We talk to the undisputed leader of the Jungelist massive, General Levy

General Levy needs very little introduction, his iconic track ‘Incredible’ has been a stable in drum and bass DJ sets since the mid 90’s and resonates with multi-generational bass heads! General Levy from Northwest London began writing lyrics and formed the ‘Third Dimension sound system’ with his mates back in the early 80’s. Some of his early reggae and dancehall tracks include ‘Heat’ ‘Champagne Body’ and it was this time he began to experiment with his distinctive hiccup sound. We caught up with Mr Incredible to find out more.

Let’s start off with Incredible! It’s a track which has transcended multiple generations, and still somehow manages to sound fresh today!

In front of a new audience,  I feel like it’s a new tune to be honest.  It’s really weird.  I’m doing it now and I’m singing it, but the vibe is so high, It’s like it’s a new tune.

You brought a lot of energy to the track and it probably felt as fresh because of that.  How do you keep it going?  How do you keep bringing so much energy to your performance?

Being myself, really,  it’s just doing what I do.  When you know, you’re given the opportunity to be yourself all through your life, then it’s the easiest job in the world.  It’s not even a job.  Just be yourself.  I mean, that track is my performance.  That was my raw performance.  I mean, that performance I gave on Incredible, I couldn’t get away with doing that on a reggae track because it would be too much, too high, too much going on, just too much!  So, I was able to really bring out myself on Incredible, the performance, the bars.  I got away with blue murder on that track because I was able to just spit all the way down for a four minute track.  That’s all I wanted to do at that age, 24 years old, go in the studio and be allowed to be myself.  And that’s what Junior Heart and Rent Records gave me the platform to do.

I don’t think there’s any lineup that you’re not on this festival season.

Well, yeah, there will be a few, man.  The corporate, the super corporate.  I won’t be on wireless, you won’t see me on wireless.  You won’t see me on certain ones, you won’t see me because that’s strictly radio play up to time.  Now, who’s on the radio last week, they want to see it.  So, I won’t be on on them, but the older, the urban, the underground, which is more, there are more like, I can’t call it, independent festivals than there are corporate festivals.  And I’m on a lot of independent festivals. But the corporate ones I’m doing a few as well.  I did one the other day.  So I do pop up.  I’m doing Kiss FM.  So I do do a few corporates still.  But yeah, I’m everywhere.  I’m omnipresent.

There’s also loads more to your back catalogue than incredible.

I’ve got best reggae singer, best reggae album and best reggae single, which was Heat.  Best album was Wicked at General.  And that’s what I got in 1992 at Hippodrome.  for the reggae awards.  Big, big reggae awards.  Yeah.  So I’m in 1992.  So I’ve been doing the reggae drag now for a while.

Drum and bass jungle came out of the 90s, that was when it really started cranking up. London was just going off obviously with all the parties and all the stuff that was going on everywhere.

Underground, real underground pulse was going on.

Do you think it was there, that you found your space?

Yeah, it was a platform, it was a playground that I felt very comfortable playing in, basically.  It was a playground that I thought I could be a bit more freeing.  My style fitted it, my hiccup style sounded amazing on Jungle.  Yeah, incredible.  And was replicated by so many MCs afterwards.  Really, because the style was a bit too, maybe because reggae is so like a cliquey, not cliquey, but kind of there’s a conventional way of doing reggae tunes.  And maybe there was a way, there was a thing with my hiccup style.  It didn’t really, I got hits in reggae, but I didn’t really get the hits because of the hiccup style.  The hiccup style was always a style that I used live, so I didn’t find its place in the studio yet, in the reggae studio.  But when I went to the jungle studio, it found its place.  It fitted in perfect and it became a valuable element and incredible.  Absolutely.

We must talk about Mucky Weekender a little bit.  I can speak from experience from being there last time, and it went off last year when you performed.  What’s the plan for this year?

I don’t know, man.  See what happens.  I don’t really plan.  I don’t plan for anything like that.  Turn it up and burn it up.  Turn it up and burn it up.

As I said at the beginning, I’m struggling to think back to the early days and think if there’s a track that really resonates more than that now, and I’m struggling.

To me, I could never be upset that obviously I didn’t get certain financial fumes from it, but I was able to make a beautiful painting.  that people still look at now.  People still look at now.  That feeling is amazing.  I prefer to do a painting that people still look at 30 years later than do a painting that only lasted like one year, and no one looks at it now.  You know what I mean?  And I’ve got loads of money for it.  Loads of money, loads of money, loads of money for this painting.  And 30 years later, no one knows what I’m talking about.  And the money’s finished as well, and no one knows the painting.  So at least with incredible, I’m still generating a living and people still looking at it, still interested in it.  So that’s a masterpiece and as an artist, that’s what you really want to do.

I think that’s a really lovely way of looking at it.  I reckon if we’d had this conversation 25 years ago, it might have been a different conversation.

Well, 25 years ago, I was really I was going through it, man.  I was blacklisted 25 years ago.  I was sitting in my yard, watching Jerry Springer.  Saying 50 pence on the electrics, man.  But I was still getting shows 25 years ago.  I was like, 25 years ago was like five years.  The track would have been out for five years.  So I was still in the doghouse, but I was on the road.  I would have been probably coming off a German tour.  I’d just come from Munich or Lechstik or Cologne or one of these places, Nuremberg.  I was doing a lot of stuff in Europe when I was not getting work in England because Germany is very intelligent and they know about good production.  And they absolutely, absolutely loved Incredible.  They studied it upside down to the left, to the right.  They dissected Incredible, Germany.  neatly as a European country.  they have to examine it because that’s where techno come from and that’s where a lot of big producers.