Hip-hop: The Welsh rapper who co-created 1980s smash hit

Eric Martin is known to many as MC Eric – the Welsh rapper who shot to stardom with the release of Technotronic’s 1989 hit Pump Up the Jam.

“I remember hearing the tune and I just knew, man,” he said.

Pump Up the Jam reached number 2 in the UK singles chart and rocketed Technotronic – that’s Martin, Belgian musician and producer Jo Bogaert, and rapper Ya Kid K – to stardom.

Now, Martin is being recognised for his contribution to the Welsh music scene with the Welsh Music Inspiration Award alongside his lifelong friend, DJ Jaffa.

“Ya Kid K blazed on that tune, she blazed,” said Martin.

“It’s when, you know, the hairs go up on your arm and you just know it’s a special moment.

“In those days, you’d do a studio session and then you’d go back to the car and listen to see how it sounds in the car.

“So, for me, listening to those tracks in the car by myself, no-one else, just listening to see what it sounds like and then you’re just sort of alone in your thoughts and there’s no-one else intruding, and I just knew, man.”

Hot off the success of Pump Up the Jam, the band released a full album and, by the early 1990s, racked up six top 20 hits in the UK.

“There was so much pressure on us after Pump Up the Jam to come up with another banger and Get Up was such a worthy successor, and such a joy to perform with Ya Kid K, the way we used to do it together.

“Get Up is for sure my favourite track.”

The original single was even credited as the first house track to reach the US charts.

The 54-year-old Welsh rapper was born and raised in Cardiff to Jamaican parents.

He went to Fitzalan High School and grew up on the streets of the Welsh capital.

“There’s a certain swagger, isn’t there, about Welshness? There’s no-one like us.

“I am very proud that when I first went to a lot of places with Technotronic, but particularly the US, I am very proud at having sat on countless TV stations having to explain to them where Cardiff was.

“Hip-house and hip-hop being such a fresh thing in those days, people just were not expecting someone from Wales to be doing it.

“There’s something about us that comes from having gone through the school system and walked these particular streets.”

Martin was there at the start of the growing UK hip-hop and hip-house scene.

“I was the one to say: ‘Let’s put our own jams on’,” he said.

“Hip-hop was outlawed in every club. Any DJ that ventured to play a rap tune was told immediately by the owner to shut it down.

“Obviously, if you wanted to hear the music, you’ve got to put your own jams on, so that’s what we started doing.

“That’s the cool thing about the scene – hip-hop has always been defiant. Even the idea of stealing someone else’s tune and looping it is quite cheeky, isn’t it? The whole thing is based on being that urban survivor.”

He said he met DJ Jaffa in 1986 and they have “never, ever been out of contact”.

He added: “Even though we’ve spent years apart at various points in our lives, we’ve always been really tight, so… it feels almost like, appropriate for us to come full circle and get this.

“I told him, they’re putting us out to pasture, man. That’s it now. [laughs] It’s hopefully the beginning of other things.”