Hiphopobit: Mark B

Mark Barnes, known professionally as Mark B, has died.

One half of Mark B and Blade, Barnes also worked as part of The Great Ones and, widely, in his own right.

In 2002, he presented a Radio One documentary on hip-hop record collecting, which is available online.

He built his own label, K-Boro Records, named after his home turf of The Royal Borough Of Kensington And Chelsea. (You can see why he shortened it.)

He'd not been especially active musically since the early years of the century; he explained to UK Hip Hop why in a 2006 interview:

Reason why is I've just not been too inspired to make any new music ‘cos I just feel like music on a whole right now is going through a very drastic, no quality control change because of the whole internet downloading, sharing thing. All of a sudden everyone who was once a music fan is now either a rapper or producer on myspace & its at a point that because of this everyone expects to get your music for free & it confuses people to whom are actually releasing music & why should they go purchase your single or LP when they can get another artists music for free. Independent record shops such as Mr.Bongo and Headnod have sadly shut down ‘cos music fans have forgotten, or maybe don’t even know what its like to go buy a 12" vinyl record or LP & be a fan of another "artist" ‘cos they think that they are somehow the next big thing ‘cos their best mate & girlfriend told them so.

No word on the cause of death.