Early life Williams, son of
Jamaican immigrants, grew up in the
Bristol suburb of
St. Andrews. He cites
reggae as one of his early influences. He was expelled from school He worked with his brother's comprehensive collection of
Studio One records and later set up a home studio, buying a sampler. The group's debut studio album,
New Forms, was released on 23 June 1997, with singles featuring the vocals of
Onallee including "Brown Paper Bag", "Heroes", "Share the Fall" and "Watching Windows". The album went five times
platinum, won the
Mercury Prize, and Williams returned to the studio to concentrate on his output for V and Full Cycle and Dope Dragon. Following their mainstream breakthrough, Reprazent had a series of
festival appearances in the summer of 1997. Following on from this, Roni Size and Reprazent returned to North America for the first time in seven years as one of the headliners at the 2009
Ultra Music Festival in Miami. They then went on to perform at
Coachella, appearing as the final act of the festival. In September 2009, Roni Size and Reprazent played a gig with an orchestra and choir to mark the re-opening of
Bristol's
Colston Hall, collaborating with the
BBC's Nature's Great Events composer,
William Goodchild. In addition to older material, the band played material from a forthcoming Reprazent album. ==Musical style==