# @90slegacymedia on Instagram

- **Type:** Video
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DV1N2iWEw3H
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/63712989-90slegacymedia-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/9bda2208a8.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-03-13T16:35:21.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** 90's Legacy Media (@90slegacymedia) — https://gondola.cc/90slegacymedia

## Caption

Kaliphz were a hip-hop crew from Rochdale, formed by 2-Phaan (Mush Khan) and Jabba Da Hype (Jabbar Khan), back when they were making sharp, politically charged UK rap instead of being slowly dragged into the music industry’s pop mincer.

Then the mid-90s got hold of them.

Suddenly they’re renamed Kaleef because nothing screams “authentic underground hip-hop” quite like a shiny rebrand and a desperate lunge for Radio 1 daytime rotation. And just to complete the corporate vandalism, along comes Pete Waterman to “help”. Yes, the very same hit-factory wizard responsible for turning half of late-80s pop into beige chart wallpaper.

The result? A hip-hop/pop remake of “Golden Brown” by The Stranglers. Because apparently the missing ingredient in northern UK rap was a Stock-Aitken-Waterman-adjacent cover of a wistful 1981 new wave song.

But before all that industry meddling and focus-group nonsense, there was a moment when Kaliphz still felt properly dangerous.

On 18 March 1994 they tore through a chaotic, slightly unhinged performance of “Vibe Da Joint” on The Word on Channel 4 - the kind of raw, scruffy live TV moment that made 90s music television feel alive rather than surgically assembled.

They were on the same episode as a completely unknown Manchester band called Oasis.

Fast-forward to 1997 and their second album 53rd State of Mind crawls out under the Kaleef name, sounding less like a bold evolution and more like the soundtrack to a particularly grim record-label strategy meeting.

Unsurprisingly, the group hated the direction and split soon after another casualty of the music industry’s uncanny ability to take something exciting and aggressively polish it into oblivion.

#90sTV #TheWord #Channel4 #Kaliphz #Kaleef #VibeDaJoint #Oasis #Britpop #UKHipHop #90sHipHop #WhenTVWasBetter #90sCulture #MusicHistory #OldSchoolHipHop #UKMusic #ManchesterMusic #RetroTV #90sThrowback #MusicNostalgia

.

## Stats

- **Views:** 2,019
- **Likes:** 95
- **Shares:** 0
- **Comments:** 2

## Tags

theword, britpop, retrotv, 90shiphop, kaliphz, oasis, 90sculture, musicnostalgia, kaleef, manchestermusic, whentvwasbetter, 90stv, ukmusic, ukhiphop, oldschoolhiphop, channel4, 90sthrowback, vibedajoint, musichistory

---
Copyright (c) Gondola