Loving What He Does

With his signature laid-back New Zealand-accented rambles often breaking into unintelligible hysterics and high-pitched impersonations, 39-year-old BBC 1 radio DJ-come-presenter-come-live-DJ-come-producer-come-general-music-guru Zane Lowe has attracted skepticism from those who find it hard to swallow that an individual could possibly be equally enthusiastic about hip-hop royalty Nas as they are about Swedish post-hardcore pioneers Refused. “I’m given the opportunity to choose what I play; I have a freedom of choice, which in the media is an incredibly rare privilege,” he says. He was the first DJ to play ‘Crazy’ by Gnarls Barkley on UK radio, which then went on to be he first ever single to go to number one in this country on downloads alone in 2006.
(12 October 2012)