Shaun Lewis grew up in Plaistow, east London and came of age as the children of the rave generation were creating a new musical language of their own. Jungle and drum & bass were already part of his listening world, but as a teenager his immediate creative environment became pirate-radio crews, UK garage instrumentals and the harder lyrical style that was beginning to separate itself into grime.

Stormin became a foundational member of N.A.S.T.Y Crew, the east London collective whose shifting line-up included figures such as D Double E, Kano, Jammer, Sharky Major, Footsie and others. The group’s early radio sets were chaotic, competitive and intensely local — exactly the conditions in which grime’s MC culture learned how to survive without waiting for mainstream infrastructure.

A 2004 Guardian report from inside a Nasty Crew pirate-radio session captured Stormin in the huddle around the microphone beside Kano, Ghetto, Hyper and Sharky Major. That image matters because it places him inside grime while the genre was still being built in cramped rooms, not retrospectively added to a history after success arrived.

Stormin maintained a strong hip-hop and reggae influence and developed a recognisable bouncing flow. He recorded solo material, clashes and tracks under his own name while continuing to work within grime. Later he also adopted the masked alter ego Teddy Bruckshot, allowing another side of his writing and performance to emerge.

The return toward drum & bass came through relationships rather than a marketing plan. Shabba D, a friend of Stormin’s uncle and one of the major MCs from the rave generation, recognised his ability and helped bring him into the D&B circuit. The connection closed a historical loop: the younger grime MCs had originally built their own infrastructure partly because the older rave scene felt difficult to enter.

In 2014 Stormin joined Shabba D, Skibadee, Harry Shotta, DJ Phantasy and Macky Gee in SaSaSaS. The group turned multiple-MC rave performance into a tightly organised modern show without losing the competitive electricity of pirate radio. Stormin’s grime cadence sat beside Shabba’s ragga influence, Skibadee’s double-time jungle style and Harry Shotta’s technical flow.

SaSaSaS became an international festival act. Their 2017 Rampage performance in Belgium is one of the clearest documents of Stormin’s later career: a huge arena responding to an MC who had learned his craft in tiny pirate-radio rooms. The scale changed; the relationship with the crowd did not.

In 2016 Stormin revealed that he had been diagnosed with stage-two skin cancer which had spread to his neck. He discussed the illness publicly and channelled the experience into the album #BRB (Be Right Back). Even the title reflected his refusal to let illness become the end of his public identity.

After a period in which he believed he had beaten the cancer, his health deteriorated again. He continued releasing music and updating supporters from hospital. Stormin died on 19 February 2018, only four days after his 34th birthday.

His family, friends and peers later told the story in the documentary Hype Master: Stormin MC, directed by Isaac Reeder and released through Drum&BassArena. The film is important because it lets the memorial move beyond genre achievements into the person: family, determination, humour, ambition and the reality of fighting cancer while trying to keep working.

Stormin’s legacy is the connection. He stood inside grime at its birth, inside drum & bass during a new wave of rave energy, and showed younger audiences that British underground history was a continuum rather than a set of sealed-off generations.