Jubilee's festival flavours and gnarly bass made her a champion in 2016

As the crowd popped off to the firestorm of dubplates being dropped by Mixpak at Red Bull’s Culture Clash, Jubilee surveyed the 20,000-strong crowd as the collective tore apart their rivals. “It was overwhelming and pretty surreal,” she says. “We walked in there fairly confident. It’s all music we love and music everybody else loves. So we knew we were going to bring it.”

Mixpak, the New York-based record label specialising in dancehall, might have been the lesser-known crew at London’s O2 Arena that night in June. But thanks to the seismic energy of Jubilee, Popcaan, Dre Skull and the rest of the crew, they fended off competition from Wiz Khalifa & Taylor Gang, UKG Allstars and Wiley’s Eskimo Dance to eventually come out on top.

As a product of the Miami bass scene, Jessica Gentile, now in her early 30s, started DJing at a drum ‘n’ bass party where she’d play anything she felt like through rap, r’n’b, dancehall and beyond. She landed on Mixpak in 2012 with the ghetto house-infused ‘Pop It!’ and has remained integral to the label ever since. But, in 2016, she truly made her mark.

Kicking things off with a follow-up to last year’s ‘Magic City’ compilation, a showcase of the best in Miami bass-inspired music and an insight into her armoury of records, the Brooklyn-based DJ’s also been touring heavily in Europe and North America, both alone and with the Mixpak crew. “It’s been a pretty crazy year. Living in New York you’re always busy and with all the stuff I’ve done, it’s been a lot. But it feels like everything’s starting to pay off.”

But Jubilee’s year doesn’t end there, as she’s just released her debut album ‘After Hours’, a culmination of two years work and “the biggest thing I’ve ever done.” It’s a party-focused record, full of festival flavour and, in a year where dancehall has increasingly become a reference point for titans like Drake and Rihanna, it blasts with deep soundsystem rumbles while also touching upon elements of Miami bass, ghetto house and acid grooves.

With a winning performance at Red Bull Culture Clash, dropping records from Gaika, Palmistry, Wildlife! and Konshens, as well as regular parties at New York’s Trans Pecos, it’s been a colossal year for Mixpak. And Jubilee has been a very big part of that. “Being with my crew is always the best,” she says – but with or without them, Jubilee has been unstoppable.