Mixpak Records is like a prism, or maybe a Rubix Cube: it's hard to see all sides of it at once. The Brooklyn label, which recently celebrated its tenth birthday, is known around the world for releasing some of dancehall's biggest hits of the last decade—by Vybz Kartel and his protégé Popcaan, Konshens, Beenie Man, Spice—many of them produced by Mixpak founder Dre Skull. And yet it's also at the center of the cross-section of underground club heads that enjoy futuristic tropical riddims: Jubilee's Miami-bassed 808 workouts, Murlo's symphonic and otherworldly post-grime, Dubbel Dutch's addictive future club blends, Florentino's romantic dembow mutations. Turning it around, you might also see deeply avant-garde ambient pop from Palmistry or Mixpak in-house studio engineer and producer Wildlife!, baile funk from Barcelona's MC Buzzz or deeply emotional New Orleans bounce from Sissy Nobby.

It might be possible to hear all these genres in one DJ set, but it's relatively rare for an independent label to traffic in such a wide swathe of sound. It was even less common back in 2009, when Dre Skull launched Mixpak out of a loft space in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. For a few blessed years, I lived there with Dre and future Mixpak artist Jubilee, next to a barbershop called Fade 2 Famous and an enormous wastewater treatment plant. At the time, Jubilee and I already referred to Dre as "the guru." Not only did he look like a young Rick Rubin, he also had the music mogul's preternatural sense of where music and technology were going next.

Dre Skull hasn't changed that much in the past 11 years, at least outwardly. The beard may be longer but he's still sipping green tea, musing about the future of the music industry and softly padding around the studio. Yet these days he has Wizkid on text and Roc Nation (who also work with Rihanna and DJ Khaled) on speed dial. His production resume includes bops with Afro B, Burna Boy, Mabel, Lily Allen and Snoop Dogg.

The Mixpak office and studio (just five blocks from that old loft) is a tidy space that's been blessed by Lee "Scratch" Perry, A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, Mr. Eazi and Santigold, adorned with classic dancehall art and fun merch from Mixpak releases and events—mostly the brainchild of longtime Mixpak label manager Suze Webb, who DJs as The Large. A look around the room reveals popcorn-scented Popcaan air fresheners and a lifesize cut-out of Poppi, club flags used to celebrate Mixpak's mighty win at the 2016 Red Bull Culture Clash, lighters that remind you to "Bun Bad Mind."

"The curation for Mixpak was definitely super intentional," Dre says. "I knew I wanted to do dancehall, rap, club music and some kind of version of leftfield pop or vocal-driven electronic music. I saw that most people had an iTunes library or mp3 collection that was quite diverse, but the way culture was being sold to people was very singleminded, like 'This is this kind of party' or 'This is this kind of label.' I definitely did and still do want to live in the world where things collide with each other."

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Mixpak's Dre Skull and Jubilee celebrating on stage with Popcaan and Spice after winning the Red Bull Culture Clash 2016 at London's O2 Arena.

Mixing it up was always part of the ethos. Growing up between California and Massachusetts, Andrew "Dre Skull" Hershey was more interested in what made songs tick than pledging allegiance to a certain subculture. Inspired by a friend's cousin who was making Pixies-esque pop, he bought a four-track and started teaching himself about composing songs and the recording process. Voracious in his musical tastes, he acquired hundreds of records and 8-tracks on the cheap at garage sales and thrift stores, and listened to the entire catalogs of labels like Rephlex and Warp via file-sharing sites. Rap, reggae and dub were also big influences. "Lee "Scratch" Perry was super foundational," Dre says. "This idea that he was not necessarily the musician, but he was using the studio as an instrument."

"When I was a teenager, music was very therapeutic. I didn't have a good grasp on the inner workings of my mind and how to process emotions. I think of music like a magnet—it can bring forth certain emotions and you can let them pass through you without them just being bottled up inside. As a fan and as someone who makes music, I've always looked for the edge between the minor and major key, so you have some sad poignancy and you have a euphoric element. I've always liked music that played in that space."

Something else also lodged in Dre's brain that would inspire Mixpak years later. "There was an Eric B & Rakim record from 1997, a collection of remixes, called the Mixpak Elpee," he recalls. "I always liked the way that looked and I also wanted a label name that signified nothing to the average fan. Something like RCA Records, not like Tropical Nightlife Records or Club Filler Records or anything with some motivational aspect."

The label also owes a debt to a long history of collaboration between Jamaica and New York, extending from outfits like Wackie's and Massive B to artists like Sean Paul, Shaggy and Kranium—Mixpak's website calls the label "a contemporary encapsulation of the classic Brooklyn-Caribbean connection."

In his teens and early 20s, Dre was enmeshed in the DIY punk and noise scenes on the East Coast, spending summers in Providence, Rhode Island and becoming friends with bands like Lightning Bolt and Forcefield and visual artists like Jim Drain and Paper Rad. "At the time, I strongly did not like the term DIY," he says. "I felt something should not be considered worthy solely because someone 'did it themselves.' But the ethos had a big impact on me, the idea that you could create a good label and try to make it impactful. You don't have to wait for someone to tell you that you can do something."

Although Dre knew what he liked, it took a while to find his musical footing. He moved to New York in 2004, landing in a warehouse full of up-and-coming painters; they involved him in "sculptural performance things" and conceptual art bands that performed at places like the MoMA and Deitch Projects. (Many of the artists he met during this time have subsequently blown up and done Mixpak covers, including animator Devin Flynn, illustrator Brian Blomerth of Pups In Trouble and Robert Beatty, whose airbrush-like digital artscapes adorn Jubilee's Call For Location and Andy Petr's Rapper Turned Singer.)

Mixpak label head Dre Skull in Kingston, Jamaica, wearing the signature t-shirt and hat of Popcaan's Unruly crew.

"It took me years to get to a place where I could make stuff and put it out into the world," Dre explains. "I was too critical and too caught up in certain things mentally around the production and what it signified and all that paralysis from academia." But he did have a revelation during this time, one that would lead him to dropping his other pursuits and committing to seven years of rigorously making music. "I had been involved in some projects that were deconstructing cultural elements. After a while I was like, I don't want to chop up a Rihanna song. I want to produce for Rihanna. I'd rather try to understand how to really make this music and navigate culture and put it out in the world."

Navigating culture took time. There were some false starts, but Mixpak eventually launched in 2009 with "Gone Too Far," an uptempo Dre beat layered with a high-powered operatic original vocal from iconic dancehall star Sizzla. At the time, the music industry was undergoing a seismic shift. YouTube and Soundcloud were starting to become important and music blogs were uploading a steady stream of free downloads (remixes mainly) from emerging artists across the globe.

"Blogs were a labor of love by the people that ran them but they actually had a bunch of power," says Dre Skull, whose tracks frequently appeared on blogs alongside then-contemporaries like Sinden, Nadastrom, Drop The Lime and Brodinski. "Someone could get the first song they ever made posted on a blog and instantly flown around the world, and it wasn't related to one genre. It felt like the broad strokes of the music business were falling apart at the high level. I just felt like, 'Everything is falling down. It's probably a good time to jump in.'"

Through the internet, Dre had found someone who could arrange for Sizzla to voice his riddim in Jamaica and email it to NYC—a process that took six months from start to finish. Meanwhile, Dre was keeping one foot in the underground club scene, getting remixes, DJing around NYC alongside the likes of Kingdom and Rizzla, as well as producing with the likes of Atlanta crunk artist Lil Scrappy and New Orleans bounce mainstay Gotty Boi Chris.

He was also going back and forth with another elusive dancehall artist: Vybz Kartel. "I spent probably six months trying to get Kartel to voice something, but when he did 'Yuh Love' he was so excited," recalls Dre. "He leaked it on to YouTube within five days of recording, which forced me to get the cover art done and get it mixed super fast and release it within ten days. And that was the beginning of a small wildfire where a song was making Mixpak money. That was a thesis. It was literally me in my room putting out a record that could go global in the digital world."

Vybz Kartel from the cover shoot for his 2011 album, Kingston Story.

After "Yuh Love," Dre Skull made good on his longtime wish to go to Jamaica. He had intended to work with six different artists, but the universe had other ideas. "The morning I landed in Jamaica I got an email from my lawyer who said, '[A certain label] says these are all the artists they have under contract' and it was almost every big artist in Jamaica at the time. Vybz Kartel was the only one who I was trying to work with that wasn't on that list. And he was the biggest artist in Jamaica. So I was like, 'I guess I have to talk to him about it and see if he can just voice all these riddims.' Over one or two days, we did four songs and he said, 'We just made a mini-album.' I was like, 'Cool. Let me go think about how we can do a whole album.' Then I just kept in touch with him, figured out the deal and kept going back to Jamaica. It was the biggest lesson and thanks to that label I got to make an album with Kartel. Had I not gotten that letter maybe the whole path of Mixpak would have been different."

It would have been a feat for anyone to make an all-original album with Vybz Kartel in 2011. He was not only one of Jamaica's biggest stars but one of its most fearsome and elusive characters. (In 2014, he was sentenced to 35 years in prison for murder.) And for Kingston Story to be produced not by a legacy Jamaican dancehall producer—or even a prominent NYC hip-hop beatmaker—but by a soft-spoken guy from Brooklyn in his bedroom was a surprise, even for those who knew Dre Skull best.

Dancehall is traditionally a culture of singles and 45s, but Kingston Story helped reintroduce the idea that a dancehall album could be important. The record explores the romantic, thoughtful and seductive sides of Kartel, the urgency of his vocals highlighted by Dre's now-signature palette of bubbling synths and trancey stabs. Its release bridged a gap between hardcore dancehall heads and casual fans. It was also a major learning experience for Dre Skull on how to put together an album, from music to cover art and marketing. Dre would these use these learnings to produce several other iconic dancehall full-lengths for Mixpak: including Where We Come From, the 2014 debut from Kartel protégé Popcaan, and its 2018 follow-up Forever. By that point, the world and the music press were primed to elevate a dancehall album to top pop status, and Popcaan's records had the right mix of brightness, authenticity and killer production to gain broad appeal. With no major label backing or radio support, Popcaan recently sold out all 10,000 seats at London's Wembley Arena.

Mixpak Records cover art

"Having an album project is a way to make a bigger splash and it quickly gave Mixpak a different feel than other labels that were only putting out remixes and EPs," Dre explains. "But every step of the way has been double-checking if this is viable. That's built into the model—trying to make everything as important as it can be and not doing so many things that it ends up feeling disposable. The background story during all this is also the rise of streaming. For vocal music, and for these dancehall artists particularly, we were unlocking value that was inherent in the fandom but hadn't been monetized before. It was a great feeling to be making these artists money, supporting the label to grow and then giving us a little room to invest in smaller artists."

With their dancehall successes, Mixpak could have easily become a one-genre outfit, but they invested the money made off these big releases into smaller artists on the club-oriented and avant-pop sides of the cube, helping them with high-quality videos, good press campaigns and access to fame beyond dance music's underground pockets. This has sometimes made the Mixpak discography confusing, especially in the early years, as hot dancehall and bashment singles alternated with emotional acid tracks from Paris' Koyote or the wonky boogie of Milwaukee's Andy Petr.

"A core part of how I operate is trying to understand things culturally and think about how you can share someone's story or vibe," explains Dre. "If you're a super-niche techno label, then maybe you don't have to do a lot of storytelling when you drop your next 12-inch—everyone knows what kind of DJ set it's for or what part of the night it will get played at. When you go multi-genre, you need to connect more. Jubilee is a good example. I felt like she was an amazing DJ and putting out these super strong EPs that were unique but weren't really quite right for different labels. And maybe that's part of the Mixpak ethos—something has to be unique about an artist or the music they make. Similar to Kartel, I didn't think the cultural powers that be were going to let Jubilee level up unless she did an album, just because of the way press works and human nature works. If you can do an album and really try to let people understand this larger context of who you are, that will open up the world to you."

Smutlee, Jubilee, Dre Skull and Nasty Nigel at Mixpak's 2017 Notting Hill Carnival Party at London's Camden Assembly.

"I think the satisfaction for me is in some way finding artists that have something special, connecting with them, working with them and seeing them flourish," he says. "With a lot of people that are making music alone in a room, the idea of a poet is an apt metaphor—which is to say, somebody who cares a lot about their choices and tries to craft something very carefully. I feel like the world takes note of that and is drawn in by it."

Although Dre spends a large amount of his time in the studio, he says the most gratifying part of running the label has been the real-world moments, from Mixpak's wild parties in Brooklyn, London and Miami to taking on arena stages alongside Spice, Popcaan and Big Narstie. "Living in a digital world is so abstract," he says. "For instance, a song of yours could have 75,000 plays in the last two weeks but you didn't see anyone personally who listened to it. It's a very strange world we're living in. But just that feeling of helping to make something or support something or nurture something—that is very fulfilling."

"You have this idiosyncratic vision and you're operating on some level of faith that there's a place for this in the world and that it's worth working your ass off to put this all together," he says. "And in certain live scenarios, you clearly understand what got you excited and what you were working towards. Like at the last Jubilee album release party in Brooklyn, where we were all rollerskating in a school gym with Egyptian Lover DJing as a culmination of all the work we all put in to that record. Or the release party for Popcaan's Forever in Jamaica, with 700 people in a parking lot in Kingston going crazy for this music that we were killing ourselves for a year to package and put out. There's still a profound euphoria in experiencing that, and with what we're all going through right now in this pandemic, those musical gatherings feel more vital and life-affirming than ever."

Label Of The Month mix

Mixpak founder Dre Skull comes with a bubblin' blend of big vocals, killer riddims and exclusive dubs.

Tracklist /
Popcaan - Addicted
Palmistry - Club Aso
Popcaan - Silence
Vybz Kartel - Yuh Love
Ms. Thing & Psycho Tanbad - Bonify
Florentino & Bad Gyal - Por Ti
Kantana - Dollar Sign
Popcaan - Wine For Me
Palmistry - Protector SE5
Popcaan - Body So Good
Jubilee - Opa Locka
WILDLIFE! - Klouds
Jubilee - Fulla Curve (ft. IQ)
Afro B x Vybz Kartel x Dre Skull - Shape Nice
Murlo - Krakatoa
Jubilee - Mami (ft. Maluca)
Jubilee - Wine Up (ft. Hoodcelebrity)
Florentino - Latigo (Perreo VIP)
Florentino - El Sonido
Popcaan - Love Yuh Bad
Vybz Kartel - Half On A Baby
Murlo - Moodswung
Sticky - Jumeirah Riddim
Sticky - Jumeirah Riddim Sequel
Lil Scrappy - Look At Me (Justin Martin Remix Instrumental)
Cee Gee - Wine
Trigganom - Murda
Serocee - Topatop
Jubilee - I-95
Jubilee - I-96 (Salva Remix)
MC Buzzz - Bota Bota (prod by Fake Guido)
Florentino x MC Bin Laden x MC Buzzz - Na Fuga
Dubbel Dutch - Look Back
Dubbel Dutch - Deepa
Murlo & WILDLIFE! - Control
Dubbel Dutch - Inevitable
Melé - Flexi
Melé - Bombay
Jubilee - JMZ Riddim (Thundridge Echo Reggae Mix)
Murlo - Moss
Murlo - Deep Breath (ft. Gemma Dunleavy)
Murlo & Famous Eno - Ariel (Spooky Remix)
Mr One Hundred - Axis Jab Jab (ft. Bunji Garlin)
Mr One Hundred - Calypso Fugitive
Popcaan - A Wha Suh
WILDLIFE! - Drift