Goldie

* Goldie
* with Kristina

**Clifford Joseph Price**, MBE (born September 19, 1965), professionally known by his stage name **Goldie**, is an English musician, DJ, visual artist and actor from Walsall.

Initially gaining exposure for his work as a graffiti artist, Goldie became well known for his pioneering role in the 1990s UK rave scene as a producer, including his work in musical styles such as jungle and breakbeat hardcore. He released a variety of singles under the pseudonym Rufige Kru and co-founded the label Metalheadz. He would later release several albums under his own name, including the 1995 album Timeless, which entered the UK charts at number 7.

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. 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.

## Early Life

Price is of Jamaican and Scottish heritage. He was put up for adoption and raised in childcare homes and by several foster parents. 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 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 took part in the largest-ever British graffiti art battle alongside Bristol artist Robert "3D" Del Naja, who later formed Massive Attack. 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. Contrary to popular belief, this is not where his nickname comes from; it stems from "Goldielocks", an earlier nickname given to him during his Bboys days and subsequently shortened when he no longer wore dreadlocks.

## Music

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 record label.

In 1992, Price made his first album appearabce, by contributing a short vocal piece to the track "Rufige" by Icelandic group, Ajax Project. Since then the track has been repeatedly misattributed to Price himself, perhaps because of his subsequent use of "Rufige" as a moniker for his own ambitions.

His releases Killa Muffin b/w Krisp Biscuit and the Dark Rider EP were released under the alias "Rufige Cru". Recently, he has used the alias "Rufige Kru" to release collaborations with other producers such as Heist. 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.

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 expresion. 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."

1996 saw the release of his Toasted Both Sides Please remix of the Bush song Swallowed, which topped charts in the USA 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.

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.

March 2013 saw the release of The Alchemist: The Best of Goldie 1992-2012, featuring prominent tracks from throughout Price's musical career. A subsequent compilation, the three-CD Masterpiece set released by Ministry of Sound in 2014, brought together tracks that influenced him (Soul II Soul's Back To Life, Roy Ayers' Everybody Loves The Sunshine) with cuts that soundtracked his entry into the rave scene and key moments from the drum'n'bass scene.

## Acting Career

Price has appeared in Guy Ritchie's Snatch and several other films, most notably the James Bond film, The World Is Not Enough. He also played gangster Angel Hudson in the British soap opera EastEnders (2001-2002). Price starred in Everybody Loves Sunshine (1999) (aka B.U.S.T.E.D. - United States title) with David Bowie.

## Television Appearances

In the late 1980s, Price appeared on Central Weekend, a Friday evening topical debate show on Central TV, promoting graffiti as an art form. He had a small documentary made about his own art on Central TV's Here and Now programme featuring Pogus Caesar's photographs of New York. He has appeared on various young people's TV shows as part of a breakdance crew, the Bboys from Wolverhampton. In 1995, he appeared on Passengers, and in a Channel 4 documentary about himself in 1998.

His next TV appearance was hosting Crime Business on the digital TV channels Bravo and Ftn. He presented the documentary series The World's Deadliest Gangs on Bravo in 2002.

Price appeared on the second series of Celebrity Big Brother in 2002. He was the first celebrity to be "evicted". In 2006, he was scheduled to appear in The Games, a UK reality TV show on Channel 4, but during training for the water-ski jump event he fractured his femur and was unable to take part in the show. He was replaced by Adam Rickitt. In 2009, he was reported to be suing the producers of the show for damages as a result of the injury.

During August and September 2008, the BBC broadcast Maestro, a reality television show in which eight celebrities, including Price, learned to conduct a concert orchestra. Price played second, behind Sue Perkins.

On July 31, 2009, the first of a two-part television programme Classic Goldie was broadcast, showing how in the wake of his success in the Maestro programme he learns to write a score for a large orchestra and choir. The resulting composition, commissioned by the BBC and entitled Sine Tempore (Timeless), was performed at two children's Promenade concerts in the Royal Albert Hall on August 1 and 2, 2009, which featured music connected with Charles Darwin and the creation and evolution of the world.

He appeared on Celebrity Mastermind on December 27, 2009 and came fourth behind Paul O'Grady, Gail Emms and Loyd Grossman. On September 11, 2010, he was announced as part of the line-up in Strictly Come Dancing and on October 10, he became the first celebrity to leave the show.

On December 22, 2010, he appeared in a Celebrity Come Dine with Me Christmas special.

On March 26, 2011, he appeared in a three-part reality television series, Goldie's Band: By Royal Appointment in which hed led a group of music experts as they conducted a nationwide search for young talented musicians and then selected and intensively coached 12 of them, who collaborated to create some musical pieces for a performance at Buckingham Palace.

On August 24, 2012, he appeared in the Channel 4 documentary Idris Elba's How Clubbing Changed the World (hosted by Idris Elba) to explain how he invented the revolutionary technique of time stretching by misusing an HF ultra-harmonizer, which is usually used for guitars. He then went on to say that when he crossed this with digital breakbeat, the sound evolved from jungle into drum and bass.

In 2014, he appeared on the telethon BBC Children in Need.

## Art

In 2007, Price returned to the art world with an art exhbition, "Love Over Gold", which was held at the Leonard Street Gallery, London. In 2008, he teamed up with Pete Tong to provide much of the artwork for Tong's new Wonderland club night at Eden nightclub in San Antonio, Ibiza.

There was an exhibition of Price's art in Berlin on June 13-26, 2008. In April 2009, his "Kids Are All Riot" exhbition was mounted to Shoreditch, London, and his screenprint "Apocalypse Angel" was released to coincide with this restrospective of his prolific works and originals.

Prince has had his art work displayed on the London Underground by the arts company Art Below.

## Personal Life

In the early 1990s, Price had a relationship with drum and bass artist Kemistry, who died in a car accident in 1999. He was romantically involved with singer Bjork for several years until their break-up in September 1996. Days later, an obsessed Bjork fan named Ricardo Kopez killed himself and attempted to kill her due to his anger over the relationship.

In 1998, he bought a country house in Bovingdon, Herfordshire. In 2002, Hodder & Stoughton published his autobiography, Nine Lives, which he wrote with Paul Gorman.

Price married model Sonjia Ashby in 2002. They divorced in 2005. As of 2003, he had five children.

In 2007, Price began a relationship with Mika Wassenaar, a Canadian. The couple appeared in the June 20, 2009 episode of ITV's All Star Mr and Mrs with Phillip Schofield and Fern Britton. Mika and Price married in 2010.

In July 2010, Price received an honorary doctorate in Social Sciences from Brunel University, Uxbridge. On September 3, 2010, he received an honorary degree of Doctor and Design from the University of Wolverhampton.

On September 7, 2010, Price's 23-year-old son Jamie Price was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum sentence of 21 years, for muder. Jamie was convicted after stabbing a man to death on August 24, 2008. The victim was a member of a rival gang.

Price was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2016 New Year Honours awards, for services to music and young people.

In May 2017, he endorsed Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in the 2017 UK general election. He told NME: "I'm definitely a massive Corbyn fan, yeah." He added: "We had it in the '90s, this is the same thing."

## Selected Singles Discography

* "Inner City Life" (as Goldie presents Metalheadz) - FFRR 1994 - UK No. 39
* "Angel" - FFRR 1995 - UK No. 41
* "Jah" / "Deadly Deep Subs" (Remixes) - Razors Edge 1996
* "State of Mind" - FFRR 1996
* "Digital" (featuring KRS-One) - FFRR 1997 - UK No. 13
* "The Shadow" (as Rob & Goldie) - Moving Shadow 1997
* "Everything" - Power Fly 1997
* "Kemistry V.I.P." / "Your Sound" (Remixes) - Razors Edge 1997
* "Moving Shadow 100" - Rhythm Republic 1997
* "Tempertemper" (featuring KRS-One) - FFRR 1998 - UK No. 13
* "Believe" - FFRR 1998 - UK No. 36
* "Angel III" / "Sinister" (The Remixes) - Razors Edge 2004
* "Say You Love Me" - Metalheadz 2005
* "Monkey Boy / Special Request" - Metalheadz 2007
* "Malice in Wonderland" (promo) - Metalheadz 2007
* "Vanilla" - Metalheadz 2007
* "VIP Drumz / Ghost's of My Life (Riders Ghost)" - Metalheadz 2007
* "Envious / Justified" - Metalheadz 2009
* "Freedom" (featuring Natalie Duncan) - Metalheadz 2012

## Selected Mix Discography

* INCredible Sound of Drum'n'Bass (1999)
* Goldie.co.uk (2001)
* MDZ.04 (2004)
* Drum and Bass Arena: The Classics (2006)
* Watch the Ride (2008)
* FabricLive.59 (2011)

## Filmography

* Everybody Loves Sunshine (1999) - Terry
* The World Is Not Enough (1999) - Mr. Bullion
* Snatch (2000) - Bad Boy Lincoln
* The Price of Air (2000) - The Greaser
* The Case (2002) - DJ Gabriel