In the mid-1990s, London producers hit on a magic formula for making dancefloors stomp! Beat masters such as Aphrodite and Ray Keith took the convoluted, polyrhythmic jungle beat and straightened it out to the point where it resembled sped-up hip-hop breaks. Cooking up a seemingly endless batch of rolling, hip-shaking basslines, they punctuated the tracks with anthem-like hardcore hip-hop and Ragga samples. Occasionally an MC would flow over the top of this mix. The result: jump-up, a warmer and funkier brand of jungle that took more influence from the organic sounds of hip-hop and dancehall reggae than it did from hardcore techno.
