Time for some Kicks!

I first met Rizzle Kicks on the BBC Blast website while entering the BBC Blast Portraiture Competition. I was minding my own business trying to learn how to design an album cover really until Charming Man and 17 exploded into my life. I didn't win the competition, but who cares? I found the future of British music in the youngest, hottest MCs on the scene.

And of course, as I do, I made it my mission to someday interview these guys and find out what it is that makes them so brilliant. Guess what? That day has come... and gone. I did indeed get to e-nterview (email interview) them and we e-spoke about  music, obviously, school and stereotypes:

C: You are still in college right? What subjects are you studying? 

RK: We’ve both actually just finished our second year of college, meaning we are now “adults” (so say our parents) so we are free to do whatever we pretty much want. But I (Sylvester) have always had a passion for acting and did a two year course of straight theatre. Rizzle studied Media, where he has developed a passion for writing, presenting and directing, all of which are strong hobbies behind music. We studied these at the BRIT school.

C: Oh, so how did you juggle school and music? 

RK: There’s always time for music… ALWAYS! Whether it’s sitting at home and working out a nice little riff on guitar or on the train to college and thinking of punch line after punch line and scribbling them down on any piece of paper you could find. I don’t think we see juggling the two an issue.

C: Do you have any other influences outside of music? If so, what are they? 

RK: Well as I said earlier I (Sylvester) have always had a passion for acting which, believe it or not, strongly contributes to music; giving me more confidence and also being able to put on a show on stage. Rizzle’s other influences mainly stem from a growing passion within the media industry. He can find his influences from a day to day occurrence, which he has cleverly based a short film on, or his general cheeky personality giving him a lot of stage presence and also a love for being on camera. 

C: What is it that you want your fans to get from your music? 

RK: We don’t just want our fans to just “hear” our music we want them to truly listen. A lot of the songs we write are simply based on our teenage life style, something I believe many artists don’t think about when writing lyrics. I think the reason why we have the fans we do is because a lot of the lyrics can easily relate to their lives but also has a banging beat behind it so they can jive along at the same time.

C: Your music seems to focus very much on youth culture. What are your views on some of the stereotypes perpetuated by the media about young people?

RK: I believe the image that the media has given young people is, in such a small sense true but also SO unfair. For example, we find it hilarious when we meet somebody and they’re shocked that two young mixed race boys, who are making hip hop, talk with proper English language and don’t want to rob them, ha. Something else that really gets to me, is the way in a newspaper article or a news broadcast, if it was a young black or Asian male who committed a crime, it would be made so clear to the public, whereas If it was a young white male it would only state them as being male. That’s something that has always got to us, definitely something to write a formal complaint about I think!

C: Do you feel that you break away from those stereotypes in your music? If so, how?   

RK: Well in a some of our songs we do talk a lot about going out and drinking and what not but who doesn’t go out and drink ? The only thing that’s different is that we talk about it in our songs. We wouldn’t EVER write a song about guns or knives or crime etc because it’s just not us.

C: What are your plans for the future?

RK: We just want to carry on making music as we are really, but now we’re free from college we can just fully focus on it. We would like to be successful not famous. And for our music to be respected and thought as “good” music, not just any other throw away band you hear on the radio.


Make sure you look out for RK's profile coming out in Live Magazine's Indie Special in August and get Your Daily Kicks on their BANGING website.


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