Hannah Wants: 2015's DJ phenomenon

Beneath the blistering afternoon sun, Hannah Wants is giving Mixmag a tour of Ibiza's San Antonio district. "I literally came here with a dream…" she says, breaking off to take a photo of the poster for that evening's gig at Amnesia. Her logo, front and centre, completes the sentence for her. Walking the sunset strip, Wants' distinctive appearance – masses of dark, pre-Raphaelite curls gathered in a headband, Moschino accessories and Boy London garms – causes heads to turn. Not just those belonging to the young Brits gathered shirtless under branded parasols, though they do stare with increasing expressions of recognition, but waiters and bar owners too, with a hug here, and a wave there. And Hannah is at the centre of it all, prickling slightly with managed shyness, but clearly in her element. Just as she is a few hours later, when she reduces the rammed Amnesia terrace to a humid mass of smartphones, beaming faces and grasping hands. Blending and cutting between Daniel Bortz and Dusky, thundering sub-bass and 'Professional Widow', it is, in anyone's estimation, a technically compelling and joyous performance. The realtime response is more succinct: someone raises their hands, thumbs together, index fingers splayed in a 'W' for Wants. Then another. Then one more. Dreams, eh? Funny things.

For the girl born Hannah Alicia Smith in a village near Birmingham, and who just five years ago was eking out a living in San An as a jobbing DJ, this journey takes on the cadence of a Hollywood blockbuster, the kind they stopped making in the 80s because they were too unrealistic. The elevator pitch? In 2012 she won Mixmag's Creamfields DJ competition. Three years on, look at her. "It's surreal," the 28-year-old beams. She's right: Hannah Wants is one of the biggest British stars in house music. When we meet she's coasting on a few hours' sleep after T In The Park, but her newfound fame, which is heightened in San An where she's approaching local legend status, keeps her on her toes. And with an eyewatering global touring schedule to keep to, the list of places where she can go and not get recognised is dwindling. She's well on her way to conquering the US, too: this April she headlined her first North American tour, her techy, bottom-heavy house and dynamic DJing style chiming with the Stateside fondness for supersized Brit bass music. Not content with being a DJ, she's upsizing to brand, curating festival stages and tours under the 'What Hannah Wants' banner. How she manages to squeeze in a Radio 1 residency is anyone's guess, but it wins her an even bigger audience than the gargantuan festival crowds she's used to commanding. At face value, tonight's Amnesia gig feels like a glorious homecoming – but this is her residency, and she's back in a month to do it all again.

We pause in our stroll for strawberry Daiquiris, and as we talk it doesn't take long to hit on the key to her success: graft, and lots of it. "I haven't been the most normal of children. I've never had a proper job, I've wangled my way through," she says, taking a sip of her brightly coloured drink. "My mum was the one who taught me not to settle, to not have normal standards."

Hannah set the bar high early, becoming a promising footballer who played for England and Aston Villa's youth teams. Injury, and her burgeoning clubbing lifestyle, would terminate that career, but not before a period of crossover: "I used to party at Kudos until 9am, go home, shower, get on a coach and travel the country to play Premier League football," she says, sheepishly. "There was a particular moment when I was playing for Aston Villa, either against Arsenal or Doncaster... I remember scoring a diving header when I was wired still from the night before." Um, so you'd describe yourself as focused, then? "One hundred per cent, yes. Whatever I do, I want to be the best at it."

Hannah has always grown up around music. Her mum, she remembers, would play everything from Fleetwood Mac to the Cranberries. Incredibly, her granddad was actually a proto DJ back in the 1940s, "One of the first people to put turntables into venues and play records instead of live bands." She even has his handwritten business card as proof: "Entertain with "SUPERSOUND," it says in businesslike capital letters; "Make Your Party A Success… Grand Selection Of Dance Tempo Records & Many Others". On the back, next to an illustrated musical note, is a signature and the date: "22/8/49". However, it wasn't until Hannah was 16 and raving – underage – in Birmingham, that her focus relocked from football to DJing. "I remember the first time I walked into a club, the DJ's name was Clinton Shawe. I watched how he was controlling the dancefloor, and I had this overwhelming feeling: that's what I want to do." She duly received a pair of Numark turntables for her birthday and set about getting there. The vibrant speed garage and bassline house scene of the millennial Midlands drove her on: the first record she bought was 'Shake It' by Lee Cabrera. Inspired by garage god and personal hero DJ EZ's virtuoso mixing, she began to establish her own approach as she practiced, alone, in her room. By 18, she had levelled up, breaking out into local bars and open mics, playing r'n'b and whatever else was required on crap karaoke equipment. She soon tired of that, and going by the name 'Hannah S' she set up her own party called Flaunt. It was thanks to her entrepreneurial spirit that she was able to exploit the untapped Sunday night market and make Flaunt a success. "I remember going back home and I'd made a grand in cash," she says. "I'd never seen that kind of money before." However, it would be a a few thousand miles away that she'd really make her name – and it wasn't Hannah S.

We walk on amid clusters of tourists eking out their hangovers in a haze of regret and ethanol perspiration on San Antonio's main drag, Hannah tracing her history, one dive bar, one tattoo parlour, one supermarket at a time. Gesturing to an inauspicious-looking apartment sloping back from the sunset strip, she points out her first Ibiza home. "Whenever I come back, it's not to some €10,000-a-day place, I come back to my little two-storey apartment, there." Politely declining the drinks offers and 2-4-1's of the surrounding establishments, she points out a modest-looking venue: Viva, the workers' bar. It was within these tiled confines that she first made her mark on the island in 2010. Then, she was between semesters of her sports studies degree, but she knew that wasn't her fate and felt Ibiza offered the best opportunity to change it. Putting the money she earned from PE teaching down on an apartment, and battling her natural shyness, she began to wangle as only she could. Indeed, she funded herself not through gigs – those were unpaid – but through her entrepreneurial nous. Pressed for details, she grows coy. "It was stuff I probably would have got in trouble for," she says, a guilty smile on her lips. Hustling to make ends meet in the daytime, she would frequently enter DJ competitions at Viva at night. These competitions, though a great proving ground, were far from glamorous. "You put your name in a book and if you had an early slot you'd have to wait around until five or six in the morning, sitting around like you were queuing for The X Factor." It was worth it: in a sea of tasteful tech-house, Hannah's bass-riveted sound stood out and she parlayed her frequent wins into a residency. Word spread, and when the headline DJ failed to turn up at a night in superclub Es Paradis – fittingly, for a Birmingham-born night called GLAS – Hannah received the call while in bed, asleep. "I questioned going for a second…" she grimaces, "but I got changed, ran down there and jumped on." Wasn't she nervous playing to the biggest crowd of her career thus far? "I'm pretty sure I was nervous…" She trails off, pensive. "This sounds weird, but I feel more comfortable behind the decks than I do out raving. " Because you're shy? "Yeah. But I've just experienced a lot through life and I think I know what the world's about."

She attributes this to her upbringing, which was good, she says, but unusual. Her parents split when she was young, and her mum remarried her new boyfriend while he was in prison. A good student, Hannah's dedication to football made her something of an outsider. Her fierce, independent streak and her inability to fade into the background seems born of these experiences. "I never wanted to sit at a job and make money for someone else," she says, resolutely. "I always wanted to strive for my own goals." Back in the UK she landed a residency at Birmingham's Rainbow Warehouse, a hub for the Midlands house and bass movement. As she became a key proponent of this slowed-down strain of speed garage she drove around the Midlands and Leeds, playing three or four gigs a night. "That's what nobody sees," she says, exasperated. "Interviews say I've risen in two years, but I've been doing it for ten." Her profile – and her extraordinary loyal fanbase – grew organically, aided by a string of productions, live DJ sets, and her frequent, genre-defying mixtapes distributed at gigs and which she still puts out every two months via her SoundCloud. Returning to her early productions, you can trace the influence of the scene and its mongrelisation of warp bass and fervent, anthemic house – indeed, many of her tracks were co-produced with Chris Lorenzo, a central figure in the scene. However, when the Daft Punk-esque 'Rhymes' broke Top 20 in February this year, it took her completely by surprise. "It was always designed for the dancefloor," she claims, but when Annie Mac picked it up it was game over. While she's grateful, Hannah expresses no interest in writing for the charts in the future. "People ask me, when am I going to release an album? I don't want to go down that route. It's not me as an artist: I'm a DJ. I'll make music for the dancefloor on the side, but I'm not going to put out an album." There are productions on the horizon, and judging by the monstrous, red-eyed stomper 'Just' that's currently appearing in her mixes, these signal a clear development and refinement of her sound. Importantly, from now on she'll be flying solo when it comes to production. "I see it as a new chapter," she says.

Like many driven people, Hannah has a knack for turning negatives into positives and positives into game-changers. She regularly works out, and when she mentions martial arts guru Geoff Thompson as an inspiration, it isn't wholly surprising. When she reveals her favourite motivational quote in the gym where she used to train, it makes perfect sense: 'Do It Now'. However, there's one subject that causes her positivity to falter: haters. "It doesn't matter whether you're Beyoncé, David Guetta, Jamie Jones or me. There are always pricks who'll go out of their way to try and ruin your day," she says. Success, though, is the best response, and her Radio 1 residency is one of the most overt symbols of it. Here she gets the opportunity to push her favourite artists and shore up her own musical identity with a wide-reaching playlist. The transition to radio DJ, however, proved a tough one. "I'd never spoken into a microphone before, and that was one of the most daunting things I'd done in a long time," she says, eyes wide at the memory. "I feel more confident DJing in front of five thousand people than I do sat in a room speaking into a mic." She must've done something right, though: they've just extended her contract.

The rapidly growing What Hannah Wants brand also sees Hannah playing tastemaker. Under this banner she curates killer DJ line-ups and takes them on the road, zoning in on artists who are, like her, DJs first and foremost. It is, she says, an attempt to level a playing field that favours producers over DJs. "Just because you can make a great track, doesn't mean you can kill the crowd," she says, levelly. "So many DJs aren't getting a shot because they aren't making music." Paying her success forward, she's currently running a competition to discover a new generation of DJ talent, with the winner joining the WHW tour as support. The circle, you sense, is complete. Maybe this is why, after the Amnesia set, she almost, almost looks relaxed. Don't be fooled. "It's easy to get to a certain level and think, 'I've made it now, I'm going to take my foot off the pedal," she says. "If anything, I'll put my foot down even more." With that she's off into the night, looking every inch the athlete. Match fit, game face on, ready to take on the world.

Hannah's solo material will be released later this year