AFTER nearly a decade of churning out dance hits in the 1990s with the Shamen, Mr C appears more than content with his other grand passion of DJing.

The former rapper recently celebrated the 11th birthday of his highly successful club, The End, in London which has gone from strength to strength.

So much so that its owner pioneered a new genre of music at the venue, Tech House which has been tirelessly emulated, much to his frustration.

Since then he’s forged a more stripped down sound and set up his own record label, Superfreq, which has offered plenty of fresh challenges.

"It’s been a great 11 years at the club which has become one of the most successful in the world as we get so many different crowds coming here every night of the week," explained the DJ, whose real name is Richard West.

His monicker came about through a childhoold love of CB radios. As a football fan he created the handle of Chelsea Boy, which he shortened to Mr C when he became involved in dance music. In his late teens in the 1980s, he made the highly unlikely move for a white youngster in central London of becoming a rapper.

"When I was about 16 I got into rap music and break dancing. I could see all these 10-year-olds who could do all this robot dancing but I wasn’t supple enough for that so I started rapping. I didn’t really get any hassle from doing it as always had a big crew of black mates with me," he added with a laugh.

Moving on to the hedonistic rave scene of the late 80s illegal warehouse parties he eventually became an integral part of The Shamen. The group successfully forged a cross-over between the dance and pop scenes. Big hits including Move any Mountain and LSI were to propel them into the mainstream limelight.

"That was amazing, we had some fantastic times with world tours and winning an Ivor Novello songwriting award.

"I think my favourite gig was probably Glastonbury in 1993 – normally I’m the sort of chatty, friendly bloke who would go out into the crowd after a show and hang out with people, but I was just so awestruck by it that I couldn’t speak for two hours and had to sit down and have a smoke!"

While they were accepted into the hallowed halls of the BBC for a number of TV appearances, they found themselves out of favour with their biggest track.

Rarely has there been such a furore surrounding a song than with The Shamen’s Ebeneezer Goode. It’s "Ezzer Good", "Ezzer Good" refrain had anti-drug campaigners up in arms when it soared to number one in charts.

"We had some of the tabloid papers saying we were an evil rave band at the time. The BBC held a tribunal on the song and they could not prove the song lyrics were about drugs," recalled Mr C of their biggest hit.

With a record label to run and a new mix CD out now, it seems life is busier than ever for him. As far as his DJing goes, he’s refreshingly bucking the exodus to use CD’s instead of traditional vinyl.

"It would be so easy to switch to CD’s and save my 41-year-old body carry a stack of records to venues, but I just can’t do it. Vinyl has a much warmer sound than if you use CD’s. Using vinyl is an art and I am an artist.

"It’s been a while since I’ve been to Kent so I’ll look forward to given them the Superfreq experience and I will be doing some old-school Acid House stuff too."

For anyone who’s nostalgic about Maidstone’s Atomics club this will be a night to savour with plenty of old favourites being given a good dusting down.

Mr C headlines the River Bar Atomics Reunion night on Sunday, May 27 with George Andrews and Old School drum n’bass in Room 2. Entry is free before 8pm, £3 before 10pm.