The name John Hillyard might be unfamiliar to many of our readers, even though you’ve likely seen him before. He is the man on the cover...

"Before the internet [...] knowledge was hard earned and could only be acquired from actual fieldwork. There were no shortcuts."

"I've always loved electro and old school rap. Stuff where if you get a feel for it, it's unmistakable and it's also undeniable..."

"I always had a dream of having my own label, so soon after Mo Wax Japan came to an end, I started Rush! Production..."

"When I first met Gab we went into a booth at KDVS and rapped first thing [...] we were just monks about freestyling..."

"I remember James Lavelle saying "I'm looking for the holy grail for Mo Wax in Japan," and so this was already very intriguing for me..."

"85-86 that's when you start hearing samples in rap records so it went from DJs playing those records to people putting it in the sampler."

"Most of my early memories were from a town we lived in called Middletown, California..."

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Endtroducing, DJ Shadow’s debut album. It was composed almost entirely of samples, and many of...

"I love the cat among the records! It's the notion that everything there has already gone through some kind of human cycle."

"I didn't have a computer so the first [Bomb Hip Hop Magazine] issue is actually done on my mum’s typewriter..."

"I suppose my A&R career started, probably in 1995-96 [...] I was 24 so it was a foot in the door for me as a young London DJ..."

On Friday June 18, 2021 Timothy Jerome Parker aka The Gift of Gab passed away, aged 50. May he rest in peace.

"There was no Oakland rap in 1979 when Sugar Hill Gang came in, it did not exist. I thought it was so cool that people could do that..."

"I was a Street Music Director who was in charge of all the mixshows. We brought in a lot of DJs [...] and Josh was one of them..."

"I was one of a few DJs in the Sacramento Valley that actually had a mix show. Josh was at the Davis High School and he came down at KDVS."

"I worked at a record label called Poetic Groove [...] either ‘90 or ’91 and I was doing college promotions, sort of learning the industry."