Issue 012

April 2006

Written and photographed by Hywel Teague

Though they may seem unusual bedfellows, rap music and mixed martial arts (MMA) are strongly linked. Fighters often choose hip hop tracks for their entrance tunes and will listen to rap when preparing for a fight, and rap music blares out of many gym’s stereos during training sessions. The edgy, urban beats and rhymes of rap make it a favourite among many MMA fighters. Fighters like rap, and believe it or not, quite a few rappers like fighting. 

One person who straddles both areas is Komlan Ray, real name Steven Quashie, a 24 year-old rapper from Huddersfield in the north of England. Ray is well known on the UK MMA scene, having performed live at events such as King of the Cage and Cage Rage. His self-produced music opened the show for the first UK King of the Cage in Sheffield last June, and he performed the entrance tune for Ian ‘M16’ Butlin at Cage Rage in 2004. 

Ray became involved with MMA through the aforementioned fighter, Ian Butlin. A close friend and training partner for many years, the two boxed for the same amateur club since their teens, and Ray was one of the founding members of the noted Quannum Gym, literally helping to build it from scratch. With a ten-fight amateur boxing record under his belt, you think he’d be tempted to give MMA a go, but Ray explains he’s happy to stay in the gym for now. “The way Ian feels about MMA yeah, is the same way I feel about my music. He loves it, its his whole life, he puts everything into it, and that’s how it is for me.” 

Ray has a number of collaborators he works with, but all of his music is self-penned, and much of it is self-produced. His music plays like a hybrid of hip hop styles, fusing scatty drum and bass beats with hard-hitting lyrics on some tracks, while dipping into two-step waters on others. Ray might have what you’d call a definite UK sound, and that comes across in his delivery. “I love messing about with words, a lot of my sense of humour is based on wordplay. Word delivery is something I really like, different phrases and stuff. If you listen to a lot of my tracks, I’ll veer off into different dialects. Sometimes I’ll stick a proper Yorkshire phrase in there to tickle Yorkshire people, because that’s what I know because I’ve grown up here.” 

Having been born and raised in the north west of England, Ray comes from an area not exactly renowned for producing much in the way of rap. The burgeoning London scene, driven by the influences of urban life, hardships and a sense of defiance, is often starkly contrasted with that of its American cousin. Much of UK rap outside of the capital seems to copy the imports, often badly. Ray brings an original approach to his music that is born from seemingly everyday circumstances. “When I’m doing rap music a lot of it comes from my experience of being a mixed race person growing up in Britain. I’m not a revolutionary or nothing, I’m just making music from my experiences. My music is day-to-day stuff, most of the stuff I write is reflections on that day.” 

So with his background in combat sports, you’d expect some references to pop up in his music, and they do. Not only is his name Ray a reference to his favourite boxer, the legendary Sugar Ray Leonard, but his King of the Cage track describes a MMA fight, with references to strikes, submission holds and the effects felt by a fighter in the middle of a hard battle. Maybe surprisingly though, the influence of his training has extended past just appearing in his songs. “I approach my rapping the same way that I used to train, that’s what gave me the discipline to organise my time.” And what about the feeling s of the adrenalin rush? Does he get a similar thrill before a live show that fighters do before a fight? “The adrenalin and hype and arousal is all there yeah. Its not the same, they’re two completely different things though- theres nothing bigger than fighting.”