Leke Adesoye and his tshirt design used in Human Traffic

A “CARD-carrying raver”, music promoter and fashion designer behind the brand that become iconic in the jungle and drum and bass music scene was described as the “Mayor of Kilburn” this week by friends following his death, aged 52.

Leke Adesoye, who had a rare form of bone cancer, was best known for the Junglist Movement clothing range that he ran for almost 30 years.

Best friend Jide Alade, a drum and bass DJ Tendai who lives in Kentish Town, said: “He always had a strong vision of what he wanted to do and the way he wanted to do things. He always stuck to that vision. “He was kind and warm guy to everyone. He knew absolutely everyone. I always said to him he was like the Mayor of Kilburn, every time you went down the road with him someone would stop and say hello.

“We met in 2006 through the music really. He invited me round to his place and we hit it off. Also both being Nigerian I think that helped. He gave me a load of T-shirts and we became very close, I’m godfather to his twins.”

Mr Alade, who went to Acland Burghley, added: “You can’t talk about drum and bass and jungle without talking about Junglist Movement. It was his lifeblood. “The brand became embedded in the culture, not just within drum and bass but also within hip hop music.”

Leke’s Junglist Movement brand hit the big time after being featured in the 1999 film Human Traffic, with popular character Koop, played by Shaun Parkes, wearing one of his T-shirts. His Aerosoul company brand clothes went on to be a favourite among a host of famous faces including rapper Ghostface Killah, jungle legend General Levy, Roots Manuva, Arsenal legend Ian Wright and Hollywood actor Daniel Kaluuya.

He was described by Mixmag as a “selector, promoter, curator and card-carrying raver, he’s been part of the fabric of the scene since it began”.

Thousands of people have liked and commented on posts on social media about his death while tributes have flooded in on social media from giants of the rave scene including DJ Slipmatt and breakbeat group 2 Bad Mice. During the pandemic, Mr Adesoye spoke to the New Journal about the shortage of black blood donors while launching his Junglist Movement range of protective face-masks and the debt he owed to staff at University College Hospital.

He said that for years he had been going to the Macmillan Cancer Centre in Huntley Street, part of the UCLH group, for monthly blood transfusions for his sickle cell disease, adding: “In our area, one in three black kids have sickle cell. But very few people have heard about it. That’s because it is a black illness.”

He slammed the government for its handling of the coronavirus crisis, calling on the public to “look out for one another and don’t do stupid things”, while saying the pandemic had shown how people could rely on independent businesses.

Mr Adesoye described his T-shirt design as the “most bootlegged fashion design in the history of dance music culture” and recalled how he started selling them in the mid-1990s from the old Soul II Soul shop in Camden High Street.

He recalled: “When they showed Human Traffic at Creamfields [music festival] it just blew up. Now I get young people saying to me, ‘oh my dad used to wear that kind of stuff.”