Composer / Co-Artistic Director of Boy Blue.

Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante is a renowned producer, composer and DJ, whose 20-year career
history is firmly etched in the UK black music industry.

Composer / Co-Artistic Director of Boy Blue.

Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante is a renowned producer, composer and DJ, whose 20-year career
history is firmly etched in the UK black music industry.

As co-artistic director of hip hop dance theatre company Boy Blue, Asante is credited with the direction and composition of REDD (2019), the film R.E.B.E.L (2018), Outliers (2018), Blak Whyte Gray (2017), The Five & the Prophecy of Prana (2013), Touch (2011), Legacy (2011) and Pied Piper: A Hip-Hop Dance Revolution (2006), as well as the Factory International commission Free Your Mind (2023). His work for theatre also includes Tree (a Kwame Kwei-Armah and Idris Elba creation for Manchester International Festival) and his collaboration with the Jamie Lloyd Company on The Effect (2023) and the upcoming Romeo and Juliet (2024) featuring Tom Holland.

As a producer, Asante has worked with major label artists including Delilah, Raleigh Ritchie, Estelle and George The Poet. Notably Asante has worked extensively with Kano including engineering and production on the critically acclaimed album Made In The Manor and the albums Home Sweet Home, London Town and 140 Grime Street. Recent work for screen includes composition for Clotilda: Last American Slave Ship (a National Geographic documentary special), the BBC documentary The Three Lives of Michael X, a collaboration with Brian Eno for three series of Netflix’s Top Boy, the 2024 Rich Peppiatt film Kneecap and Paul Ruttman’s Apple TV show Criminal Record.

Outside of the studio, Asante mentors and delivers master classes in directing, choreography and music and is also found residing in the Guildhall School of Music and Drama’s faculty as a Professor of electronic music, from where, in 2018, Asante was awarded an Honorary Fellowship (HonFGS). Asante is also a member of the Barbican Board, sits on the Board of Governors for the London Contemporary Dance School and received an MBE to Hip Hop Dance and Music in the 2022 New Year’s Honours.