Wiley

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Richard Kylea Cowie (born 19 January 1979, Bow, East London, England), better known by his stage name Wiley (named after a character in the cartoon Thundercats) is a British music producer and MC who was one of the original founders of the Roll Deep Crew.

Wiley

Wiley has been active in the fields of Drum & Bass and UK Garage music, but is best known for being the major mover in the creation of Grime.

The Grime genre of music is said to be originated from Bow. Wiley has been proclaimed as the "King of Grime" also "Godfather Of Grime". Other Grime artists have cited Wiley as a big influence in their careers. He has been a prolific artist producing several albums and mixtapes for a number of labels. His origins have often been a subject of his work (e.g. "Bow E3"). Wiley joined with the "The Ladies Hit Squad" UK Garage crew with school friends DJ Target and MC Maxwell D around 2000. They achived some success on the UKG scene but then decided to combine with rival crew Pay As U Go to become a "super crew" containing the Ladies Hit Squad members plus DJ Slimzee and MC's Major Ace and Plague. God's Gift, Flow Dan and Riko joined soon after. In 2002 the collective achieved a top 40 hit "Champagne Dance" Soon after the crew disintegrated due to the power of the individual members who had differing ideas of the direction the crew should take.

Wiley went on to form the Roll Deep collective. Which included Dizzee Rascal and Tinchy Stryder as MC's. They were making music that was different from UK Garage. For a while there was not even a name for it. The label "grime" was the one that stuck. From 2001, Wiley produced a slew of instrumental "riddims" singles on his WileyKat Record label. The most famous ones are the "Avalanche", "Blizzard", "Eskimo" and "Ice Rink". This lead to him sign a record deal with XL Recordings.

Many of Wiley's early vinyl releases, such as 'Eskimo', were released under the alias "Wiley Kat", this name was derived from a character in the cartoon Thundercats. However the 'Kat' is never officially used by Wiley anymore, only mentioned loosely in some of his songs. Wiley also has two clothing ranges in addition to his music. The performer announced his retirement in 2007 as he thought he was "too old" for the game aged 28. He quickly ended it to continue recording the following year when he released the "Wearing My Rolex" single.

Wiley is the CEO and owner of his own record company, EskiBeat Recordings, which he does a lot of production and artist development for artists in and out the Grime scene.

It was announced at the end of October 2009 that Wiley had signed a four-album deal with record label Island Records. The first single to be released under his new record label will be " Take That", a collaboration with Brooklyn/New York based producer and remixer Chew Fu. Wiley came up with the song's title as a result of Take That rehearsing in an aircraft hangar nearby and Mark Owen popping in for some cigarettes. The first of these albums is likely to be entitled The Elusive. but in another more recent interview Wiley brought up the name King Richard, as another possible album title.

Official Site: www.myspace.com/eskiboywiley