MC Junior

After I made a post about Force & Styles recently I thought I should make a post about MC Junior. I can name a number of people in music who made a big impact in such a short period of time and MC Junior most definitely fits that category.

The first time I came across MC Junior was on a tape which taught me the guy who sang "Pretty Green Eyes" was also an MC. I'd heard other MCs sing along to the tunes or just sing randomly, but MC Junior would sing along to the tunes with his vocals on them and unlike other MCs he was actually a good singer.

One thing I liked about hearing him MC was the contradiction between his singing and his rapping. Whilst he was singing love songs like "Pretty Green Eyes" he was quite the bad boy MC with his rapping. He swore so much that some started calling him MC Fuckin Junior.

One of the great moments of him on tape was at the end of the Dougal set at Helter Skelter Strings of Life with Force & Styles about to start. He tells the crowd to "keep it fuckin down". Once the crowd quietens down he tells them to make some noise for Dougal. The whistles and horns blow and then Junior say's "he ain't that fuckin good". 

Although he'd been MCing for a number of years prior to meeting Force & Styles, the oldest Force & Styles tape with him on it that I've found is from United Dance on April 19th 1996. No "Pretty Green Eyes" on that tape, though it's not the complete set. It appears the first time "Pretty Green Eyes" was played at a rave was a couple of weeks later on May 3rd. 

In April 1997 we had the United Dance 6 album which had "Cutting Deep" on it, the last track Junior sang on for Force & Styles, so all the tunes with him singing on came within the space of a year. At some point between Helter Skelter String of Life in June 1997 and Helter Skelter Energy 97 in August he went to prison.

The first sign of him being released from prison was in June 1998 when he appeared on the flyer for Helter Skelter Human Nature. This was the first time his name was on a Helter Skelter flyer. However, when I received my Helter Skelter newsletter following the event it said that Force & Styles ended up not playing that night.

It was around this time I went for a period of not buying any new tape packs. I knew someone at the time who was into the rave scene though I always questioned whether he really knew anything about it and whether he just made stuff up. He told me later on in 1998 that MC Junior was on trial for murder but was then found not guilty.

I was skeptical about that story, after all he'd presumably only just got out of prison at the time. Also, in the likelihood it was a bullshit story it would have to be a not guilty verdict to explain why he would be MCing at future raves.

The first new tape pack I'd bought in a while was Helter Skelter Lost In Music in March 1999. I played the Force & Styles tape which began with Junior saying it was nice to be back and ended with Magika pointing out Junior had been away for a while. That's not to mention Junior mentioning his jail time in his lyrics.

This confirmed to me the story I'd been told had been bullshit because at the time he'd not yet got out of prison. As both me and this person weren't really friends and had since moved on to other things, I was no longer in contact with him to point out his bullshit.

What's considered the most legendary MC Junior moment was him MCing over "Braveheart" at Helter Skelter Nightlife in May 1999. Force & Styles said in an interview that he'd just got out of prison that morning, but they're getting their wires crossed because MC Junior was clearly there at Lost in Music and does quite a performance over "Braveheart" there. What's quite astonishing was that was just his 4th Helter Skelter.

He would appear at all the Helter Skelters in 1999 and the way I saw in the 21st Century was the Force & Styles set at the Millennium Jam with MC Junior.

As mentioned in the Force & Styles post, they went their separate ways at the start of the 21st century and as a result it seemed MC Junior had moved on himself. 

A couple of years later came the commercial dance versions of happy hardcore from the likes of Flip & Fill and Ultrabeat. One of those was "Pretty Green Eyes" but Ultrabeats Mike Di Scala was singing it rather than Junior. Then one day in 2004 I was in a pub with music channels on and the new Flip & Fill tune "Irish Blue" came on. Not only was this an original tune, it also had MC Junior singing on it.

I'd stopped following up front hardcore by this point so can't really comment on how active Junior was during this time. The next I heard of him was on new years eve 2011 when I was at Moondance, an old skool rave, and it was announce that MC Junior had sadly passed away that day. They played "Pretty Green Eyes" as a tribute.

Following that news I found out that his real name was Leroy Van Brown, something I'd not known before. This lead me to a news article from 1998 about a prisoner called Leroy Van Brown. On the day he was supposed to be released from prison he killed his cellmate with a single punch. He was found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter and had his jail term extended as a result.

Suddenly the events of 1998 were making sense. He was due to be released from prison in 1998 and play at Helter Skelter, but that incident happened and so he wasn't released and could be a reason why Force & Styles didn't play that night. Then came the trial for murder this person told me about which turns out not to be a bullshit story at all. I just wonder how the fuck did he know given that even in this era of the internet it's not exactly common knowledge.

The impression Force & Styles gave of Junior on their podcast is that he was a loveable rogue and that what you hear on the tapes reflects what he was like as a person. That's good to hear.