Records. Artists. Scenes. Shifts in culture. The things that matter before the world has noticed they matter. Snips finds them early and has been doing so for thirty years.

In 2007, he co-founded Livin’ Proof, the London hip-hop night that ran for eighteen years and gave artists like A$AP Rocky and Joey Bada$$ some of their first UK stages. He committed to vinyl long before the revival, and to a style of quick-mix DJing that has become increasingly rare on records. That approach continues at his weekly party at NYC’s Record Room, where he is co-founder and resident DJ.

His production and remix work spans artists as diverse as Groove Armada, Giggs and Kamaal Williams. He has taken that same eclectic ear and genre-bending approach to rooms across four continents, sharing stages with artists and DJs including Kanye West, Stretch Armstrong, Mark Ronson, De La Soul and Freddie Gibbs.

Whether DJing, producing or teaching, what connects these disciplines is finding what matters and then explaining it. In the room, through the records, in the mix. He doesn’t just play and produce music. He knows what it means. Where it came from. What it did to the people who first heard it. The record is never just the record. There is always a story underneath it, and he tends to know it.

Recognition has a habit of following the work, whether through a high-profile client list that includes Netflix, Adidas, Boiler Room and SNL, or through the quieter anonymity of producing records bought and played by people who never knew he was behind them. He would always rather you noticed the music than noticed him.