Taken from the spring 2021 issue of Dazed. You can pre-order a copy of our latest issue here
“We are doing a clash that involves two absolute beasts from the east, and I think it’s only right that I give you a special disclaimer – this is for entertainment purposes only.” When, towards the end of last April, Jason ‘Scully’ Kavuma hosted the seventh episode of NS10v10, the flagship gameshow of online radio station No Signal, no one realised it would cause the internet to explode. The “beasts from the east” in question were UK rap breakouts J Hus and Kojo Funds and the concept was simple: two guests take turns playing 10 of their favourite tracks from a selected artist and a social media audience votes every round to determine the winner. It’s a format drawn from Jamaican soundsystem culture, where crew members from opposing systems engage in ‘sound clashes’ with the intention to ‘kill’ the competition. Without physical space, NS10v10 is less animated than an actual clash, but there’s still a lot of fighting talk. The episode, and controversy over Funds’ win, catapulted the No Signal brand into the Black British public conscience. “That’s when people really took notice of us,” says Jojo Sonubi, who founded the station with his brother David last March. “People were excited. We reached 4,000 listeners that day. We were like, ‘What the fuck?’ The rest is kind of history.”