DESCRIPTION:
Mike Skinner is starting a small intimate London clubnight called 'Tonga' ft guests like Murkage : http://bit.ly/1jFNSMe
And a label championing new MCs and bass music.
Skinner's blog: very entertaining: http://www.mikeskinner.so
Catch Mike with Mistajam at SW4: http://bit.ly/1or6WSx

Mike on going back to DJing:

"It didn't feel like that much of a stretch to me. I started out learning to DJ on vinyl when I was 15. Obviously I then focused on The Streets and have come back to it ten years later. Musically I find it quite straight forward -- people know me for rap and having a party, as well as the other influences in The Streets. 'Blinded By The Lights was an attempt to combine rap and dance music which is now kind of happening with the whole trap thing. So it sort of feels quite obvious that I'd be playing a bit of dubstep, trap, the odd bit of rap, house and garage. "

Mike on his club night...

"Me and Murkage are going to do a party in London and it's going to be called Tonga. It's going to be really small, to begin with probably just mates, but I'm really excited. For all the things I haven't got going for me, one thing in my favour is I've met a lot of people over the years -- so I'm hoping I can get a lot of people coming down and it should be quite mad. It's going to be a very entertaining party bass night rather than a mass skunk smelling chin stroke."

On his new label...

"The label is going to be called Mike Skinner. That's incredible imaginative isn't it? Basically, I didn't have a name and then I started filling out all these forms, having to write my name down over and over and then my wife said you should just call it Mike Skinner. So I did."

It's fourteen years since the release of Mike Skinner's groundbreaking album 'Original Pirate Material' as The Streets. With it's lo-fi production, garage influenced beats and kitchen sink poetry, it paved the way for a whole new generation of UK MCs and producers that would truly find their own voice and style, one that didn't imitate the US. As the classic lyric goes..."Round here we say birds not bitches". Five studio albums later, The Streets are now closed, leaving Skinner the time to focus on new musical projects such as The D.O.T. with Rob Harvey from The Music, nurturing new MC talent such as Oliver #Worldpeace and, most interestingly for us, resurecting his DJ career and starting an clubnight. You can check him lay down a set tommorrow in The Lab.