Richard Kylea Cowie (born 19 January 1979) better known by his stage name Wiley is a British music producer and MC who was one of the original founders of the Roll Deep Crew. Wiley has been active in the fields of Drum & Bass and UK Garage music, but is best known for being one of the pioneers of Grime.
Wiley was born in Bow, an area in East London, England. His musical career began as a Drum & Bass MC, before becoming involved in UK Garage music. He was a founding member of the group Roll Deep, producing and contributing vocals, with whom he pioneered a style of music that came to be known as Grime. He has released several albums, both as a solo artist and as part of groups, including Roll Deep and Pay As U Go.
The performer announced his retirement in 2007 but quickly ended it to continue recording. He has collaborated with various artists over the years, including Kano and Dizzee Rascal. Wiley has pioneered the Grime, as both a record producer and an MC, though he sometimes refers to his music as “Eski” short for Eskimo. Wiley releases all of his mixtapes under the name “Eskiboy”. He explained his choice of name for his music and the continuing theme in his song and album titles such as Treddin’ on Thin Ice, partly because he likes the wintertime, but mainly meaning cold in spirit. Wiley was quoted in conjunction with his “cold” theme: “Sometimes I just feel cold hearted. I felt cold at that time, towards my family, towards everyone. That’s why I used those names.”
Many of Wiley’s early vinyl releases, such as ‘Eskimo’, were released under the alias “Wiley Kat”, this name was derived from a character in the cartoon Thundercats. However the ‘Kat’ is never officially used by Wiley any more, only mentioned loosely in some of his songs. |
