Biography
Asbest The Moor King is an MC/ Producer born and raised in Zambia, moved to England at the age of 12. He is part of a generation that found their home in a Movement/Sub-Culture that saw the growth of youth finding common ground and an outlet to express themselves through Hip Hop, namely the 4 Elements of Hip Hop - Break Dancing, Graffiti, Rapping (Mcing) Djing.
Asbest reflects back on his early days growing up:
As far as I can remember I have always been into music. My family used to watch a music program called 'Soul Train' religiously. On one single night you could easily see Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and Curtis Mayfield all performing on ‘Soul Train’. That was my introduction to music.
While watching ‘Soul Train’ one night I came across a group called Sugar Hill Gang, performing ‘Rappers Delight’. At the age of 9, that blew my mind. I was used to seeing people singing but what they were doing was crazy, first time I ever heard anyone rap, from then on I used to recite ‘Rappers Delight’ all the time. Later on I started dubbing the ends of songs on to another tape, like 10 times, so I could have 1 or 2 minutes of rhyming time over the tapes. Nowadays they call it ‘Pause Tape Recording’ or something like that. I don’t know what gave me the idea to do that at a young age.
I started writing a bit more at 16 and started to take what I was writing more seriously. I joined a few bands and started getting up for Open Mic’s at Hip Hop nights. This gave me more confidence and I loved the response I was getting when other crews came down and wanted to battle the local mc’s. This was the early 90’s, good times for Hip Hop. Most of us were studying at the time, and I had friends in other parts of the country at College or University that I could link with and check what Hip Hop nights were going on in different towns (Plymouth, Exeter, Reading, Coventry, Bristol, London, etc..). I was more in to my Underground US Hip Hop, British Hip Hop and Reggae/Ragga at that time.
At the same time I was also Graffing, Graffiti for me was the same thing as trying to write a verse. The whole process of constructing letters and getting them to bend to form a piece made sense to me. Graffiti always inspires me to try and push the way I write further and ‘to try and use the whole space and bring the letters out’, in Graff terms.
Asbest released his first debut E.P in 2008 on ‘Latenite Lounging Records’ under the title ‘Never Had It Right’ produced by ‘SumSuch.’ During a visit to Geneva (Switzerland) in 2007, Asbest met with producer DJ Goo (Synchrovision Records). After collaborating on a number of tracks on their first meeting ‘Asbest’ was invited to perform in Geneva with ‘The Sound Travelers’ featuring Brian Jackson (composer of Gil Scott-Heron). Asbest and Goo have gone on to collaborate further on a number of singles and an album release on Synchrovision Records. Following this Asbest has gone on release Independent music.