I didn’t know Neil Kulkarni in real life, but I knew him from his words, which in many ways is better than real life. Some but not all will know he stayed in Coventry when he might have opted to move to London when writing prolifically for Melody Maker in the 1990s, at which point he was still in his early twenties. Neil for long periods was a commentator who was proudly and pointedly outside the music hype bubble of the capital, and unlike others, he never got the gig just because he was someone’s mate.  

We worked on several projects together when I on staff at The Wire, but I knew his voice (I’d almost say intimately) from reading almost every word he wrote in Melody Maker, often more than once. Reviews of Wu-Tang Clan, Mobb Deep, God, Come, Orbital and many more have stayed with me as tiny thought bubbles that often visit while I’m thinking, writing or editing around music. So it’s sort of accurate to say I’ve lived with him in my head for decades.

As a writer, he was thrillingly urgent, and you should just go and read him, but it’s enough to say that he captured the thrill of dropping a needle on a record like few others. He could evoke the spirit of the moment, of anticipation, of waiting for the bass to drop, or the drama of listening fixatedly to a lyricist telling their story. One sweet and typically humble detail in a review (who knows which, it was simply thrown out mid-flow) was that at night he’d retreat to his bed to listen to his Wu-Tang Clan albums, which summed up both his devotion as a listener, and his willingness to make himself naked within the music.

Neil started writing for Melody Maker after he wrote a devastatingly eloquent letter to the publication about how it was a white boys’ club and needed to up its game. I remember clocking the letter at the time. It was so confusingly superior to the other words around it, ones the publication had actually paid money for, that it seemed like it must be part of some kind of plant or scheme or conceptual prank. His truth was stronger than such fiction. MM to their great credit told him immediately to get in touch and get some work. In 2015, we experienced something a little similar at The Wire, when Daniel Neofetou filed a letter critiquing my review of the Bloc dance music festival, making several points I’d either missed or wished I had thought of, and Daniel started contributing to the mag as a writer soon after.

Neil started contributing to The Wire in the early 2000s, but if memory serves right it was Joseph Stannard in particular who banged the drum for repping his work in the mag. He was a cherished contributor for all of us, and every one of my dealings with him was a delight. Some careerist music hacks lose their mojo as they grow up, but Neil just seemed more crazily in love with music each time you talked to him. He called editors “Chief”, which seemed deferential to the point of chivalry.

I didn’t agree with all of Neil’s opinions: on abstract hiphop pioneers (for him, appropriators) Mo’ Wax, or Primal Scream, who I might wearily argue made at least one magical record. But even if he was wrong aesthetically, he was invariably right structurally, which where the real struggle is. He would support artists who needed it, and tear down sacred cows whose reputations were now barriers for others. Neil figured out something almost like a secret code in music journalism, which is to write forcefully but always from a place of love – for music, not its machinations. Even when he was laying down the law, there was a righteous sense of greater good behind it. The legacy he leaves behind as a non-white British music critic is impossible to overstate, and he will be remembered while many who forged solid industry careers are rightfully forgotten.

Now I think about it, we did talk, on the phone, for pieces he filed for me, which for some reason slipped my mind. When someone’s voice is already fixed in your head, it can be hard to square that with a different one on the other end of the line. One time he filed a piece, which was great stuff, but not quite ready to go, due to the kind of commissioning cross-wires that many editors will be familiar with: too many quotes, not the right degree of context, and most of all, it didn’t have enough of Neil himself, and the way he thought and heard. With deadline approaching I asked him to make amendments, and in just a couple of hours he had completely rewritten and recast the piece with thrilling elan, exploring new angles and advancing fresh hypotheses and creating the starting point for at least a dozen more potential future articles. It was the kind of unfortunate mix-up that makes you realise what someone was really made of.

The Wire has put up this beautiful Portal article where Neil selects articles from the archive. It was completed very shortly before his death, and he is as typically generous here as ever. Elsewhere he wrote for DJ Mag, The Quietus, and was a contributor to the long running Chart Music podcast, whose tribute by Al Needham is especially worth reading among the pieces out there at time of writing. Do consider giving to the Go Fund Me launched on behalf of his family if you are able.

Photograph: Neil Kulkarni in Coventry, 1991 (@kaptainkulk). Text from Melody Maker, Autumn 1993