Champion & Highsnobiety Spotlight: 30 Years of Rinse FM
It’s late at night, and the pirate radio station Rinse FM is broadcasting its first show from a tower block in east London. With a mixer and decks balancing precariously on top of a homemade transmitter in a friend’s kitchen, the station’s then 16-year-old founder DJ Geeneus leans out of the window, points his aerial towards Hackney—and turns the music up.
In those days, practically every rooftop in South and East London stationed an unauthorized antenna installed by pirate radio stations. Offering a new angle into music, these stations transmitted new tracks by artists rarely played on the BBC or other commercial stations. But there was one station that towered above the rest. At the forefront of this uncharted scene was Rinse FM, which broadcasted new music from just about anywhere they could get a signal. In its early years, Rinse mainly played jungle with a particular focus on MCs, a creative predilection that set Rinse apart from competing stations.
For most of its history, Rinse has been in hiding. At times, it broadcasted from Geeneus’s nan’s front room or kitchens belonging to friends and DJs, constantly moving between these locations to avoid getting shut down by authorities. In the beginning, the station operated from personal, shoestring funds, with Geeneus and his friends often scrounging for £1 subs from DJs and stealing the cables from their families’ household appliances to stay on the air.
This constant, always-on-the-go, physical mobility followed them in their musical curation, too. Rinse FM and its resident DJs had a “destroy and rebuild” philosophy that underpinned the scene’s different eras—from jungle into garage around the late ‘90s to the birth of grime in 2001 into the gradual takeover of dubstep thereafter. Countless artists have cut their teeth on the station. Rinse has always had a finger on the pulse, and often brought artists of different genres together, putting electronic geniuses like Skream next to bass-heavy creatives like Roska.
And because of that unprecedented arrangement, it’s nearly impossible to discuss London’s cutting-edge musical landscape without mentioning Rinse. After countless rooftop broadcasts (and an equal number of brushes with the law), Rinse has quite the legacy to look back on. Before it was awarded a community FM broadcast license in 2010, which allowed the station to stream legally, the station was known as the most influential pirate station on the air and credited with bringing artists such as Dizzee Rascal and grime stars Skepta and Wiley to the public consciousness. In 2003, the station also launched a label, which has seen signees like Katy B make it into the top five of the UK charts. They also launched a residency program, helping hundreds of young musicians each year hone their artistry and jumpstart their careers. Not to mention, Rinse’s iconic, decades-defining club nights they’ve hosted around London and the broader UK Since its inception, Rinse’s modus operandi has always been to positively promote and encourage underground music, and it's clear by its initiatives that it still holds onto these principles today.
Now on the cusp of the station's 30th birthday, leading cultural advocate Champion cements its status as a cultural purveyor with a Rinse-worthy celebration. Harnessing the athleisure and lifestyle brand’s dedication to spotlighting contemporary phenoms pushing culture forward, the brand champions the radio station’s trailblazing spirit by hosting a star-studded rave on Rinse’s home turf in London. Under the pulsating lights of the Village Underground, Geeneus along with some of his closest friends and collaborators, will ring in another year as a globally-recognized hub for underground music. The night will also see performances from Katy B, Arthi, and Ella Knight.
And as we look to the next 30 years (and beyond), we can’t help but look back and wonder: What propelled a group of music-obsessed city kids, hanging an aerial out of a tower block window one day to becoming the most influential voices in music the next? Some could chalk it up to an unwavering vision or their unquenchable drive. Or perhaps, it was just a stroke of Geeneus.
Ahead of the station’s 30th anniversary, Rinse founder DJ Geeneus connects with Highsnobiety to detail the station’s earlier years, using your platform to support underrepresented creative communities, and what the future holds for the beloved music entity.
Can you take us back to the early days of Rinse? What was the spark that made you decide to create Rinse?
The reason behind creating Rinse originally was due to us not being able to get shows on other local pirate radio stations at the time. So the only alternative we could come up with was to create our own station. A few of us got together and started Rinse.
In the quest to create your own platform, what were some of the early challenges? And how did you overcome those challenges?
The early challenges of Rinse were having to deal with being an illegal radio station that was constantly being shut down by the authorities while also having to deal with the other pirate stations taking our equipment. It was a constant cat-and-mouse chase because we were the youngest station when we first switched on. We had quite a lot of problems and had to come up with solutions [quickly]. We started putting transmitters in lift shafts, down chimneys, climbing through all of the air vents, climbing into people's flats, and locking them up in people's houses. We just basically came up with every way possible to stop anyone from being able to take our equipment.
With that in mind as you look back on those earlier challenges and your journey, did you imagine you'd be celebrating a 30 year anniversary? What do you hope the legacy of Rinse will be 30 years from now?
Thinking back, I would never have imagined that we would have made a radio station that would have lasted 30 years. In all honesty, I wasn't thinking about three or four years. I was just keen to make something of our own for ourselves, to build our own future.
Throughout our journey, we haven't really stopped to take much time to consider what we've done and how we've done it. We've just cracked on with it all. So, to be here now [after] 30 years is quite a big thing. Half the team at Rinse is not even as old as the platform they work for, which considering it now, I think is a fair achievement. I've seen many platforms and companies come and go throughout our time and we're still here. I think we've done fairly okay to still be here 30 years later still cracking on with the same ethos. Still helping young artists and talent get into the music industry and building careers that they can hopefully continue to have for 30 years or more. It is and has always been the key thing of what we do here. I would hope that we have gotten to the stage now where you will wake up and we will be here every day forever
Rinse has supported and fueled subgenres like dubstep, grime, and garage that have defined rave culture. What are your thoughts on Rinse's impact on rave culture, and was this impact intentional on your part?
When we first started, we had no intention of impacting rave culture. We just had the intention to help ourselves and our surroundings. [We wanted] to have something of [our] own that would give us a platform to express our creativity to an audience. There was no set agenda to make it. Anything to just show our talent and what we believed was good. As we moved on and moved through the genres, we realized that by building audiences and having a radio station, we had a platform that could actually get music, artists, talent, and creatives out to a wider audience. Rinse had a key role in helping all of the genres by being a voice for the communities and for the genres. What started out as organic, naturally became intentional because we realized as we went along, that we were helpful and we could show people what is good and what is new [in music]. We built an audience of fans who trusted us. So we became a trusted voice within the underground electronic music scene.
As we grew, we supported new talent and new genres, we put them at the forefront. We never took the stance of waiting for something to get big before we got on it. We always went first and I think it's the key thing for us as a platform to have an impact on culture and push things forward. To show what no one else is showing and not be afraid to get it wrong or right. Just back what you believe in. We have had a consistent journey of having an impact on the scenes and the cultures based on our ability to not be scared to go first.
