OKAY PLAYER!
Shiba San busts out with bassy hit, we sit down for a chat...
Ghetto house DJ/producer Shiba San, originating from Paris, was a fan of hip-hop producers DJ Premier, Pete Rock and Dr Dre back in the day, and also rappers Jay-Z, Notorious B.I.G, Busta Rhymes, Snoop Dogg and Wu-Tang Clan. Simultaneously he was listening to early house music.
“I was into early Chicago house, early deep house and garage,” he tells DJ Mag. “I really liked Masters at Work.”
It was probably only natural, then — once he'd started producing music himself — that he started making bassy house music, we suggest. “Yeah, I guess that it's been a natural evolution for me, a mix of all the music I have been listening to since I was a kid,” he says. “I wanted to produce music that I could play in clubs. In a way my music style merges the ‘dirty’ side of hip-hop with the ‘clubby’ side of house music.”
Sufficiently, it was perhaps inevitable that he should end up on Dirtybird — Claude VonStroke's bassy house haven. “I’m a fan of the label, I’m into Justin Martin and Claude VonStroke, and I went to see Claude play in a club in Paris,” Shiba recounts. “I told myself that when I have a track that is right for Dirtybird, I will send it to Dirtybird, and this is just what I did with ‘OKAY’. I got a positive answer right away, but I was not expecting the track to go so big.”
With its burbling bagatuelle bassline, 'OKAY' became a Dirtybird barbecue fave, and it's a similar story for his association with Amine Edge & Dance. “They post on their SoundCloud all their live performances, so I was listening to their sets almost everyday when I was at the gym and I felt that I had these four tracks which were right for them,” he says. “I sent them to Amine, and he answered right away that he wanted them for an EP for his label.”
These tracks became the 'All About Booty EP' on Cuff, while 'OKAY' is currently the subject of a bidding war by various UK labels. “‘OKAY’ is opening a lot of doors for me,” he says. “I’m working hard on a follow-up to ‘OKAY’, Claude VonStroke has a clear definition in his head of what he wants for his label, so I want to give him something that I feel is perfect.”
