Rusko
Christopher Mercer grew up on Leeds' bass-heavy sound-system culture — jungle, jump-up drum and bass, and the dub steppers scene around Iration Steppas' Subdub nights — before helping push dubstep toward the harder, more aggressive sound that got nicknamed 'brostep.' Tracks like 'Cockney Thug' turned filthy, wobbling bass into dubstep's signature hook and made him a direct bridge between the UK underground and the American festival stages that followed, Skrillex's among them.
Rusko grew up around the Leeds sound-system scene, and he's pointed directly to Iration Steppas' Subdub sound clashes — huge, distorted sub-bass built for a rig, not headphones — as one of the two things that shaped his ear before he started making dubstep.
listen forCue up Iration Steppas' 'I'm a Warrior Dub' and then Rusko's 'Woo Boost' — the same sound-system-first mentality, where the sub-bass is the lead instrument and everything else just decorates it.
Rusko has cited early-'90s jungle as the other core ingredient in his sound alongside jump-up drum and bass; the breakneck, chopped-up rhythmic urgency of that scene, which Goldie helped bring to a mainstream audience, feeds into dubstep's own sense of rhythmic tension and release.
listen forCompare the frantic, rolling breakbeats of Goldie's 'Inner City Life' to the tension-and-release structure of Rusko's 'Hold On' — different tempos, but the same DNA of UK bass culture pushing a beat right to the edge of chaos.
Dubstep's own family tree runs through the dark, sparse 2-step and garage records El-B was making in Croydon and South London in the early 2000s — stripped-back and bass-heavy, considerably more minimal than the garage around it, which set a template dubstep, and later Rusko's own productions, would push even further.
listen forListen to the empty space and sub-bass throb in El-B's 'Buck & Bury,' then Rusko's 'Cockney Thug' — same principle of leaving room for the bass to dominate, just with dubstep's harder wobble layered on top.