Mantronix had come a long way in a short time when he made this career-defining anthem. The Jamaican-born DJ/producer first earned his rep as a teenage scratch DJ at Manhattan’s Downtown Records, using his technical mastery of Roland’s TR-606 Drumatix and TB-303 Bass Line to add multiple layers of intricate polyrhythmic heft below the relatively rudimentary party rhymes of MC Tee. After two independent albums for Sleeping Bag (and some great productions for T La Rock and Just-Ice), Mantronix jumped ship to Capitol/EMI and set the controls for the pop jugular on 1988’s In Full Effect with mixed results (although tech nerds hailed it the first digital recording mastered from DAT). While the itchy electro-funk of A-side ‘Join Me Please’ was utterly forgettable, UK DJs fell hook, line and sinker for its heavily sample-based flipside. One of the first records to lift the break from the Winstons’ classic 1969 B-side ‘Amen, Brother’, ‘King Of The Beats’ was a club monster that savvily riffed and scratched its way through the Meters (‘Same Old Thing’), the Magic Disco Machine (‘Scratchin’’), Rufus Thomas (‘Do The Funky Penguin’), Bob James (‘Take Me To The Mardi Gras’), Original Concept (‘Pump Up That Bass’) and half a dozen more. Heavily sampled in turn (London Posse, Snap!, J Dilla) it cemented Mantronix’s place in hip-hop history and gave him an unbeatable sobriquet to boot.