Once upon a time in 1991 a hip hop loving 20 year old David Davies ( aka THE RUF, to become improfessionally known as (I.K.A.) RUFMOUTH, MINDBOMB, JEEP BEAT COLLECTIVE and GODAFTHER OF WEIRD decided the only way he could fund his growing hip hop addiction and positively contribute to the scene, was to start selling the dopest hip hop on planet rock to a small group of beat fiends met at jams, on the street and through magazines etc. Before long his hatred of the 9-5 mundane office existence didn’t matter as he left IBM to join another shite computer company (Cavelle Data), only for that company to go down the shitter and leave our anti hero on the dole, in a freezer of a house in Wythenshawe. From this draughty base he set up a mail order company and a small stall in Manchesters corn Exchange building from where he sold 2nd hand and new tunes from hip hop to funk to house to soul to whatever. By 1992 he was working in the shop unit full time, now known as FUNKY BANANA ENDEAVOURS and building up a reputation within the local music scene as a hip hop DJ with a great collection, some skills and a smattering of attitude. He started making his own rufly unique hip hop records at the same time as he started the “Boomin’ System” radio show on the much missed SOUL NATION “pirate” station, which played the best new releases about with a heavy smattering of UK tunes and classics alongside choice breaks and mega mixes. With both shop and mail order businesses doing well he opened a second shop BOOM TUNES at Ducie House with a national campaign in hip hop connection magazine and releases on the new BOOM TUNES LABEL see THE RUF “Northern Conquest” including the catchy track banned from being manufactured in the UK by our FREE SPEECH loving music industry… mind you it was called “Fuck The Queen” and apparently you could, and still can be banged up for saying that? Within a matter of months though he found himself ejected from the Corn Exchange due to greedy landlord issues, although this was actually a huge favour as the building was shortly shut down after being damaged by an alleged IRA bomb, that just may have been a false flag event done by our very own secret service (certainly looking at the multimillion pound centre of Manchester now it seems sure the big boys profited whilst all the stallholders in the Corn Exchange were thrown out and offered little help). By 1993 the label, shop and mail order were all run from BOOM TUNES at Ducie Street until another greedy landlord gave Dave no option but to quit whilst he was ahead and keep the mail order going to please his now loyal and dedicated hip hop fans happy. In a lightning flash move lovingly arranged by the then Ms Ruf, back to Mr Ruf’s original home of Timperley, Altrincham (9 miles South of Manchester with the money belt of Cheshire just below missing us by a few miles), Dave found the time to finally master the recording equipment he’d bought 2nd hand whilst in Boom Tunes: a Roland W-30, tascam 8 track, Quadraverb, 2 x Technics, a few mixers and mike’s and a dirty Roland SH101 snyth. He had already released a couple of highly sought after “Ruf n Rugged megamix” LP’s along with Boom Tunes first and only release THE RUF “Northern Conquest” but wanted to personalise the label further. The best demo he had received to that time HEARTS OF DARKNESS’s “A taste of Venom/ don’t fight the featherweights” 12” then became the first release on the THE RUF LABEL and kick started an, as yet unrivalled, personal recording history in British hip hop. With the mail order lists now going out monthly to 300 addicts, Dave THE RUF now took a bit of time out to fully nurture his two new alter ego’s, JEEP BEAT COLLECTIVE on a unique DJ track, cut n paste tip and MINDBOMB his idea for fully unleashing proper intelligent, vocal, party rocking hip hop. In 1995 The Ruf Label went into overdrive dropping more albums than anyone in UK hip hop. With THE RUF personally handling distribution up and down the country, going town to town loaded down with dope wax, he soon found he was distributing many of the records now considered to be classics from the early days of the 2nd dope Wave of UK hip hop (after the death of Music of Life, Kold Sweat, Hijack) etc. With the label ever expanding and getting respect and winning friends all over things started to take off. THE RUF was now doing all kinds of Dj gigs and shows and taking his unique sounds out and about. Soon he had recruited scratch ace Mark one to the JEEP BEAT COLLECTIVE stuff and LOZ as a back up MC within MINDBOMB and as the releases flowed out so more fans flowed into Ruf Beats. By 1995 Ruf Beats had an unrivalled reputation for finding the hottest tunes and had expanded by bringing in huge quantities of slept on old skool from 1980 right up to date. We had purple copies of Def Jam, all the Cold Chillin and Wild Pitch stuff, Enjoy, Tuff City, Warlock and then the best selection of Uk hip hop- at a time when fucking NO ON ELSE was bothered about it whatsoever.. man they were glory days. With Ruf now writing for Hip Hop Connection (Afrika Bambaataa, Krispy interviews and monthly Demoblaster page) Represent (reviews) Downlow (the original Uk hip hop page – Downlow went on to become FAT BOSS and Matt got himself on Paddington green on the BBC), advertising constantly, pushing records out all over the UK his profile and reputation continue to grow. With full release schedules for the label he found that more and more he was having to take care of ALL aspects of mail order, label, gigs, writing and so much more. His professional attitude towards business saw him become respected and courted by a succession of distributors and foreign interests until by 1998 Ruf Beats was a truly international label with records licensed to US BOMB, SONY, POLYDOR, MIX CD’s , AMDY SMITH’s MIX CD, FILM SOUNDTRACKS, MAN UTD DANCE COMPILATIONS ( I KID NOT), FRENCH UK HIP HOP COMPS and become hunted down by the big beats scene by labels like BOLSHI, NINJA TUNE, DUST 2 DUST and many more. Through all this, the backbone and often the only really profitable business was the no nonsense mail order company. In 1997 both mail order and label were finally running under the Ruf Beats banner. With loads of releases and shows under his belt Dave took a bit of time out to marry his sweet-tart and Ms Ruf became Mrs Ruf on a hot summers day in 199something (I know we men are shit with dates). The semi detached house on Timperley (home of the legendary Frank Sidebottom) was filled with boxes of wax but was a great place to keep away from big city madness and distractions and get on with creating the dream. As the years rolled on the label developed into the first proper home for UK hip hop for artists from all over the country on the much loved Ruf Diamonds compilations and slowly towards the late 90’s more and more labels sprung up and followed the examples from people like Dave, Blade, First Down, Deliverance, Liberty Grooves, Blue Eyes and more. Labels like Big Dada, Ronin, Jazz Fudge, a resurrected Low Life, Hombre all benefited from parts of the music business now being open to hip hop seriously whilst by Now hip hop fans and even the slow as fuck media were catching onto the fact that hmmmm British Hip hop sounded much better when we actually tried to be ourselves. Well no shit Sherlock! Despite this Tim Westwood had by now infiltrated the all wannabee G’s with his brand of major cock swallowing over produced, over glamourising, weak as fuck hip hop.. still Shirley in Staines thought he was “the big dawg” and wanted to big up all the girls thugging it outside the local chippy. Despite 90% of Uk talent saying the guy was wackwood, RUF was the first to say it properly with 1998’s “Westwood is a twat”. Despite the obvious controversy, and a play by homeboy John Peel, BBC 1 totally ducked the issue and promptly sent round a memo (allegedly) saying not to play the track… rather then debating whether we should be filling our youth with fucked up records made by fucked up, thugged down hip hop sounds gladly marketed by cynical companies who when new and improved gangsta rap “blew up” in the early 90’s (any old shite G got rewarded with big contract s(for an album or two) and simultaneously dropped all their remaining conscious acts. As a result of this by 1998 crews like Public Enemy, KRS 1 and Paris were finding it impossible to get their much more empowering and life affirming message out there. Styles in hip hop are constantly shifting but always look at who controls the big businesses, the money, the entertainment networks and you will find they are part of technological, defence or mediocria businesses – the very ones that tell us lies day in, day out whilst we buy there shitty empty products like the fucking little consumer monkeys we are… ahem I digress.. what I’m saying is, that hip hop got hijacked, just like our governments are and anything that’s worth anything seems to be. As the 90’s moved on for a short time the independents struck back with all of us fighting to put out our own brands of original Hip Hop, not just in the Uk but across the whole world. Rawkus was the biggest “indie” in the US but actually, when you looked close you found that a son of a Murdoch was the man behind it –hence it soon got sold off to one of the big 3 (that’s all there REALLY is) “music entertainment conglamourites”. Ruf Beats changed with the times, still selling all the classics (which were by now getting rarer and rarer all the time), trying to stock all these (mainly) great little indie labels plus by now giving people access to the rare cd’s, mixtapes, videos etc that hip hop culture thirsts for. When Mark One and Loz left the live set up in 1998 RUF bounced back with his most accomplished vocal album to date “Great British Beef”. In it you will find a manifesto and history of the late 90’s hip hop living, funny, informative, dreamy and more than a bit dope. Since then he has taken on the mission further with Ruf Beats now more fiercely independent than ever before and with more of an emphasis on intelligent information and TOTAL PARTY ROCKING SHIT. As music sales decreased and illegal downloading paralysed the indie sector Dave kept dropping gems right up to JEEP BEAT’s “Death race 2001”. Since then he has been busy as fuck bringing up his beloved Samson with Mrs Ruf in their new love nest in Northwich (20 miles out from Manchester now)! The last 2 years have been spent doing some hardcore research on life, the universe and everything. He is now ready to tell the truth and find a way to revolutionise the music industry so it works on our terms. He is about to rebuild the mail order and label into a concrete launch pad for his quest to help restore sanity and reason to the world whilst having great music and partying his balls off. His life has more recently resembled an X Files episode with trips about the UK to meet all many of weird and wonderful people and have his eyes opened to the true agenda’s working in the shadows to manipulate us humans. Dern dern dern… it would be scary stuff if it wasn’t so damn funny half the time. This is not your average business or indeed human being… then again who the fuck wants to be average. Since 1991 I’ve wished for better, deserved better, bitched a whole lot, but done sweet F.A. about it on the whole. Ruf Beats has always aimed to do things differently and not be afraid to speak the truth. It is needed now more than ever. So that is a little bit of where Ruf Beats comes from but it is only a fraction of the real story. All I can say is that I am doing this from my heart, I love my music and I love life and it’s time for us all to stand up for the things we believe in, otherwise I’m afraid our sons and daughters will be walking around like Day Of The Dead or the Borg listening to the lastest lame 50 Cents or fucking Rn’Bollocks track directly though the micro chip implanted in their neck (that tracks their every move in this very real but belated 1984 scenario). Anyway, buy some hip hop off us folks… Ha ha ha we’re doing this for the right reasons and want to see big smiles when you get the real shit you want rather then the shit the chainstores try and flog you. They are pretty soul less except for Fopp and Music Zone anyway! With us its up to you, we give you loads of information – you make the choices and get what you want. Anyway welcome to Ruf Beats, that’s a touch of the past.. here’s looking forward to the future and meeting you at some shindig sometime. Remember the internet is great but we all need to be out there living life rather than staying in comatosed watching Wifeswap or something! Yours truly Dave Davies