Dynamite MC

Dynamite MC is Dominic Smith, an MC and vocalist whose career connects pirate radio, live drum and bass, and studio rap. He began MCing on Gloucester’s Crush FM in the early 1990s before meeting Roni Size and working with the Full Cycle crew. In Reprazent, he shared vocal duties with Onallee, contributing to New Forms, the collective’s Mercury Music Prize-winning 1997 album. He also appeared on its 2000 follow-up, In The Mode.

His solo album World Of Dynamite arrived in 2004. It gave him space to move between different lyrical voices and forms of production, with collaborators including DJ Zinc and Andy C. Discussing the record with MusicRadar, he explained that he wanted it to show the full range of what he could do. He also made some of its beats himself, using an MPC sampler, rather than working solely as a guest vocalist.

That distinction matters to his later work with DRS. Their collaborative album Playing In The Dark, released by Hospital Records in August 2020, places the two vocalists over productions from artists including Calibre, S.P.Y, and Roni Size. Highrise FM draws on their memories of pirate radio, while the title track addresses the place of MCs and lyricists within drum and bass. The record gives that perspective a sustained album format, with the two voices carrying the connections between its different producers.