X marks the spot with debut album via Virgin. (Talent).

Under the pseudonym Girls On Top, Richard X was the producer who kick-started 2001's short-lived bootleg scene into a frenzy with a host of now-classic soundclashes, including I Wanna Dance With Numbers (Whitney Houston meets Kraftwerk), Being Scrubbed (Human League meets TLC) and We Don't Give A Damn About Your Friends (Gary Numan meets Adina Howard).

Such was the paranoia surrounding the media-hyped bootleg scene by the end of 2001, when Richard X was first contacted by Virgin Records A&R manager Steve Brown, he ignored the calls for several weeks.

Presuming it was an angry record company executive wanting to chastise him for using one of their copyrights in one of his bootlegs, X chose to lie low.

When he did eventually decide to call him back, he was surprised to find that Brown wanted to talk about developing Richard's ideas into an artist album project.

"We signed him before Sugababes released their version of We Don't Give A Damn About Your Friends," says Brown. "At the time, nobody really knew who he was or that he was responsible for those records."

A few months later, Richard X would become the name to drop in pop circles thanks to his production of Sugababes' Freak Like Me--a cover of his Girls On Top bootleg. The single went on to top the charts, for some marking the end of the underground "bastard pop" movement. A year later, Liberty X were next on Richard X's hitlist, clocking up a Top Five hit with another "legitimate" bootleg, Being Nobody.

Aside from the singles, Richard was busy plotting his ultimate goal, a legitimate street album. As the album developed, industry speculation was rife surrounding the legal negotiations, suggesting a number of copyright owners were less than keen to let Richard use their material, legally or not.