Born in Manchester/UK into a Jamaican family, Top Cat came to test his skills on the microphone when he was visiting his cousins in Jamaica as a teen in the late 1970s. Soon he started kicking deejay lyrics on various UK soundsystems, like Sledge Hammer and Viking, and turned up at Sir Coxson Sound in 1989, where he got to know his long-time mic partner Tenor Fly. When the jungle hype came up, at first Top Cat was not exactly pleased by the fact that his late 1980s dancehall tune "Love Mi Sess" got bootleg remix treatments, but in 1994 he set up his own jungle label 9 Lives Records, where he released various remixes of his old dancehall songs as well as new material. As in 2007, Top Cat still tours the world with a program consisting equally of jungle and dancehall material.