Drum & Bass in Focus: MC Chickaboo

No one's influenced the global sound of D&B and jungle quite like MC Chickaboo. She’s the first female jungle MC, and has been fighting for the mic since day one. As one of the most instrumental players in the growth and boom of D&B worldwide, she reflects on her long and fruitful career, the early days, the golden eras, and her part in the latest resurgence of the genre.

Chickaboo's Contribution to Jungle and DnB

Chickaboo is a name synonymous with the evolution of jungle and D&B. Born to a Jamaican dad and an Irish mum and raised in Birmingham, her early experiences with jungle came through free rave and soundsystem culture.

“I was just obsessed with music as a kid, I’d buy records and play at my local youth club from the age of 13 or 14,” Chickaboo says.

She started playing records at house parties and then joined a sound system that played reggae and soul. “Kids in the area started asking me about rave music and I said I wasn’t into all the bleeping,” Chickaboo says. “But I started playing some rave music and the kids would jump around and go nuts.”

Chickaboo didn’t connect with the acid house played at raves, but when her sound system played hardcore, she started messing around on the microphone.

“That’s what you do in sound system culture,” Chickaboo explains. “You have a selector, a person on the microphone, the operator, and you all swap and change. It’s a collaboration of like-minded people.”

One day, a promoter heard Chickaboo's whip-sharp MC skills and invited her to perform at his party.

“It was a club in Birmingham, and that’s where I met G.E. Real,” Chickaboo says. “He asked if I would MC for him, so we went and did a gig and it just went crazy.”

After that, Chickaboo and G.E. Real became an unstoppable team. G.E. Real was often mixing on three decks and Chickaboo wowed crowds who’d never seen a woman MC before. They were invited to play at some of the UK’s biggest raves including Fantasia, Dreamscape and Jungle Fever, but in 1996, just as their careers were taking off, G.E. Real became unwell, and passed away a few months later.

Chickaboo's Early Career

Crushed with grief, Chickaboo was unable to leave the house, let alone perform, but their agent Tanya convinced her to get back out on the stage. The following year, Chickaboo moved to London, and started MCing for jungle’s biggest players including Bryan Gee, Aphrodite, DJ Zinc, and Shy FX.

Chickaboo’s galvanizing vocals featured on some of jungle’s most loved tracks, gaining her global respect not just for her versatile vocals, but for her ability to wrestle the mic off all the men.

“It would get physical getting the mic,” Chickaboo says. “But I’m quite brave, so I’d get in there, grab it and then be so good they’d be too intimidated to take it back.”

In 1999, Chickaboo got a call from Knowledge Magazine in the USA, who invited her to MC on their tour. “We had British and American DJs coming in and out and I did the whole 6 weeks,” Chickaboo says. “So I exploded there, and then DJ Dazee and I became a team, and we were in the US every two weeks.”

In 2002, Chickaboo teamed up with Timo Maas to sing vocals on his track “Shifter.” The song became one of the seminal tunes in deep house music, hit number one on the Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart and has gone down in history as one of the most influential tracks of the era.

Chickaboo and Soul II Soul

In the early 2000s, Chickaboo received a phone call with a familiar voice on the line. “I knew exactly who it was,” Chickaboo laughs. “He said ‘it’s Jazzie B from Soul II Soul’, and I said ‘I know!’”

Jazzie said he was looking for a MC, so Chickaboo invited him to her gig that night. “I was so nervous I was shaking, and the next day he called and said he had a gig for me this Friday,” she says. “So suddenly I was on stage looking at Jazzie B and Rose Windross in front of 2000 people, and I’m like fuck. I’m on stage with Soul II Soul. Little Chickaboo from Birmingham!”

That led to a long and fruitful partnership for the next 12 years, brushing shoulders with the likes of Debbie Harry, Alicia Keys, Nile Rogers and James Brown. “So I left Drum & Bass and Jungle because I was so busy,” Chickaboo says.

Returning to Jungle

In 2018, Chickaboo had to take time off her music career after an accident led to a botched knee surgery which left her house-bound for several years.

“When lockdown happened, I’d spent the last three years on the sofa,” Chickaboo says. “So it wasn’t so bad because I was already in a lockdown.”

Then DJ Mantra, DJ Flight and Sweet Pea formed EQ50, a collective of women working towards fairer representation within drum and bass. Chickaboo shared her unparalleled energy on their live streams, reminding everyone why she’s such a historical figure in the genre. “I was the busiest MC,” Chickaboo says. “I was just doing all the streams because I'm quite an excitable person.”

Chickaboo had a successful knee surgery, and as the world emerged from lockdown, so did she – just in time for round three of Drum & Bass. Chickaboo’s phone started ringing off the hook, with the new wave of D&B artists wanting Chickaboo’s old school energy on the mic.

“Oh my gosh – the DJs that emerged during lockdown,” Chickaboo says in disbelief. “Everyone was sitting at home doing streams in their bedrooms, and it’s amazing that so many of them are women. I feel like a proud auntie.”

Although Chickaboo won’t be touring anywhere near as much as she used to, she’s regularly playing gigs across the UK, either with her OG jungle crew or with new talent. “My absolute dream is to see more people in the scene like me,” she says. “After that, maybe I can retire.”