Honky, kulture klash krew - by Ian Peel
1994 was a weird year for music – something you could only realise with ten years of hindsight. On one hand you had some of the most daring and groundbreaking rap and hip-hop ever released. The UK had Portishead’s Sour Times and Goldie’s Inner City Life and the US has the Beastie Boys’ Sabotage and the dawn of G Funk. But on the other hand, Britain was about to undergo a rock revival and the dawn of Britpop with various bands that had been recording for years – like Pulp, Blur and the Charlatans – getting a new lease of life alongside new acts like Oasis.
If you’d have asked who Liam Gallagher’s favourite band from the rap and hip-hop side of things was, he would have probably said Honky. Not that anyone would have ever asked him that and not that he would have ever replied to such a non-rock and roll type question.
But rewind the tapes, pause, now zoom in. You’ll see Liam watching in the wings as Honky make a powerful live performance on The Word, pumping out second single The Whistler with at least one Honky rapper in an Oasis t-shirt.
The reason for this unlikely pairing came about when Honky signed to Ignition Management, also home to Oasis. The band revolved around two central members, instrumentalist and producer Matt Ellis and rapper and vocalist Kye Wright - “like Jay Kaye with the chip removed from his shoulder,” as the NME once described him. Both had met on the club scene in their native Doncaster in the late 80s, then later “Kye came into my studio to record some songs he had written,” remembers Matt. “In fact he came in about three times in nine months before we decided to work together on some new songs.”
Originally calling themselves Club St Louis, their first tracks – most of which featured Kye singing as opposed to rapping – went unreleased, but one (Let’s Go Lazee B/W Let’s Go Zzzz) made it out as a single on Eastwest in 1991.
Just 12 months later Honky was a fully operational unit and one of the first demos they recorded – K.K.K. – became the subject of a major bidding war. ZTT won the day and took the band on, with the duo ramping up to a five-piece in early photo shoots courtesy of three friends, Stu, Joloise and Rosa. “Rosa is Kye's sister,” explains Matt, “Joloise was her friend who we got in to sing on The Whistler and Stu was just a friend of Kye’s. We just asked them to appear in the first videos ‘cos they were around and Rosa could dance!”
K.K.K. (Boom Boom Tra La La La) was an original cross between Arrested Development-style urban poetry and Stereo MCs-style beats and breaks. It became the band’s signature tune and the centre-point of their first single, The Honky Doodle Day EP. Released in February of 1993 it dented the UK singles chart and dented UK dancefloors with a 12” promo of the Fully Loaded/Alpha Mix and the Honky Doodle Dub.
Kye was a heavyweight with his raps and lyrics. K.K.K. stood for Koffee Koloured Kids and dealt with his feelings of alienation as a mixed race kid in 90s England. For its follow-up he rapped about the violence he suffered at the hands of his father who he nicknamed the ‘the whistler’ because he would always start whistling before an outburst.
The Whistler – “insanely catchy, like Arrested Development on steroids,” according to NME - became the band’s second single and this time pushed towards the top 40 thanks to that live performance live on Channel 4. The Word may be remembered for The Hopefuls, the delirious Oliver Reed and the delirious Amanda De Cadenet, but at one point it was also a major platform for new music. Nirvana one week, 808 State another, L7, The Farm, Happy Mondays, there is as much footage of classic music in their archives as there are of students eating buckets of worms.
The Word was definitely a highlight for Matt - “It was great. Weird doing it completely live, i.e. going out live on air, much more nerve-wracking than pre-recording a live performance” – but one of many from Honky’s live performances and life on the road that also included “Kye falling through the stage in Amsterdam… Jools Holland asking to play the piano intro to The Whistler on our Later appearance and us saying no… Playing the main stages at Glasto, T in the Park, and especially Reading - all fantastic and great crowd responses…. Our three rappers trying not to swear by order of the BBC on a live Radio 1 gig in Brighton and completely forgetting – the most swearing I've ever heard on Radio 1!…”
Love Thy Neighbour followed The Whistler as Honky’s third and final single, which had added DJ kudos thanks to the Balkan/Rubber Dub 12” promo of club-only remixes. All appeared at a time when ZTT was really pushing forward with UK dance music. As well as The Honky Doodle Day EP, 1993 also saw 808 State’s Plan 9 and 10x10 and Shades of Rhythm’s second dimension with Sweet Revival and Getting Away. The next year their album appeared on ZTT at a time when Seal was reuniting with Adamski, Apollo 440 were remixing Frankie, All Saints released their debut single and Chris Coco was remixing S/O/R.
If reviews are anything to go by, Honky could do absolutely no wrong at this time. Peter Paphides called The Whistler “the kind of dippy kaleidoscopic jeunesse that De La Soul would kill for.” For Melody Maker, Honky’s music combined “assured post-Daisy Age rap with a feel for commercial hooks, proving at least someone from these shores is capable of the laid back vim of the likes of Cypress Hill.” Single word reviews were more powerful though. NME on the Honky Doodle Day EP? “Excellent.” On KKK? “Wonderful.” On The Whistler? “Genius.”
The Ego Has Landed arrived on 18 April 1994 and completed the triad of ZTT’s early rap exploits that had started off with two albums released in the autumn of 1990 - Sevier’s outbursts on Hoodlum Priest’s Heart of Darkness and MC Tunes’ debut, The North At Its Heights with 808 State. Honky’s album cuts were as well received as the singles with the chorus from Who Am I? giving Melody Maker’s reviewer “an irresistible urge to bend her two middle fingers into the palm of her hand and stick her arm out in front.” Chains simply had “a chorus to thank your lucky stars for.”
The band took on a harder edge for their next project – the Kuljit album that eventually appeared on Sony - its first single Hip Hop Don't Ya Drop being a personal favourite of Matt’s. But Honky ended soon after. Matt: “There was no big split really… (Backing rapper) Ash got disillusioned and left shortly after the second album, but me, Kye and Era (another backing rapper) continued doing songs and gigs for about a year after the Sony deal ended... It just fizzled out really and we decided to call it a day. We're still mates though. Kye didn’t do any music for years after Honky split, then a couple of years ago he started writing again and recorded some songs at my place.” The place in question is Axis studios, where Matt Ellis is now songwriter/producer/remixer-in-residence, working with R&B/pop acts like Louise, Honeyz, Supersister and Catalina.
A little over ten years later and it all looks a lot clearer. The Ego Has Landed is pure 1994 – the closest the UK came to Fugees-style rhyming and wordplay before it all dissolved into trip hop as dance music stepped aside for the mod-rock revival. At the same time the ZTT singles are getting spun again by turntablists like DJ Riko who slapped The Whistler right in between Air’s Alpha Beta Gaga and The Lovin' Spoonful’s Daydream for a Superchunk session on X-FM in 2004. A memorable ‘History Mix’ that included Fatboy Slim, Lemon Jelly and LCD Soundsystem and takes in other ZTT/related tracks like Art of Noise’s Snapshot and Beat Box (Diversion One) and a capellas of Yes’s Leave It and Malcolm McClaren’s Buffalo Gals.
But enough of the trainspotting. The last word here should go to the late and much missed journalist Jack Kane. “An ex-girlfriend of mine had the Honky album,” he once told me, “and used to amuse herself (and perturb me) by always quoting the lines ‘All the guys in the house say yo, all the ladies in the house don't go. Cos we've got a trick and it rhymes with quick and it ends in a juicy flow.’ Disgusting.”