Mo’ Wax — Where Are They Now: DJ Magic Mike (2000)
Mo’ Wax was a record label started by James Lavelle in 1992, which closed about ten years later. Initially they released 12" singles and licensed a compilation from Japan of Japanese Hip Hop, until 1994 when they began releasing albums of their artists original work. While some of these artists such as DJ Shadow, DJ Krush, and Money Mark continued releasing music after Mo’ Wax closed, others have seemingly disappeared from the music scene. In this series I will look at each artist on Mo’ Wax and try to find out where are they now…
Michael Hampton, aka DJ Magic Mike, began his career in Orlando, Florida, making mixes for radio, and DJing at a roller skate rink while he was a teenager. For several years he was known as Mixmaster Mike, before he became DJ Magic Mike, and he built up a reputation which led to Beatmaster Clay D hiring DJ Magic Mike to work on his next album. Unfortunately DJ Magic Mike realised he wasn’t being credited for his production work, so he left and remains uncredited for his contributions on Beatmaster Clay D. & The Get Funky Crew’s You Be You And I Be Me 1989 album.
At the same time he met Tom Reich, President of Cheetah Records, who signed and released DJ Magic Mike’s first five albums, starting in 1989 with D.J. Magic Mike And The Royal Posse. In 1994 that album was certified Platinum after selling one million units, and by then DJ Magic Mike also had several of his other albums go Gold, after selling more than 500,000 units. DJ Magic Mike joined Cheetah Records as Vice President, and the label become one of the biggest independent record labels in the USA, leading DJ Shadow to write in 1997, “by the early ‘90’s, only one name reigned in the bass game: DJ Magic Mike and he made ALL the money.” But even with such strong sales, DJ Magic Mike wasn’t a household name, and in 1993 Vibe called him “the biggest hip hop star you’ve never heard of”.
DJ Magic Mike’s final release on Cheetah was a best-of compilation released in 1996, with the label closing soon after. That same year he collaborated with Techmaster P.E.B., aka Patrick E. Baker, for the album Back In Bass, released by Newtown Music. Ever prolific, DJ Magic Mike released several more albums, and even appeared in a commercial for Coca-Cola, before he joined Mo’ Wax Records in the UK.
In September 1998, while promoting the new UNKLE album, James Lavelle told The Age what he was currently listening to, and listed DJ Magic Mike alongside Beastie Boys, Cornelius, and Marvin Gaye. DJ Magic Mike soon created a remix for Mo’ Wax, with In Two Minds (Da Bottomed Out Mix) featured on the Japanese edition of Andrea Parker’s album Kiss My Arp on November 21 1998. In the UK the remix appeared on Parker’s The Unknown single in June 1999, and that same year promo copies of DJ Mike’s next album were released by Mo’ Wax, titled The Journey (Era Of Bass Part 1).
In 2000, Mo’ Wax had started a new Booty Wax series of records featuring DJ Magic Mike and DJ Assault. The series lasted for seven releases, three from DJ Assault and four from DJ Magic Mike, including his album.
Upon its release on March 20 2000, Edinburgh’s The List gave The Journey (Era Of Bass Part 1) 3/5 but were ultimately unimpressed, feeling the music wasn’t exciting outside of the context of hearing it in a club. The Times London (April 1, 2000) gave the album 7/10, calling it “funky big beat for people with extra-large speakers”, while back in Scotland, Scotland on Sunday (March 5, 2000) awarded the album 2/5 and wrote:
Magic, aka Michael Hampton, is one of the fastest deck operators around, and the opening of this reminiscence is breathtakingly frenetic. There maybe more scratching than at a flea convention in a cat and dog home, but he instinctively knows when to take things down deep in time- honoured bass style, making part two of this journey due later this year a more interesting prospect.
The album didn’t chart, and possibly didn’t sell very well in the UK either, as DJ Magic Mike told Red Bull Music Academy that his music wasn’t always marketed correctly, explaining with regards to his time on Mo’ Wax:
You have to know the music in order to do the music. When I say “do the music” that means: whether you are recording it or whether you are selling it, you have to understand the music and where it came from. And if you don’t, it makes it hard to sell it because it’s kind of off the beaten path and no one is really used to it. For the average consumer, this music just doesn’t make sense. It can be quite difficult to sell this sound. So that’s pretty much what happened in that situation.
As noted above, The Journey (Era Of Bass Part 1) was intended as part one in a two-part series, and in the linear notes of Part 1’s release from NMG Entertainment, DJ Magic Mike revealed that Part 2 was being worked on as of May 2000, and that fans who emailed him their name would be personally thanked in the credits once Part 2 was released. But while a second volume was produced, and had been planned for release on Mo’ Wax in 2001, it was left unreleased. A test pressing was created, and according to a tracklist which appears on Discogs and All Music, half of the songs on The Journey (Era Of Bass Part 2) are from the three 12" singles released as part of the Booty Wax series. The remaining songs remain officially unreleased.
Six months after he released an album with Mo’ Wax, DJ Magic Mike released Magic’s Kingdom on Restless Records, which saw him rapping and exploring a more Hip Hop infused sound. The album was described by All Music as his “most realized and ambitious effort”, but they ultimately felt the exploration of “everything from Southern-flavored rap to fairly straight-forward R&B…[is] just far too diverse, too indecisive, and too short on stellar talent to ever make a lasting impression.”
2001 would have seen the release of two more album, The Journey (Era Of Bass Part 2) and A Bass Odyssey (as mentioned in The Journey (Era Of Bass Part 1)’s linear notes), but neither saw release. Instead, 2000’s Magic’s Kingdom was followed in 2012 by Beyond The Magic, a new album which DJ Magic Mike called, “a journey into my world, my life and my atmosphere. It gives you a glimpse into my inner state and where my mind has grown since the last release 12 years ago.” The album did well on iTunes and Beatport charts, and is his most recent album to date.
Following Beyond The Magic, DJ Magic Mike has continued to release new music regularly as single MP3's, with three new songs released digitally in 2020. Of these, two have been collaborations with OnDaMiKe, including most recently a remix of Drop The Bass released in October, and in August DJ Magic Mike & Krafty Kuts teamed up on Plastic Wax. Outside of new music, in 2020 DJ Magic Mike has also kept busy DJing, hosting regular DJ sets on Twitch, and he even returned to his roots by DJing at a skate rink again, with a special event over Thanksgiving.
With a career starting in the late 1980's, DJ Magic Mike has released 21 albums, and 36 singles between 1988 and 2012, and has been called “a treasure, a monument, an institution” of Orlando’s music scene, with his early music held up as classics which still sound fresh today. Now, as he continues making music into a new decade, DJ Magic Mike has produced an incredibly deep discography which is begging to be revisited by fans old and new.
