymes talking about all this space-age, futuristic shit. It influenced me massively in that it was just this mad, unorthodox music and when I started making music, mine was very unorthodox as well. They were talking spaceship shit, like it was from another planet and they were 'Hardcore Bronx' fools too. The beats were banging with a big old bass and it just felt like some next level shit. It was hard as fuck, street shit set against these incredible lyrics – you just did not hear people talking like that. Kool Keith would rhyme but he'd also do this shit where nothing at all rhymed (like 'Mentally Mad') and that was very different at the time. They came just before Doctor Octagon and I never got into them or none of that as it felt watered down. Ultramagnetic MC's were just pure hood shit and they stood out because of it. Critical Beatdown was just incredible with the music and the beats they used. There's something too about having the contrast of the deep voice and the high pitched voice that's kind of like B-Real or Chuck D and Flava Flav. When one goes away, the other comes in and they switch again: when they come back, it's always more powerful too. They created a really dynamic sound."