Hello, this is Dela. I grew up in Cergy-Pontoise, France. I knew I wanted to be a musician at age 9, after my big brother took me to a Guns N’ Roses concert (I know). I was the quiet kid who finally found a way to express himself. Then in junior high a classmate lent me his 36 Chambers CD, I hadn’t even asked for it. Shrug. Another classmate said let’s make a rap group. He wanted beats that sounded like ATCQ, so I borrowed his 90 minutes homemade cassette mix of Midnight Marauders and Beats Rhymes & Life, and it changed everything.

My hometown is a 45mn suburban train ride away from Paris. In my teens I spent a lot of time riding trains, metros & busses. I would hit up Paris to buy clothes (qui se souvient de ruffneck?), then it was for records, concerts, school... Commute music is tricky. Paris is a tough city and I needed the drums in my headphones to beat, hit and breathe the proper way. With a commute that long, I also craved for melodies, chords, textures I could relax to. This is how I ended up bumping Tribe, Pete Rock, Jay Dee, Les Sages Po, DJ Mehdi, J.Rawls… all the time.

I'd written a whole another paragraph but I'm told I need to wrap it up