Stereoboard Talk To Rizzle Kicks About Their Rise To Pop Stardom (Interview)
Tuesday, 01 November 2011
Written by Nick Duquemin
A lot can happen in a year in pop music — and to teenage hip hop duo Rizzle Kicks, last autumn must seem a very, very long time ago.
This time last year the pair—Harley "Sylvester" Alexander-Sule and Jordan “Rizzle” Stephens—were working, respectively, as a teaching assistant and at a greyhound track. They were doing music on the side, but as they freely admit, they weren’t really up to much at all.
Then they made 'Down with the Trumpets', an infectious slice of sunny hip hop straight out of 1988, and along came a little label called Island Records.
“We were just freaking out!” Alexander-Sule tells Stereoboard ahead of the release of Rizzle Kicks’ debut album, 'Stereo Typical'. “We were still in our part time jobs, but we had made an original video to 'Down with the Trumpets', and the right people had seen it somehow…
“We weren’t really anywhere, to be honest. And now, three months later, we’ve done so much crazy stuff”.
That stuff includes getting their voices on Olly Murs’s Number One single 'Heart Skips a Beat', two of their tracks being named Radio 1’s Record of the Week, and an ecstatic Wembley Arena gig for the same station’s Teen Awards last month.
“It probably wasn’t the best gig we’ve done because of the nature of the situation”, says Stephens, “but seeing 9,000 people jumping to us at Wembley was one of the first times I've been properly, like, almost overwhelmed and emotional by how quickly things have come on”.
Rizzle Kicks first made waves earlier in the year with their inventive reworking of Jessie J’s 'Price Tag'. 'Down with the Trumpets' was their breakout hit, and the pair recorded their first full-length album over the late summer.
The result, released on October 31st, is a catchy set of tracks that hark back to the classic hip hop of the late 80s and early 90s. Stephens cites Jurassic 5 as a “major influence”, and there are shades of irreverent early jazz-rappers like De La Soul.
“We were just so excited to be put in the studio with these different producers, we just made so much material really quickly”, says Stephens. “And then our label were like, whoa slow down a bit”
Rizzle Kicks made it by themselves, but they don’t pretend to be ingénues. Both are graduates of the famous BRIT school of performing arts, and you get the feeling that they’re not totally shocked to be in the limelight.
“As a kid I just entered like any competition going, because it was just fun”, says Alexander-Sule. “So we get asked to do an interview, or something on TV or on the radio, we're not going to not do it. We don't want to shove ourselves down anyone's throats or anything, but...
Next up after promotion for the album is a tour supporting fellow breakout rapper Professor Green.
“It’s gonna be awesome. We haven’t properly done a lengthy tour before…we get along with Pro really really well, so it’s gonna be a lot of banter I think.
“Our sounds really complement each other as well. I think we’re in the same vein of music, so I think us supporting him will benefit both of us,” adds Alexander-Sule with confidence.
“We’ve spent a fair bit of time with him recently, and we’re just glad that we get along really well. So I don’t see how the tour could be a disappointment.”
Big words coming from a pair of 19-year-olds with just a few months’ experience under their belts. But Rizzle Kicks’ enthusiasm is so infectious, it’s hard not to be taken in. They might be sure of themselves—but they’re having so much fun, it’s hard to begrudge them their confidence.
So what’s next, when the tour’s over and the album promotion has died down?
“We’re going to make a good second album. A brilliant second album. We’re gonna defeat the stigma attached to new artists”, says Stephens.
“From the small dose of the industry we’ve had quite abruptly as a result of '[Down with the] Trumpets' doing well, I can kind of understand how people lose the plot a little bit.
“Even though I sometimes worry after watching films like Control (about the unravelling of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis) that I’m going to go absolutely insane, I do think we’re quite grounded people, and in the same way that Mike Skinner held it down completely with his second album, I really want to just crack on with it and make another record we love.
“So I now want to make the best song on our album like ten times better, and make that the second album”.
The way Rizzle Kicks are going, you wouldn’t want to bet against them.
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“We were just so excited to be put in the studio with these different producers, we just made so much material really quickly”, says Stephens. “And then our label were like, whoa slow down a bit”
