Stevland Hardaway Morris, known professionally as Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer. One of the most acclaimed and influential musicians of the 20th century, he is credited as a pioneer and influence by musicians across a range of genres that include R&B, pop, soul, gospel, funk, and jazz. A virtual one-man band, Wonder's use of synthesizers and other electronic musical instruments during the 1970s reshaped the conventions of contemporary R&B. He also helped drive such genres into the album era, crafting his LPs as cohesive and consistent, in addition to socially conscious statements with complex compositions. Blind since shortly after his birth, Wonder was a child prodigy who signed with Motown's Tamla label at the age of 11, where he was given the professional name Little Stevie Wonder.
Thomas Morgan Robertson, known by the stage name Thomas Dolby, is an English musician, producer, composer, entrepreneur and teacher.
The Streets is an English musical project led by vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Mike Skinner. The project was founded in the early 90s, while Skinner was still a teenager; however, no music would formally eventuate until the early 2000s. In the initial run of The Streets, the project released five studio albums: Original Pirate Material (2002), A Grand Don't Come for Free (2004), The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living (2006), Everything Is Borrowed (2008) and Computers and Blues (2011). The Streets also released a string of successful singles during this time, which reached the Top 40 on the UK Singles chart – including "Has It Come to This?", "Fit but You Know It", "Dry Your Eyes", "When You Wasn't Famous" and "Prangin' Out". After disbanding The Streets in 2011, Skinner pursued several other musical projects before ultimately reviving the moniker in 2017. A mixtape, None of Us Are Getting Out of This Life Alive, was released in 2020. The Streets' sixth studio album, The Darker the Shadow the Brighter the Light, was released in September 2023.
James Iovine is an American entrepreneur, former record executive, and media proprietor. He is best known as the co-founder of Interscope Records and became chairman and CEO of Interscope Geffen A&M, an umbrella music unit formed by Universal Music Group in 1999.
David Allan Stewart is an English musician, songwriter and record producer, best known for Eurythmics, his successful professional partnership with Annie Lennox. Sometimes credited as David A. Stewart, he won Best British Producer at the 1986, 1987 and 1990 Brit Awards. Stewart was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2020 and the duo were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022. Outside of Eurythmics, Stewart has written and produced songs for artists such as Ringo Starr, Stevie Nicks, Mick Jagger and Tom Petty.
Hospital Records is a British independent record label based in South London. Primarily releasing drum and bass, the label was started in 1996 by Tony Colman and Chris Goss and has grown in recent years to become one of the most well-known labels within UK dance music. The label has been home to artists including Blame, Danny Byrd, Camo & Krooked, Logistics, Nu:Tone, Urbandawn, Metrik, Fred V & Grafix, High Contrast, and S.P.Y and releases music from across the DnB genre. In Forest Hill, South London, Hospital runs the publishing company Songs in the Key of Knife and their worldwide events brand, Hospitality. Until the end of 2019, they also ran the more experimental label Med School Music.
Drowned in Sound, sometimes abbreviated to DiS, was a UK-based music webzine financed by artist management company Silentway. Founded by editor Sean Adams, the site featured reviews, news, interviews, and discussion forums.
Hard-Fi is an English indie rock band, formed in 2003 in Staines-upon-Thames, Surrey. The band consists of Richard Archer, Ross Phillips, Kai Stephens and Steve Kemp.
Kane Brett Robinson, better known as Kano, is a British rapper, songwriter and actor from East Ham, London. His fifth album, Made in the Manor was shortlisted for the 2016 Mercury Prize and won Best Album at the 2016 MOBO Awards. On screen, he played the role of Sully in Top Boy.
An unsigned artist, unsigned band or independent artist is a musician or musical group not under a contract with a record label. The terms are used in the music industry as a marketing technique. Bands that release their own material on self-published CDs can also be considered unsigned bands. Often unsigned bands primarily exist to perform at concerts.
Nathaniel James Speas, known as Nate James, is an English singer-songwriter. James released his debut soul album Set the Tone in 2005 which won him two MOBO Nominations for Best Newcomer and Best R&B Artist, featuring his revered first release "Set The Tone" He released on his Frofunk imprint via Independent Labels around the world and became one of the most successful independent soul recording artists globally. James has sold over 1,000,000 albums and he has had airplay hits in both Europe and Japan.
Carl Carlton is an American R&B, soul, and funk singer-songwriter, best known for his hits "Everlasting Love" and "She's a Bad Mama Jama ".
Michael Geoffrey Skinner is an English rapper, singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer. Best known for the music project the Streets, Skinner has also released music as a solo artist, as part of the D.O.T. with frequent collaborator Rob Harvey, and under the pseudonym The Darker the Shadow the Brighter the Light.
"Bird Flu" is an urumee melam-dance song by recording artist M.I.A. on her second studio album Kala (2007). It was released as a digital download in 2006 through XL Recordings under exclusive license to Interscope Records in the US. Critics noted its autobiographical lyrics "updated to the present day, where she's straddling the line between major-label success and her own crazy-ass major-label-bucking tendencies, singing she's too cool "to be a Rocawear model," whilst adding that she couldn't be a "rocker on a label"- they wouldn't have her because "...my beats were too evil." Also praised was the song's utilization of the folk urumee melam/gaana and dappankuthu music, Tamil genres of music that the writer was familiar with having grown up in Jaffna. Arulpragasam recorded the song using live drummers from temples in Chennai. M.I.A. wanted to work with Tamil folk music as it gave her a sense of rhythm as a child and she wanted to draw certain aspects from Indian music that Western audiences hadn’t heard before.
The BT Digital Music Awards (DMA) was a British music award ceremony held annually for 10 years from 2002 to 2011. Music industry professionals nominated artists, venues and hardware into the Judge's Choice award categories. The rest of the awards were made up of People's Choice Awards, voted for by the public. The final awards were held at the Camden Roundhouse on 29 September 2011.
Brian Wayne Transeau, known by his initials as BT, is an American musician, DJ, singer, songwriter, record producer, composer, and audio engineer. An artist in the electronic music genre, he is credited as a pioneer of the trance and intelligent dance music styles that paved the way for EDM, and for "stretching electronic music to its technical breaking point." In 2010, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album for These Hopeful Machines. He creates music within myriad styles, such as classical, film composition, and bass music.
The Very Best is a collaboration between London-based DJ and production duo Radioclit and Esau Mwamwaya, a singer from Lilongwe, Malawi. Their music has been described as an Afro-Western mix of dance, hip hop, pop, and the traditional music of Malawi.
Robert Solheim is an electronic music composer from Norway. His styles are techno and deep/tech-house, downtempo and electronica with a strong emphasis on Nordic sound. Influenced by all kinds of electronic music, he has developed his characteristic style from his first ambient and ambient-techno releases in the 1990s, through down tempo and deep/tech-house and techno for clubs and home entertainment.
William Joseph Crawford, known by his stage name Ya Boy, is an American rapper from Fillmore District, California. He is best known for his 2011 single "Lock Down". The year prior, he signed with the latter's record label, Konvict Muzik, having first signed with San Quinn's Done Deal Entertainment to release his debut studio album, Rookie of the Year (2005). The following year, he signed with the Game's Black Wall Street Records, and later Mack 10's Hoo-Bangin' Records in 2009, although he released no albums with both labels.
Derek Nash is a British jazz saxophonist, band leader, arranger and recording engineer.
