"They were sampling Hall & Oates, Steely Dan, and all this music that I actually liked. And it was the way they did it as well: not giving a damn and taking whole lumps out of stuff. It was very challenging to what anyone expected from young black artists; the connections they were making in the music didn’t have that overlay that other hip-hop artists had of being dangerous and misogynistic. There was an amount of silliness in it. I found it incredibly engaging. Wire’s never really shared much taste as a band. In the beginning we would talk about music, but it diverged over the years. It’s about the work. It always has been. It’s never been about, “I’ve heard this record, let’s try to do that.” Whenever I try to do something that sounds like something else, it ends up sounding so far from it that nobody could understand how I made the connection."

"When I heard this I was just completely floored. I was like 'What the fuck is this?' [Laughs]. Radio was amazing, it was so good. Similarly to Public Enemy, I heard this album and I wanted to know how he did it – I just had no idea how. He was talking my language and speaking to me but in styles I had never heard or experienced before. I wanted to know how he did this. The whole album is fire; the beats were hard and the rhymes were hard. It banged and undoubtedly became the sound of a generation. It was almost like punk rock in sentiment, urban punk rock which is effectively what hip hop is. It didn't matter which part of the world you were from either when you listened to this. The people that got this record were all going through the same shit. The worlds might have been somewhat different, but it was the same oppressive shit and it united people."

"That album! Oh man. Supa Dupa Fly was such a jam but Missy was just a creative fucking force when Da Real World came out. I remember she looked like Lee Bowery and her skin was painted true black, her eyebrows up to her forehead, back when videos could still be incredible videos. It was so top-of-the-line, Timbaland and Missy collaborating, and I felt like it was her time to shine as a writer and as a producer. It set the tone of that time. I was obsessed with it. 'Hot Boyz'? It is hit after hit. 'She's A Bitch'? What a jam? That was the video. She was so innovative and ahead of her fucking time. Everybody was on that, it was a family affair, but she is a genre all of her own. She is her own thing. Nobody is like Missy. She is one of those people where I'm like, sexism is alive, because if she was a man, she would be getting all of these crazy props. She's so incredible, and so underrated. Her harmonies are unbeatable. Un. Beatable. She's a maestro, a genius, a music nerd, an absolute culture nerd. And a style nerd. She's just such an icon. She was cool too. She's powerful. She is performance art, and that wasn't in hip hop at that time. And it certainly wasn't in female hip hop. The thing about Lil' Kim was that she sold sexuality and she did it so well, like no one is Lil' Kim, but Missy wasn't selling conventional sexuality, she wasn't selling female sensuality, that wasn't what she was doing, and I relate to that as a person who is big and a person who isn't attracted to conventional things. I like the weirdness, I like the things that stick out, I like things to look a little clowny, or look a little crazy and that's why she's such an icon. Same with Outkast. I think Southerners are just naturally weirder. Look at Lil' Wayne, Missy, Timberland, Outkast, Neptunes, all of those are Southerners so they're different. A different breed of rapper."

"It's black rock & roll basically - it's a way of being offensive. Turn up loud and say 'Fuck you'. It's a great album just the whole way through. Its R n B but it has some hip hop in it, but it wasn't sappy 'I'm going to love you to that sky falls' stuff - I don't like that kind of shit. And then, I kind think back now how it used [producer] Kyle West - his name was mentioned throughout. 'Kyle West break it down...' he shouted himself out in those tracks. I've never seen Kyle West, I don't know who he is. He's like a mystery, but his name stays with me, and that’s one reason why this album sticks out - you think, 'I wonder what happened to him?' If that one moment is never recaptured by an artist, you know even moreso that that moment was special. Al B Sure! never really did it again like with In Effect Mode, but he was on top with that record."

"I love what he was trying to say in that song, it touched me. He was trying to connect people and give them this earthy feeling - that we're all connected in some way. And the melody is just incredible. “The funny thing about this song is that you can drop it mid-set, maybe mix it into SVW's “Right Here” to keep it moving. You’ve got to find ways! That's the beauty of the whole DJing thing. Why not drop “Nice & Slow” and then the tempo of “Human Nature” is around 60, 63, 64 BPM. If you double it, it's the same speed as a fast dance tune, so you can just put a dance beat underneath and then you're in the mix. So this one I try and play out when I can. “The sample was used everywhere too, and this is one of the things I love about hip hop. The ability to take a classic and flip it. It's what makes DJing so great too."

"I think that it pretty much changed the game. You can say what you want about Waka or whatever. like, ‘Oh he can’t rap.’ He always is like, ‘I’m not a rapper anyway.’ The proof is when this dude drops his album, if 80 percent of It just makes me want to shoot machine guns. that genre of music changes to sound like him, you know you did something right. Everybody is trying to be hype and get Lex Luger beats and all that. Everybody is just all about that energy that I don’t think anyone matches as well as Waka. He just brings this almost punk-rock energy but it’s so hood and hip-hop. I just remember kind of taking a gamble getting the album and it’s just one of those times...I was sitting at Universal Studios about to ride some rides, but I just kicked it in the parking lot because as soon as I turned it on, I was like, ‘Whoa.’ It just makes me want to shoot machine guns. I love Waka, he’s the shit."

"My older brother used to play this a lot in the house - the piano sample in 'C.R.E.A.M.' is probably one of the earliest things I can remember. It predates the first records I fell in love with, it was just always getting blasted out of his room. I didn't actively keep up with hip-hop - all I had access to was through him while I got more interested in guitar and rock music. When we were mixing Antidotes, I started to go back and actively rediscover a lot of the stuff my brother had been listening to at the time, from around '94/'95. I love the production, the lyricism and how evocative this incredibly captivating cinematic cartoon world is. I love the whole gang mentality, their self-sufficiency, the grittiness of the production. I don't think I've taken direct musical influence from them, but I admire their ethos and the self-mythologising, the way they turned it into something much bigger than just the tracks. It's just a fucking amazing record."