Goldie

Clifford Joseph Price MBE (born 19 September 1965), better known as Goldie, is an English music producer and DJ.

Price was a member of the breakdance crew Westside, based in the Whitmore Reans and Heath Town areas of Wolverhampton, in the 1980s.

He later joined a breakdance crew called the Birmingham Bboys, and made his name as a graffiti artist in the West Midlands.

His artwork around Birmingham and Wolverhampton was featured heavily in Dick Fontaine's documentary Bombin'.

He is mentioned for his graffiti in the book Spraycan Art by Henry Chalfant and James Prigoff, which contains several examples of his art.

He moved to the United States owing to graffiti projects, and also started selling grills (gold teeth jewellery) in New York and Miami; he continued this business after his return to the UK in 1988.

His nickname stems from "Goldielocks", an earlier nickname given to him during his Bboys days and subsequently shortened when he no longer wore dreadlocks.

Initially gaining exposure for his work as a graffiti artist, Goldie became well known for his pioneering role as a musician in the 1990s UK jungle, drum and bass and breakbeat hardcore scenes.

He released a variety of singles under the pseudonym Rufige Kru and co-founded the label Metalheadz.

By 1991, Price had become fascinated by the British breakbeat music scene when his girlfriend, DJ Kemistry, introduced him to the pioneering jungle and drum and bass producers Dennis "Dego" McFarlane and Mark "Marc Mac" Clair, known as 4hero.

He went on to execute some design and A&R work for 4hero's Reinforced Records label.

In 1992, Price made his first record appearance by contributing to an EP by Icelandic group Ajax Project that included the track Ruffige.

For many years, the track was repeatedly misattributed to Price himself, perhaps because of his subsequent use of "Rufige" as moniker for his own releases.

His releases Killa Muffin b/w Krisp Biscuit and the Dark Rider EP were released under the alias "Rufige Cru" His track "Terminator", released under the name "Metalheads" in 1992, was a hit in the jungle scene and is noted for pioneering the use of time stretching.

In 1993, he released Angel, another 12" on the Synthetic Hardcore Phonography label. 1994 saw him setting up his own record label, Metalheadz.

He later released several albums under his own name, including the 1995 album Timeless, which entered the UK charts at number 7.

His first studio album, Timeless, followed in 1995.

Timeless entered the UK Albums Chart at number seven.

The album fused the breakbeats and basslines common in jungle with orchestral textures and soul vocals by Diane Charlemagne.

The album's title track was a 21-minute symphonic piece.

"Inner City Life", a track from the album, reached number 39 in the UK Singles Chart.

Timeless helped to popularise drum and bass as a form of musical expression.

The music critic Simon Reynolds noted that Price's credentials as a musical innovator—and particularly as one of the key driving forces of innovation in the jungle/breakbeat scene—were exceptional.

"Goldie revolutionised jungle not once but thrice", he noted in The Wire magazine, continuing, "First there was 'Terminator' (pioneering the use of time stretching), then 'Angel' (fusing Diane Charlemagne's live vocal with David Byrne/Brian Eno samples to prove that hardcore could be more 'conventionally' musical), now there's 'Timeless', a 22-minute hardcore symphony."

In 1996, he released the Toasted Both Sides Please remix of the Bush song "Swallowed", which topped charts in the US and Canada.

Price released his second album, Saturnz Return, in 1998.

The album's opening track, "Mother", is an hour-long orchestral drum and bass piece.

The album featured appearances by David Bowie, Noel Gallagher and KRS-One.

The album met with mixed reviews.

David Brown of Entertainment Weekly called the album "ambitious but monotonous and overlong—Pink Floyd with a gold tooth".

Goldie's acting credits include the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough, Guy Ritchie's Snatch (2000) and the BBC soap opera EastEnders (2001–2002).

He has also appeared in a number of celebrity reality television shows, including Celebrity Big Brother 2 (UK), Strictly Come Dancing, Come Dine with Me and Maestro.

Born in Walsall, England but raised in Wolverhampton, Price is of Jamaican and Scottish heritage.

He was put up for adoption at the age of three, and raised in childcare homes and by several foster parents.

According to his 2002 autobiography, he was physically and sexually abused during this time.

In 2002, Price said that he had been working for three years on a film called Sine Tempus, described as a coming-of-age story of a young paintbrush artist.

In 2006, he announced the soundtrack as his new album.

The album was released via the Metalheadz website in 2008, but the film has not been released.

Price is known for his work as the leader of Rufige Kru.

The group has no fixed members and has included drum and bass producers such as Technical Itch, Heist, Cujo, Agzilla Da Ice, Danny J, Doc Scott and Rob Playford.