At the next Defected In The House event at Ministry of Sound on 8th February the legendary Kenny Dope headlines, bringing a taste of US magic to London’s most iconic club.

While the reduction in barriers to music production have allowed artists to remain ever more faceless over the last few years, house music used to be all about big names and big personalities, and neither are much bigger than Kenny ‘Dope’ Gonzalez. Whether it’s his pioneering work as one half of Masters at Work and Nuyorican Soul, or solo endeavours as Mass Destruction, Kenny’s beats take some serious beating and his hands-on, unpredictable sets still bear the hallmarks of his musical origins as a hip-hop DJ.

Ahead of his appearance at Ministry of Sound, we talk you through five of the records with which he made his name.

Nurorican Soul – The Nervous Track
A stone-cold classic and one that – more than 20 years after its initial release – sounds every bit as fresh, exciting and unique as it did when it was originally released. Occupying the often hazardous space between house, funk and jazz, The Nervous Track painstakingly blended elements from all three genres and beyond to create a record that discloses new joys with every listen. Dope and Louie Vega’s Nuyorican Soul project was all about fusion; gelling what were seen as disparate sounds and techniques, and The Nervous Track was arguably their crowning glory.


Kenny Dope presents The Bucketheads – The Bomb! (These Sounds Fall Into My Mind)
Who would have guessed that a 15 minute track – with a looped intro of over five minutes – would become Dope biggest commercial hit? That an unplanned, b-side would enter the top 5 of the UK Singles chart and have people across the world chanting along to that mis-quoted sample (the actually sample taken from Chicago's Street Player is “…street sounds swirling through my mind..."). "I never meant for it to be 15 minutes" said Dope. "When I recorded the track, I kept flipping through the sequences on my drum machine and it sounded ok so I just left the intro like that." Just as well he did, as The Bomb! laid out the blueprint for house music for years to come.


Masters at Work – I Can’t Get No Sleep feat. India
You can’t really talk about Dope’s finest moments without highlighting at least one Masters at Work record. The duo pretty much defined house music throughout the 90s, and their collective body of work stands as arguably the most impressive in house to this day. Everyone has their favourite Masters at Work record, and arguing the case for one being better than the next is beside the point, but I Can’t Get No Sleep with frequent collaborator India is an undoubted highlight. Before everyone else became obsessed with sampling disco vocals, India simply wrote her own which when combined with the signature MAW sound resulted in a record it was hard to resist.


Kenny Dope and Terry Hunter present Mass Destruction – No Hook
Alongside Terry Hunter Dope barrages his way through 7 minutes of razor-sharp percussion and cataclysmic drums, carelessly toying with a squelchy lead throughout while steadfastly refusing to drop anything that could even passingly referred to as a hook. The result? A visceral, compelling reminder that good house music can be as straightforward as the beat upon which it’s built, and proof that there’s no-one better equipped to prove it than Kenny Dope.


GotSome – Bassline (Kenny Dope O’Gutta Remix)
The argument that a producer is only as good as their last record is a shaky one – especially when considering an artist of such enduring calibre, but even if you live by this dismissive mantra, Dope delivers. GotSome’s Bassline had been bubbling nicely on the underground by the time Dope got his claws into it late last year, and the results are nothing short of spectacular. With similarly rasping aesthetic as the aforementioned Mass Destruction project, Dope chisels off the smooth edges of the original with powerfully raucous results. Anyone questioning the current form of Kenny ‘Dope’ Gonzales needs look no further than this epic remix.



Kenny Dope plays Ministry of Sound for Defected In The House 8th February – click for full info and tickets

House Masters Kenny Dope is out now - buy from iTunes