Dta was started in 2001 by three friends in the South Wales valleys, Carl Ruddock (mc), Ade Carter and Kevin Watts (mc).

We first started off battling each other for a bit of fun but quickly decided that we could work at it a bit more and started to write our own material, after covering various songs from american artists we had grown up listening to. The major influences for our music have all been american artists such as the Shady Aftermath crew, Bone Thugs n Harmony, Tupac, Biggie and so on, as well as more conscious rappers such as Rakim, Mos Def and Nas, giving our songs a more american style edge as opposed to a lot of other UK acts, while still staying true to our Welsh heritage and upbringing, and maintaining the deep lyrical content that we were brought up on.

   After recording various covers Ade, who at the time was producing us, was doing a Music Technology course in university and picked up a copy of Fruity Loops, on which he learned how to start making his own beats for us to use for some original material.

   The first song we wrote was entitled Shitstorm, which went on to become the title track for our first recording, a 19 track mixtape, recorded and mixed down on an extremely basic music making program called hip hop e-jay. For the first 4 years we were together as a group, we concentated solely on writing, recording and perfecting our individual styles, which isnt the easiest thing when you're recording through a computer microphone on that program.

  After the mixtape was finished, we quickly realised that the quality of the recordings was not doing us any justice as a group, and so we purchased a Yamaha AW16G home studio system to record ourselves on, again with Ade acting as our producer. In the first 4 years we spent as a group without gigging, we recorder well over 100 tracks, narrowed down to 22 for our second mixtape.

  Eventually, we decided we were ready to start making ourselves known and set about booking ourselves into any gigs we could play at. At this point we had lost Carl as the workload was too much for him so we got ourselves a manager, David Maunder, and started looking for gigs to play at. As we are from the Valleys in South Wales, there are not a lot of opportunities for Hip Hop acts like ourselves so the majority of our early gigs were spent playing punk and metal nights, which seems to be pretty much the only marketable genre in our area.

   As you can imagine, we stuck out like a sore thumb and would often get quite a few laughs and jokes aimed at us before we played. Whenever we left any gig though, we would leave with everybodys respect and would have had to shake the hand of everyone who saw us play. We quickly built up a big following not only among the few hip-hop heads around here but also among people who would not normally give us or any other rapper the time of day.

   Eventually situations escalated to the point where I was not able to pursue the music full time, and had to get a job in Cardiff. At this point we became involved with another act based in Caerphilly called Inferno and the Fuzz. They were running a hip hop night as a tester in a local bar situated close to a university and got a surprising turnout, showing us that there is a definite market for hip hop around us, it was just a lot more underground than we realised.

  After speaking to Inferno (the MC) a few times, he quickly hooked us up with other acts around our area all pursuing the same thing but encountering the same difficulties we had come up against. Soon afterwards we set up a night in Pontypridd in a small run down club with oursleves and other South wales rappers, Mic justice, NSP (NightShift Productions) and Inferno. The night was a massive success and just went to show the scene that is building up around here, and the genuine talent that is coming out of the valleys.
   After performing the same sets a few times, It was decided that we would start working on our first album, but decided this would need to be done professionally, as with the following we were building and the rate that the situation was progressing, the Yamaha just wouldnt cut it anymore.

  We got in touch with Ruthless Recordz in London and travelled down to see them as we were under the impression that potentially something could arise from recording a mixtape with them.  We travelled all the way down to London accompanied by a colleague of mine who was shooting a documentary for the BBC covering our efforts to get a record deal,  only to arrive at the building and be faced with a little run down shop selling mixtapes. Although it was massively dissapointing, we did get hooked up with a producer based in Dagenham called Toshi, and spent a few months recording some old material with him.
  We got hooked up with a gig in Piccadilly Circus, but sound problems meant it didnt go quite as well as planned, and it wasnt exactly our best introduction to the hip hop scene outside South Wales, as well as facing some major problems from the promoter, Alizay, who basically wouldnt give us the time of day because we weren't involved in his little 'clique'. This was most unfortunate for us for the reason that we had been told this was a major gig, and we were expecting to feature prominently so as such we contacted Sony BMG and Parlophone, as well as NME who all proceeded to send scouts out to see us. Even though the gig didnt quite go as well as planned, we are still in talks with them and the release of our new album Say Something, in the process of being recorded at Blossom Studios in Abertillery, by London College of Music graduate, Noel Watson should see us getting signed onto one of them in 2008.