Things we didn’t expect in 2022 – a reunion of Skream and Benga, Flume collaborating with Damon Albarn of the Gorillaz and now this, a posthumous track from sorely missed French producer DJ Mehdi.

DJ Mehdi, real name Mehdi Favéris-Essadi sadly passed away during a tragic accident in 2011 when celebrating a friends birthday at his home in Paris. His legacy includes some of the best electronic music of all time that still sounds as fresh today as did on release day.

His biggest, and most popular track was the screaming electro banger ‘Signatune’ that featured a just as high energy music video.

The new track is a collaboration with good friend and Ed Banger boss Busy P as well as Santigold and French rapper Benjamin Epps. How the track surfaced is just as iconic as Mehdi and the label with Busy P explaining just how it happened;

“Let’s go back in time, let’s fly back to New York city. The year is 2001, it’s summer time, the twin towers are still looking at the moon. DJ Mehdi is renting a flat a couple of blocks away from Central Park.

“He always loved to escape from Paris to work on some music with his MPC 3000 in his bag. We decided to set up a little production camp in the living room. I joined him for a week with my MPC 2000.

“Mehdi was working on a beat with a mental sample, a flamenco guitar that touched my heart right away. I played with the sample and created a track based on Mehdi’s first idea. Mehdi loved it and we decided to jam on it… We never finished the beat, we preferred to party with the Giant Step crew in a party where Mark Ronson was DJing near Canal Street…

“20 years later I found the floppy disk in my basement, all samples and drum kit were saved. I put it in my dusty MPC 2000, magic happened, I was in New York again with my brother.”

The track dubbed ‘MPC 2021’ is just as large now as it would have sounded way back in 2001 with a big twisty sample peppered with ferocious vocal chops and a hip-shaking bassline.

Dive into it below. C’est la vie!