Wayne Lotek

LOTEK is a Jamaican-English born Music Producer and Reggae/Hiphop Artist, who has contributed greatly to the sounds of Big Dada artists including Lotek Hifi, Roots Manuva and the 2009 Mercury Award winning artist, Speech Debelle.



Lotek's music production career started soon after his chance meeting with Roots Manuva's then manager, Jeremy Tuson (known as Tuse). Tuse was running a label called Sound of Money Records, and was a small independent label specialising in soulful reggae and UK hip hop. His artists on the roster included reggae singer Wayne Paul, Black Twang and Rodney Smith AKA Roots Manuva, who had just released his first single, Next Type of Motion.



This chance meeting resulted in Lotek re-working a Tuse beat for a Roots Manuva track. Manuva loved what he heard and the pair continued to work together (a few years later this work would appear on Brand New Second Hand). Lotek then went on to work on both of Manuva’s follow up albums, Run Come Save Me (which was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in the UK) and Awfully Deep; Lotek also served as the musical director on the Roots Manuva, Run Come Save Me Tour.



Cementing himself as part of the Big Dada stable, Lotek went on to remix, produce, write and engineer many other Big Dada releases. He subsequently created his own project for Big Dada – Lotek Hifi. As part of this group he went on to release three singles and two albums before eventually deciding to work on solo projects. Such projects included writing the music for the multi-million-unit-selling PS2 game, Getaway 2 – Black Monday and opening Plan B Studios in Birmingham UK. During this time Lotek also won a BBC Urban Music Bursary Award and used part of the prize money to travel to Eastern Europe and Australia to tour, write and record.



Lotek is one of the main driving forces behind the emotive, acoustic hiphop sound of emerging UK Artist, Speech Debelle. The album "Speech Therapy" which he recorded with Debelle in Australia, is one of the most anticipated UK Hiphop albums of 2009. (See Bigdada.com for more details).



Taking influence from reggae, Lotek explores the evolution of hip hop by way of the Reggae Sound System culture. He looks to Jamaica for inspiration and takes pride in continuing the tradition of UK artists working with, and interpreting, the sounds of Jamaica. This direction is more than evident in the sound and feel of his forthcoming album, Rebel HiFi.