Rizzle Kicks

Since their breakthrough track ‘Down with the Trumpets’ stormed into the UK charts last year, Rizzle Kicks have been winning over girls, boys, adults and grannies everywhere with their self-professed “vibes and charisma”. About to join the mightily impressive line-up of this year’s Parklife, we chatted to Jordan about the tidal wave of success they have experienced over the last year, going from posting their videos on YouTube to playing to crowds of 60,000 screaming fans who know all their songs by heart.

With their upbeat Hip-hop sound and funny, optimistic lyrics we challenge you not to like them. BBM chats to Jordan and finds out the reasons why Rizzle Kicks are everyone’s guilty pleasure…

Jordan, what’s up? What are you up to at the moment?

I’m good thanks; I’m in North London at the moment. I’ve just been chilling today, I had a much needed day off and caught up with some people I hadn’t seen in a while. It was nice.

The last year or so has been a bit of a whirlwind of success for you guys – can you even begin to explain what it’s been like?

Wow, well it’s difficult to cram everything that we’ve done and experienced into one sentence but I’ll try. It’s been a mad! We’ve gone through a very steep learning curve and although I know that it’s a massive cliché, it’s been exciting beyond our wildest dreams. It’s been a huge experience that we both hope continues for a long time. At the moment we are just taking every day as it comes.

You guys have sold 300,000 albums and one million singles in the UK – have there been any other particular highlights?

Well aside from that, which I can still hardly get my head around, we have done some amazing gigs. Our first tour sold out and our dates are out now for our winter tour and they’re 95% sold out – we’re playing bigger venues this time. Recently we’ve been returning to the same gigs and festivals that we did last year when we were first starting out like T4 on the Beach in the UK. Back then we were playing the smallest stage and no-one had a clue who we were. A month ago we were back there fucking headlining to 60,000 people who all knew our songs. Through all the stuff that has happened, we always pretend that it’s normal to us, that we’re used to it but this time I couldn’t hold back – I was so excited that I went mental and smashed up the dressing room. I just couldn’t act cool any more, I was so excited!

You’re hugely popular with people from all walks of life and all different age groups – why do you think that that is?

I don’t know. I mean, the majority of our fan base is young girls. They’re the ones who buy the records and use all the social networks and our popularity with them could be down to the fact that we are two young boys, but our music is uplifting, upbeat, has very much a Pop essence, which appeals to that age group. Looking at it from another angle though, we make our music into a mirror – we are only trying to impress ourselves and as 20-year-old boys, if it appeals to us, hopefully it will appeal to boys of a similar age. We’re influenced by old-skool Hip-hop so, you know, when we get a tweet from someone who was around in that era saying that they like what we’re doing, that gives us a huge confidence boost. It’s good to see that the artists that have influenced us have been identified in our music by people who were around when it was huge.

There are different inspirations to our music as well. If you listen to ‘When I was a Youngster’, young people listening to it will identify but if you listen to the lyrics, it’s about not being young anymore and looking back on when times were simple – this is going to appeal to older people and of course, we sampled The Clash so hopefully their fans will recognise that.

I have to ask – you went to the famous Brit School where the likes of Adele and Amy Winehouse honed their talents – what’s it really like?

It was brilliant! You know, there’s a real stigma associated with it. People assume that it’s an all singing, all dancing la la land where everyone is given a record deal instantly, but the reality is that you have to audition to get in so everyone wants to be there, everyone wants to work on their own stuff. You don’t have to put up with all of the dickheads who are only there because they are forced to be.

You worked with Norman Cook on ‘Mama do the Hump’ – as fellow Brighton residents it must have been amazing for you. How did that all come about?

It came about literally from living in Brighton. We told our A & R that we wanted to do it and so we gave it a pop and send him a demo. Somehow we stood out, he dug our vibe and before we knew it we were meeting him. You know ‘Right here, Right Now’ was the second cassette I ever bought, I was a little bit star-struck – it was emotional man!

It seems that you guys have always been destined for music careers, but if you weren’t doing this what do you think that you would be doing?

Writing something. I love writing. I’d probably be holed up in a small house somewhere obsessively writing a novel or a feature film – which I’m currently kind of doing. I’m always writing ideas down, thoughts I have. You never know, one day I might meet the right person and things could happen.

Now you’ve achieved such success have you stopped reading the reviews?

I still read reviews because I want to see what people think. I want to see what people misunderstand and what they take notice of. Primarily, the reviews don’t effect what we do. Like I said, we make it for us so if people turn around and think that it’s shit, it doesn’t matter because we didn’t make it for them, we made it for us.

You’re set to tour around Australia with Parklife Festival in October – is this your first time down under? Excited?

We’re both so excited! It’s the first time there for us both and we’ve both had lots of mates who have travelled there on gap years or gone there to work and feedback has always been great. We spoke to Jessie J and Professor Green who toured there recently and they both loved it. I can’t wait to see it for myself and the Parklife line-up is great. There’s no city that I am particularly excited to visit, I’m totally unbiased – I just can’t wait to be there.

Is there anyone else on the line-up that you are particularly looking forward to seeing?

There are some great British acts on the line-up. I’m excited to see the acts that I haven’t seen before like Nero. Labrinth and Plan B always play amazing shows so they will be highlights for us.

For those Australians out there who are heading to Parklife and who haven’t heard your music before – what would you tell them to expect from the show?

We play upbeat, optimistic Hip-hop. A complete mish-mash of genres and most importantly, we have a lot of fun.

By Amy Baker