Soundtrack To My Life: DJ Ace

For this edition of Soundtrack To My Life, we speak to BBC Radio 1Xtra host DJ Ace—a legend from the days of Channel U who has been a mainstay in the UK music scene for over a decade.

Earlier this year, he took over the weekday slot from Trevor Nelson; big shoes to fill, given Nelson's stature in UK music. Undaunted, DJ Ace has gone on to build a show that is now one of 1Xtra's most popular, consistently bagging big name guests (see below) and, of course, breaking the up-and-comers. 

Regular listeners to his 1Xtra show won't be too shocked to see such a varied—and well-informed—selection; his weekly slot remains pretty eclectic (something that's reflected in the inclusion of Rodney P and Nirvana in this list), but at his heart, Ace is an R&B guy through-and-through.

His support of UK artists over the years has been invaluable to our homegrown R&B scene. Both his R&B Hour shows on 1Xtra and his DJ sets across the world have played a huge role in putting UK R&B on the international stage and, as his picks and our conversation show, Ace knows both US and UK iterations of the sound up and down.