On a spring night in Bucharest, Control Club vibrates before a single word is spoken. Gathered at the city's sound system faithful for the eighteenth installment of the Black Rhino Residency - April 19. On stage, Rider Shafique steps to the mic. Later in the night, Blackeye MC will trade versus with Tim Reaper’s retro-futurist Jungle. Behind him, the Bristol-based duo Gorgon Sound cue their first brooding riddim. Shafique allows the bass to fill every corner before releasing his low, deliberate voice. Charged with gravitas, what unfolds is a part sermon, part sound clash, echoing with transatlantic lineage. From the sound systems of Kingston to the pirate airwaves of East London, from jungle raves to grime clashes, the MC has served as "master of the ceremony," a mediator between music and meaning.
In Bucharest, far from the scenes where these traditions first took hold, Shafique embodies their continuity as a living, politically resonant form of crowd communication. Next to him, the Bristol-based duo Gorgon Sound cue their first brooding riddim. Shafique allows the bass to fill every corner before releasing his low, deliberate voice. Charged with gravitas, what unfolds is a part sermon, part sound clash, echoing with transatlantic lineage. From the sound systems of Kingston to the pirate airwaves of East London, from jungle raves to grime clashes, the MC has served as "master of the ceremony," a mediator between music and meaning. In Bucharest, far from the scenes where these traditions first took hold, Shafique embodies their continuity as a living, politically resonant form of crowd communication.
Black Rhino Residency: Gorgon Sound, Rider Shafique, Tim Reaper, Blackeye MC
The 18th instalment of Black Rhino Residency at Control comes in full force on April 19, mixing the sound pressure of dub with the uptempo energy of jungle musi...
The art of MC in bass music has emerged from a confluence of traditions. In mid-20th century Jamaica, the sound system was a structure for community and resistance. Operators like Clement "Coxsone" Dodd and Duke Reid carted enormous homemade speakers into open-air spaces, turning the streets into dancehalls. As the selectors spun American R&B and later Jamaican ska, a new figure emerged: the toaster, whose job was to speak rhythmically over records, to hype the crowd, to animate the music. Count Machuki, often credited as the first Jamaican toaster, brought a staccato, syncopated cadence. Later, U-Roy transformed toasting into an art form, releasing hit records in the 1970s that placed the MC front and center. As his 1970 single Wake the Town proved, spending 12 weeks on the Jamaican charts, toasting was performance, reportage, and oral history transmitted through bass and reverb.
The emigration of Jamaicans to Britain following the arrival of the HMT Empire Windrush in 1948 brought these sonic practices across the seas. In London, Birmingham, and Bristol, diasporic communities replicated the sound system model, often in small contested spaces: church basements, West Indian social clubs, and squats. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, these UK-based sound systems had become cultural institutions. Saxon Sound System in South London, for example, was instrumental in cultivating a generation of MCs whose fast-chat style mixed Caribbean patois with London vernacular. Artists like Papa Levi and Smiley Culture pushed this hybrid language into the public consciousness; the latter's 1984 track, Cockney Translation, reached the UK Top 20 by satirizing linguistic and racial tensions with humor and agility.
As sound system culture entrenched itself in Britain, another fledgling movement was emerging: Rave. The late 1980s saw the rise of acid house, and by the early 1990s, this had splintered into (amongst others) jungle. Built on rapid breakbeats, sub-bass, and samples culled from reggae, hip-hop, and soul, jungle offered the MC the new role of commentator and co-pilot. Stevie Hyper D tends to be credited as the pioneer of the double-time flow, a rapid-fire delivery synchronised to Jungle's 160-180 BPM tempos. Tragically, he died in 1998 before ever releasing a full-length album, but his influence is evident in every jungle and drum & bass set where the MC matches the DJ beat for beat.
Other key voices of this era include MC Conrad, known for his lyrical and soulful flow over the liquid atmospheres of LTJ Bukem, helping define the "intelligent drum and bass" sound of the mid-1990s. With his trademark "listen!" callout, MC GQ's commanding stage presence became a staple of raves across the UK and beyond. And MC Skibbadee, whose multi-syllabic speed and rhythmic complexity set a new standard for performance.
That rhythmic inventiveness lives on in contemporary MCs like Blackeye, whose work with Tim Reaper and Future Retro London brings the energy of classic Jungle firmly into the 21st century. Blackeye MC’s precise and raw delivery bridges the legacy of rave-hardened hosting with the sharp narrative flow of grime and hip-hop.
The late 1990s and early 2000s saw yet another mutation in UK Garage. As a smoother, more soulful offshoot of house music, it became the soundtrack of London's nightlife in the era. Garage MCs maintained the energy of Jungle but added swagger, flirtation, and often humor. Crews like Heartless Crew and So Solid Crew became household names. So Solid's 2001 single 21 Seconds, which featured eight MCs taking turns on the mic in strict 21-second intervals, reached number one on the UK Singles Chart and introduced the foundation that would eventually be Grime. At the more commercial end of the garage spectrum, The Artful Dodger and Craig David helped bring MC-led UK Garage to the top of the charts with hits like Re-Rewind in 1999, which blended club-ready beats with radio-friendly hooks. But as garage's polish began to chafe against the lived realities of Britain's inner cities, a harsher, colder sound emerged—Grime, the gritty younger sibling raised in pirate radio studios and concrete estates. Grime distilled UK Garage and Jungle's energy into something more urgent. Its minimal production was often built around sharp synth stabs and sub-bass with lyrical content that was hyperlocal and often autobiographical.
Pirate stations like Rinse FM and Déjà Vu FM offered uncensored platforms for lyrical warfare, where Grime's most agile sharpened their craft in real time. These stations nurtured an intensely competitive ethos that privileged freestyle battles and dubplate exclusives, giving rise to a new generation of verbal tacticians. Dizzee Rascal's 2003 debut album Boy in da Corner won the Mercury Prize and brought Grime to national attention. MCs like Wiley, Skepta, Stormzy, and Kano solidified the form, building careers from agile flow and streetwise lyricism.
Throughout this multi-decade evolution, the MC remained a narrator and a reflector of social realities in a role that is inherently adaptive, mutable, and responsive to context. In Grime, the MC became the street's correspondent, documenting the texture of daily life, its pressure points and ruptures: the council flat politics, the coded threats, the simmering rage of being young, Black, and broke in Britain. Still, not every voice in the genre chose reportage. Flowdan, for one, stayed tethered to the DNA of dancehall, carrying its rhythms and patois-soaked cadences into Grime and Dubstep alike. Known for his explosive ad-libs and disjointed flows, D Double E's bars in tracks like Street Fighter Riddim ('Shoryuken!') exemplify a sonic signature as distinctive as any producer's beat.
Emerging from the South London underground in the early 2000s, Dubstep offered something of a return to the sound system ethos. Early dubstep events, particularly FWD>> in London and DMZ in Brixton, emphasised bass weight and mood. In this context, MCs like Sgt. Pokes and Crazy D often took a backseat to the music, offering sparse interjections rather than continuous flow. Yet even in minimalism, they echoed the original Jamaican toasters. Dubstep's emphasis on physicality and atmosphere allowed for reintroducing politically and spiritually resonant vocals. The Bug's 2008 album London Zoo, for example, featured MCs like Warrior Queen and Flowdan, which paired industrial-grade Dubstep with apocalyptic lyricism.
It is in this tradition that Rider Shafique situates himself. Born in Gloucester to a Jamaican family, Shafique absorbed the UK's diasporic musical traditions from childhood. He first performed in the early 2000s with Pressure Drop Sound System and, over the past two decades, has developed a singular voice within the UK bass landscape. Unlike many of his peers, Shafique straddles multiple roles: MC, poet, educator. His collaborations span dubstep (Kahn & Neek), drum and bass (Sam Binga), and experimental (Young Echo). Tracks like Prophet and I-Dentity showcase his calm and deliberate dub poetry, often recorded in a near-whisper. Contrasting with the aggressive energies around him, it's a voice that commands attention.
Shafique is also emblematic of the re-politicization of the MC. While earlier generations used the mic as a weapon against erasure, commercial pressures in the late 2000s, as they tend to do, often blunted that edge. But in the past decade, a new wave of artists like GAIKA, Kojey Radical, and Loraine James have reinvested in the MC as a political figure. They draw on the same traditions Shafique does: sound system culture, dub poetry, and diasporic consciousness.
What Rider Shafique represents, ultimately, is continuity through evolution. He is not a revivalist but a revisionist who takes the past seriously enough to carry it forward. In his performances, one hears the echoes of U-Roy, Papa Levi, Stevie Hyper D, or Flowdan and the presence of Blackeye MC, already shaping the next chapter and the murmurs of tomorrow's MCs, yet unborn, who will find in his measured cadence a model for what the mic can mean. As he steps off the stage in Bucharest, the radical resonance lingers, not as an echo of the past but as a signal for future reform.
Cover ilustration by Andy Sinboy.
