“We know exactly who we are and what people think we are – and we own it,” says Gareth. “If I had kids, I wouldn’t let them watch our videos” – Kane Welsh They have since become unique and indivisible rappers that accentuate each other’s strengths, and trade equal bars. This was unfair, they say, as the music (within which they are all equally dexterous MCs), was a result of necessity rather than anything else: when few of their friends liked bassline, they grouped together. When the band started out, their lyrics about dirt bikes, designer clothing and going on benders meant that comparisons were made to Kurupt FM, the parody pirate radio crew from BBC mockumentary People Just Do Nothing. It’s undoubtedly a core component of their sound – an amused detachment that gives them the freedom to make music as loud and boisterous as they’d like, while ensuring it’s never taken as a joke.
They’re so enthusiastic about the music they’re making that their conversation is breathless and overlapping – even though they’re visibly tired and nearing the end of their first-ever headline tour, which takes in 11 UK cities in just over a fortnight, including a massive homecoming show at Bradford’s St George’s Hall.īut between inhaling balloons and singing directly into the dictaphone at random intervals, the Crew’s hyperactive energy can feel slippery and uncontrollable. Their biggest single, the fluorescent-hued ‘Don’t You Worry About Me’ – which appeared on this year’s polished five-track effort ‘Charva Anthems’ – even broke the Top 40 over the summer. Since the release of last year’s debut EP, ‘Full Wack No Brakes’, they have transcended their comedy origins, and formed the nucleus of something that’s been missing in British music for some time: an exciting, youthful scene whose leaders refuse to take themselves too seriously. We’re doing this to make people feel good because it’s a shit world out there.”īeyond the off-colour humour, the members of the Crew shared something special: an enviable knowledge of west Yorkshire’s history of bassline and organ house music, the region that spawned T2’s genre classic ‘Heartbroken’. We’re not trying to be role models for anyone – all we want to do is make people laugh. “But we don’t give a fuck about what people think of us. “If I had kids, I wouldn’t let them watch our videos. “We know people that are far more badly behaved than us – but we’re just the silly c**ts that went out there and put our lives on social media,” Kane tells NME backstage later that day. Oh, and there was the time they took a dump in their manager’s spare prosthetic leg – but that video got deleted by Facebook’s servers for obvious reasons. It started in summer 2018 when the group, then three friends working low-wage jobs around Bradford, began posting unfiltered comedy skits to social media, including recurring sketches of Mandy and Fez played by Gareth and Clive – an argumentative couple inspired by the “ridiculous characters” that they grew up with. They’ve followed the boys throughout a triumphant festival run this summer, which included some of their biggest shows to date at Parklife and Reading & Leeds, the latter of which NME described as a “celebration of youth and young mashhood”.įor the past three years, the Bad Boy Chiller Crew phenomenon has proudly stormed its way past onlookers, raving, drinking, skanking with its middle fingers up. And today, an ITV2 camera crew is also on-site, filming for a six-part, unscripted, currently-untitled docu-series that is due to air next month.
Made up of Gareth Kelly, Kane Welsh, and Clive (Sam) Robinson, the trio are part ridiculously entertaining MCs, part producers, part social media comedians. The fans are waiting for Bad Boy Chiller Crew, Britain’s most lively new band. The doors for tonight’s show don’t open until 7pm. It’s a cold, dreary Tuesday afternoon, and here, the snaking queue that has formed is growing so rapidly that a security guard has to keep walking away, sighing, to fetch more barriers. Dedicated and excitable, at least 40 of them have gathered, battling blustery winds, risking it all on a rumour that the object of their fandom will be coming out to greet them. Outside the front entrance of the venue – Nottingham’s Rock City, a 2000-capacity hall that, over four decades, has played host to the likes of Nirvana, Public Enemy and Arctic Monkeys – a swathe of young fans, bedecked in bucket hats and loose trackies, are waiting outside a cordoned-off door that is rumoured to be a secret entrance for their favourite group. Dozens of teenagers have the building surrounded.
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