Miscellaneous - Interview

  by Aaron Brown

published: 11 / 2 / 2005

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Article

2004, year of the chav, Britain underclass became the buzzword of the year, even more strangely entering the Oxford English dictionary. Tracksuits, Burberry and cheap gold jewellery from Argos that would shame Mr-T became the must have items for our new prols while the Beckhams became chav royalty with their love of designer tack and dodgy names for their kids. An eight piece hip-hop band from Newport in Wales took advantage of this and became stars overnight. With their tongues firmly in cheek, songs like ‘Your Mother's Got a Penis’ and ‘Guns Don’t Kill People, Rappers Do’ did for 80's hip hop what The Darkness did for 70's cock rock. Pennyblack Music talked to MCs Eggsy and Mystikal before a sold out show at the famous Barrowlands in fashionably chic Glasgow. PB : You guys pretty much came out of nowhere, I mean one minute you’re just this little group from Newport then you’re everywhere. Eggsy: I know. It was weird because we’ve been doing this for a long time, never even thinking that it would get on to the gig circuit, let alone the big media circuit and we got lucky. People started getting into it and buying our stuff. The first sort of six or seven albums we just recorded stuff and passed them out to mates. Then Mystical got the website on, he’s the king of computer, the IT master and made this amazing website and we got something like 20,000 hits a week. Mystikal: We had a counter on the website that kept resetting every time it hit 20,000. Eggsy: We started to think this is nuts because people are into it but we thought it wouldn’t be viable for record companies because they wouldn’t take us seriously because we haven’t got guitars and we’re not miserable. So it was kind of weird when we started getting emails of little record labels, publishers and managers that were interested and we thought that was cool. Then it was bigger labels so then we thought let's give it a go and do it properly. And we did our first gig last summer, not last Glastonbury but the Glastonbury before Mystikal: 2003. We called it the Glastonbury warm up tour and it was one gig in Cardiff the night before. Eggsy: We weren’t even going to Glastonbury, but it was the Glastonbury warm up tour. That was the first gig we ever did. That was when we realised. 500 people showed up to the show and it sold out and people were paying something like a hundred quid for a ticket outside. We never thought anyone would share the same twisted sense of humour as us. It was fucking weird. PB: What are your influences? Eggsy: Shit 70's horror. We’ve lots of influences. Mystikal: Vaults of horror with Tom Baker and anything from the house of horror basically Eggsy: Glen Campbell's ‘Wichita Lineman’ (Sings song). It’s like pretty much anything, it’s all like eye candy. You look at it, and anything you see. You’re like a kid and staring at it and thinking that’s amazing. PB : What’s your most expensive jewellery? Eggsy: My chain. I actually got it for free but it retails at about £1:50 (Takes out of pocket). And I think it’s actually a teenage angst because it looks like a wallet chain but it doubles around your neck. 100 per-cent plasti. £1:50 can’t go wrong with that. It’s got this little plastic attachment to hold it together. Mystikal: Yeah it looks like a security tag like the things they use for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay. PB: You played the Tsunami relief concert in Cardiff. How was that ? Mystikal: That was fucking amazing. Eggsy: The only other big indoor thing we did was the Smash Hits awards. It was horrible. There were loads of TV people with headphones and clipboards. The Tsunami thing was brilliant. It was a great day and everyone was on the level. Even Bryan McFadden was there. We’ve met him a few times and we’ve smoked fags with him and he never has fags (cue dodgy Southern Irish accent). But it was a cool day and Billy got on stage at the end with Eric Clapton. PB : You seem to play a lot of festivals. Is it just the drugs? Eggsy : It’s brilliant; it has been the busiest year of my life, ever. It’s fucking weird because the last few years we’ve been doing just routine jobs. Sometimes I just want to lie down and sleep but at the same time it’s amazing. We were opening most of the festivals last year, so we would be going on about midday. So we get to bed about four in the morning, get up at half past ten, being sick, and then during the gig some of us would be sick on stage and then coming back we would be fucked the rest of the day. Mystikal: Then you’d start all over again the next day PB : Is your whole gimmick damming critiques of the British underclass or is it just a piss take? Mystikal: I only understood about three of those words. Can we have it again ? PB: Are you just taking the piss out of chavs ? Eggsy: It’s a damming critique of pop music and main stream media because it’s all so polished and fucking bollocks. You know what it’s like. You put the TV on and it’s over polished shit, so what we’re doing is shit and cellotape and its crap Mystikal: We’re just taking the glamour down a level, taking it down a notch and concentrating on what we believe to be important. PB : What about arty types who analyse your music as if there’s some hidden meaning? Eggsy : The idea is you get stoned in a room. You have a laugh. You do something that’s crap and other people laugh at it because it’s crap. PB : Like the Bloodhound Gang? Eggsy: Yeah, that’s the same sort of thing. It happens when something new appears. People over analyse it. Mystikal: Some people have too much time on their hands; they know too many big words. There’s too many Brian Sewells in this world, him and Malcolm McLaren have the best voices. Eggsy: Yeah, he skanked the Pistols and then claimed he invented hip hop. PB : Does your mother have a penis? Eggsy: You see, a lot of people always get confused, it isn’t ‘my mother’s got a penis’ it’s ‘your mother's got a penis’. It’s the ultimate pub insult, someone is giving you shit. Fuck you son, your mothers got a penis, can’t go further than that. PB : How many members are there in the band now? Eggsy: Technically there are 23, there are eight main members who do the show but usually we bring others if we can get them off their arses. It depends on whose high and can be bothered to pack a bag. PB : So do you really court girls at McDonald’s? Eggsy: Yeah McDonald’s, Newport Sunday lunch, you can’t go wrong, McJunk, the place to be for a bit of romance. PB : Are you guys for real? Mystikal: I think we’re probably more real than a lot of the acts out there at the moment, but you’re not going to see Prince being sick on stage. Eggsy: Yeah, that’s true, in the physical sense, is that real enough. PB : Who’s your biggest fan? Eggsy: Johnny Depp, apparently, which is quite mad. That’s funny as fuck. You know he’s into his British comedy. He was on 'The Fast Show' and he wants to be on 'Little Britain'. Mystikal: Trisha, as well and her kids. DCI Burnside of 'The Bill' is a fan, he did the voice over for the TV advert for the album. PB : What’s the difference between ‘safe’ and ‘safe as fuck’? Eggsy: Having a bird in your bed on a Saturday night is safe, but having two Brazilian models is safe as fuck. PBM: Cheers. You knows it

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