ERIC MORILLO

Erick Morillo is one of the second generation of influential NY house producers alongside DJ Sneak and Armand van Helden who, inspired by the success of trailblazers like Todd Terry, Frankie Knuckles and David Morales, have established themselves amongst the world’s best producers in the nineties. Like his peers, Morillo started out as a DJ and still spins regularly today, yet he’s had the kind of commercial impact that most dance producers can only dream of. He’s also the only one to have found considerable success outside the house scene, scoring hit Latin music singles as well as house releases.

Born in downtown Manhattan, Erick Morillo lived across the river in New Jersey until, at the tender age of three, his poverty-stricken mother sent him to live with his aunt in Colombia, South America. He returned to Jersey seven years later, barely able to speak a word of English, but well schooled in Latin rhythms. Morillo bought his first turntables and mixer at the age of twelve and like so many before and after him, cut his teeth playing house parties and school discos during his teenage years. Yet he always took DJing seriously, even printing his own business cards!

After graduating high school, Morillo spent some time bumming around before a TV advert for New York’s Center of Media Arts caught his eye. He called the next day and within two months was studying sound recording, eventually graduating at the top of his class. At the time he supported himself by working as a mobile DJ around Hudson County, NJ, and after graduation he and a friend began the construction of a rough’n’ready home studio.

Morillo’s first publicly-released material was a remix of a reggae track, Burrup, by Nardo Ranks. He played it out at Jersey’s Shanghai Red’s club, where it caught the ear of Latin reggae artist El General. The two began working together and produced a single, Muevelo, released on RCA/BMG. It proved to be a huge success, selling platinum numbers and was even voted Latin Single Of The Year 1992 by Billboard magazine.

Around the same time, Morillo was introduced to house music by his friend Marc Anthony, then collaborating with Masters At Work Louie Vega and Kenny Gonzales on another future anthem, Ride On TheRhythm. As a result, Morillo began experimenting with house in the studio. He took his first tracks to New York’s most influential A&R, Gladys Pizarro, then at Nervous Records, but the meeting proved fruitless.

Undeterred, Morillo revisited Pizarro four months later, by which time she had moved to Strictly Rhythm, this time armed with a tape of a track he’d made with Ralphie Muniz which featured reggae-style vocals. This time around Pizarro snapped the record up and it was released on Strictly under the name of Reel 2 Real, the first incarnation of the group that would soon propel Morillo to worldwide fame. The single, The New Anthem/Funky Buddha, reached number one in the Billboard dance chart. It was Pizzaro who gave Morillo his ‘More’ nickname, because he always brought her far more mixes of a record than could actually ever be released.

Then El General introduced Morillo to a NY-based ragga MC called Mark Squashie who had adopted the stage name of The Mad Stuntman. The first single the pair produced under the Reel 2 Real banner was Go On Move, closely followed by I Like To Move It, which broke through to become a worldwide smash hit and achieved gold status in the UK, Germany, France, Belgium and Australia. The UK proved particularly receptive to Reel 2 Real and by the end of 1994 they had had a further three top twenty singles: Go On Move (re-released in the wake of I Like To Move It), Can You Feel It and Raise Your Hands. All the singles were included on the huge-selling debut Reel 2 Real album, Move It.

Reel 2 Real’s success led to the inevitable remix requests and Morillo worked on a variety of releases from traditional New York garage tracks, such as Crystal Waters’ 100% Pure Love and What I Need, to gimmicky pop records like Zig & Zag and PJ & Duncan. He also kept a hand in the underground with more releases on Strictly under the name of Smooth Touch and R.A.W., plus the Erick ‘More’ Morillo EP and had another big club hit with Reach, a collaboration with his DJ hero Louie Vega under the name Li’l Mo Yin Yang.

A period of heavy touring preceded Reel 2 Real’s second album, Are You Ready For Some More? in 1996, a broader set of tracks which even included a drum’n’bass collaboration with Armand van Helden entitled Don’t Panic, and upon release it proved nearly as successful as the first, spawning two more hit singles in the shape of the title track and Jazz It Up. The club releases continued, however, among them Smooth Touch’s Tripping and B-Crew’s Partay Feeling - which featured vocalists Barbara Tucker, Ultra Nate and Dajae - while Morillo’s remixes included Basement Jaxx’s Fly Life, Boris Dlugosch’s Hold Your Head Up High and Smokin Beats’ Dreams. He capped another great year in