Their songs of ‘bikes, jewellery and JD Sports’ have made the West Yorkshire rappers an underground hit. Now they’re aiming for the mainstream
It is a sweltering afternoon in Minsk, Belarus, yet Bad Boy Chiller Crew are looking decidedly, well, chilled. Already an underground sensation in West Yorkshire, the Bradford bassline rappers have escaped the
British lockdown to plan the next phase of their ascent. They have come to Belarus on “medical tourism and business” grounds, says
Rapper GK, who has undergone a chest reduction procedure after years of struggling with his body image. He has documented the process in a series of affectingly candid before-and-after
Instagram posts complete with supportive comments underneath from his
Friends. Speaking over Zoom, he shrugs it off with a humour that encapsulates the BBCC ethos: “It’s 2020! Why hide? I don’t give a fuck.”
A year ago the MC trio of GK, Kane and Clive – AKA Gareth, 25, and Kane and Sam, both 23 – were getting by driving an ice-cream van, DJing at the weekend and packing boxes in a warehouse, but have since become one of most hyped new acts of 2020. BBCC’s first official outing, in May 2019, was a song-advert for a local pizzeria, with the lads donning aprons and serving up dishes from the menu. Its follow-up, Pablo, took a classic old-school garage tune, DBX’s 2 People, and ramped it up into a modern bassline-rap banger; its video – them doing donuts in a field in a Vauxhall Corsa, dancing with a particularly well-endowed horse – is about to hit a million views. By the end of the year, the Guardian had named them one of its “50 New Artists for 2020”, and they were approached about filming a documentary with Vice, which drops in July.