WOMAD

Yungun

From United Kingdom

Yungun (a.k.a. Essa) began his musical career as a host and MC on pirate radio. Having formed the group Dupa Styles (alongside Devise and Harry Love), it wasn’t long before Yungun launched a solo career with the release of That’s What Eye See (Food LP, Low Life Records) and the underground anthem City Breaks amongst various mixtape appearances. Teaming up with Mr Thing, Yungun released the white label banger Straight Jack It and the party smash Dancing Shoes on Janomi Records. Following numerous performance and heavy radio rotation, Yungun released his first official solo single, Push, following it up with a full-length project, The Essance featuring brand new and previously unreleased material. With production by Harry Love, Lewis Parker and Mr. Thing, and guest appearances from Devise and Terra Firmas Kyza, the Essance was one of the Hip-Hop albums of 2004. Touch gave it album of the month, Hip-Hop connection gave it four stars, and everybody predicted big things ahead. Since the release of The Essance, Yungun has been going from strength to strength. There has been support stateside with the track Liquid Love being featured on the top US DJ Jon Does mixtape All About The Doe along side the likes of Nas, Jay-Z and Kanye West. He has also performed alongside artists such as Slick Rick, The Beatnuts, Guru and De La Soul. This year, Yungun was the host MC at the 2005 MTV Party at the Cannes Film Festival as well as hosting at the official MTV Europe Music Awards party in Lisbon this November. He has also been tearing up festivals in Czech Republic (Love Planet/Hip-Hop Kemp) and getting 2000 people go crazy at the Bestival Festival as well as playing other shows across Europe and up and down the country. The radio response has been incredible, with strong support from BBC Radio 1s Zane Lowe and DJs Semtex, Ras Kwame, Ace & Invisible, Rodney P and Skitz (1Xtra) MK (Kiss FM) as well as the pirates (Itch FM, Y2K) to name a few. He also did an interview for the Craig Charles show on BBC 6 Music. A real highlight of 2005 has been Yunguns performance with a full live band for the BBC Africa Season at the prestigious BBC Maida Vale Studios which received a great response from the audience and the critics. This year will see the release of a EP project alongside DJ Mr Thing, Grown Man Business, which will also feature two videos. The EP will be dropping on Silent Soundz following the smash white label release Jacking For Breaks which has spent 5 weeks in DJ Semtex's 1Xtra Hip Hop Chart and has been getting spins everywhere from KISS FM's Shortee Blitz to Radio 1 legend Steve Lamacq.