The man might have begun DJing in the late seventies but his beginnings in the music industry proper were behind the scenes. His first major break was his job as an A&R man for Champion Records, a London based record label known for its soul and dance music.
He scouted his adopted home town of New York City, USA for talent and, unarguably, he found it. He didn’t just sign Salt-N-Pepa to the label; he also signed a little known duo called DJ Jazzy Jeff And The Fresh Prince. Yes, technically speaking we have this man to thank for Will Smith’s film career.
This would make a career in its own right but Oakenfold wasn’t done yet. In 1987 the success of a birthday party of his in Ibiza led him to create one of the first major acid house club nights in the UK, this was the time that he started being recognized for his ability as a DJ and in his downtime from the night, started putting together music of his own.
That spark of creativity became a fire in the late 80s and all of the 90s, where he was pretty much the UK’s biggest name in electronic music. His remixes for Happy Mondays were top five singles, he was invited to DJ at The Stone Roses’ legendary Spike Island concert and in 1990, he won a Brit award for his production on the Happy Mondays album “Pills ‘n’ Thrills ‘n’ Bellyaches”.
As the 90s continued, he played to 90’000 people at the 1995 Glastonbury Festival and his remix of the U2 song “Even Better Than The Real Thing” charted higher than the original in the UK, such was his popularity. Unlike many musicians popular in the 1990’s, however, he didn’t implode by the end of the decade.
2002 saw the release of his debut album “Bunkka”, it went on to sell one million copies world-wide and truly cemented him at the top of his game. Since then he’s done official remixes for everyone from Radiohead to Madonna, even stopping off in between to record his own version of the James Bond theme in 2002.
Oakenfold might just be the man who legitimised electronic music to the mainstream music world. And for that, he deserves the respect of any and every true music fan. He’s a legend, and he will be for a very long time.
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Charli XCX
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