DWG started in 2004 as a platform to have fun doing ‘creative stuff’ with a hip-hop foundation.

We first all met while I was working on the sorely-missed original Spinemagazine website, which I co-founded in 1999 as an internal project of my Unorthodox Style creative agency (now known as U-Dox). Along with the Crooked Tongues website (which emerged from pages on the original Spinemagazine site), I acted as the creative director, writing reviews, features and designing many of the interviews and features while overseeing the agency's creative work with clients like adidas, Nike, MTV and Ralph Lauren.

Along with with Russell Williamson and C-Law, the agency developed Spinemagazine and Crooked Tongues to become successful independently-run businesses, along with other new projects such as Spine TV and the Deadstock fanzine that circulated to over 80,000 people worldwide. When I left Unorthodox in 2004, Spine's direction changed slightly, leaving the range wide open for something to fill the gap. And that's where DWG comes in.

Through trading hip-hop vinyl, I had already met Rare Dave, Sureshot and Toby Shaker: with the same tastes in music, same values and enthusiasm to do something we enjoyed, DWG began life as a Blogger-hosted website in May 2004. Before we knew it, we had evolved into a ‘proper’ record label collaborating with the likes of Phill Most Chill, Godfather Don, Unique, Cadence, Main Source, Marley Marl, TDS Mob, Sound Providers and DJ Format. First and foremost, we are big fans of the artists we work with. As a result of this, we only release music that we collectively believe in and, more importantly, music that we would want to spend our own hard-earned loot on!

The last couple of years have been hectic to say the least – we sadly said goodbye to Sureshot in 2009, when he left to work on his own projects. Trying to maintain a steady flow of heavyweight releases in the midst of increasing competition, a global recession and a number of personal issues has proven to be stressful. Nevertheless the list of DWG-collaborating artists keeps growing.

As we enter a new decade, D.W.G. is healthier than ever and ever-hungry to work on new projects: keep an eye on the website as we never quite know what’s around the next corner. As always, thanks to everyone who has purchased one of our projects (we know times are hard right now) and to all those who continue to visit the website and contribute to our forum on the regular.

Chris (and on behalf of Rare Dave and DJ Shaker)