HERITAGE: Jaja Soze Talks Openly About Turning His Life Around On 'Danny Dyer's Deadliest Men' (2009)

HERITAGE: Jaja Soze Talks Openly About Turning His Life Around On 'Danny Dyer's Deadliest Men' (2009)


March 15, 2023

Back in the 2000s, P.D.C. was one of the most important crews at the centre of road rap's formative years. Led by Jaja Soze, P.D.C. (aka Peel Dem Crew) originally started out as a gang involved in bank robberies, the drug trade and various other rackets, but when Soze went to prison, things changed.

As he tells Danny Dyer in this episode of Deadliest Men, the crew split on the issue of their future. Jaja and his faction wanted to clean up their act and put everything into music, while others wanted to double down and go harder.

Eventually, Jaja and his set changed their name to Poverty Driven Children, and they ended up shaping the future of rap as we know it in this country. Perhaps not as famous as Giggs and SN1 in the eyes of the wider public, their role in its formation is at least as essential. Thanks to P.D.C., UK rap became darker, less glossy, and the flows became slower. Most importantly, it became more reflective of what was really happening on the streets.

At the time, P.D.C.'s true potential was hamstrung by issues getting distribution and an industry that wanted nothing to do with them. Today, Jaja is still making music as a solo artist, with a stack of albums under his belt and he even owns his own studio, Brixton Recording Studio where he puts on the next generation of talent. Seeing Jaja and his people in the studio at the end of the film, you can't help but wonder what P.D.C. might have become if they'd had those resources from the start.



Photography: David Wallace


Recommended: