Skibadee

Alphonso Castro K. Bondzie (1 February 1975 – 27 February 2022), known professionally as MC Skibadee, was a British MC and producer from Waterloo, London. His primary work sat in drum and bass and jungle, though his output and tastes crossed into ragga, reggae, dancehall, grime, UK garage, UK funky, bassline, acid house, bass house and related club styles.

Skibadee’s entry into the scene began on pirate radio. He started broadcasting on City Sound Radio in 1993, using the live-radio platform to develop a fast, improvisational delivery and to refine crowd-calling techniques. Over the 1990s and into the 2000s he became widely regarded as a pioneer of MC-focused performance within UK jungle and drum and bass, taking the vocalist role from simple hype to a complex, rhythmic instrument in its own right.

From around 2000 he worked regularly with Shabba D as the duo S.A.S (SaSaSaS). That partnership is one of the concrete collaborative threads in his career and formed a large part of his recorded and live output in the 2000s. He won multiple industry awards during his career, including Best MC at the Drum & Bass Arena Awards, and received recognition from BBC 1Xtra; those honours are part of the public record of his impact on the scene.

Skibadee’s musical style was defined by rapid, double-time patter, ragga-inflected cadences and near-instant improvisation. As an MC he used tight internal phrasing and breath control to lock with short, chopped breaks and fast rollers, often trading rhythmic patterns with the DJ rather than simply shouting over the kick. He favoured call-and-response hooks, quick-rolled syllable runs and the kind of on-the-spot rewriting that turns a live set into a distinct performance. Those signature vocal choices made him as much a rhythmic element of a track as a front-line voice.

On the production and edit side — where he occasionally applied his skills — his contributions consistently emphasized vocal hooks and edits that sat forward in the mix, shaped to cut through dense breakwork and heavy low end. Across sets and sessions he moved fluently between jungle swing, dancehall phrasing and garage-derived pocketing, adapting his delivery to rollers, jump-up and more melodic material without losing the rapid-fire core of his style.

Concrete milestones in Skibadee’s career include his 1993 start on City Sound Radio, the S.A.S partnership with Shabba D from around 2000, multiple industry awards including Drum & Bass Arena’s Best MC, and public recognition from BBC 1Xtra. He died on 27 February 2022; those dates and collaborations mark the recorded facts of a career that changed how MCing sits inside drum and bass and jungle performance.