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Question: What do you get when you take nine young MCs and one DJ from Chingford, Essex?

Answer: The freshest UK Garage outfit; the Blazin’ Squad, currently burnin’ up everywhere from Brixton to Bounds Green, that’s who.

Anyone who’s been to a Garage rave or even turned on the radio on a Sunday morning will more than familiar with the Blazin’ Squad’s signature tune. ‘Standard Flow’ is anything but: a messy (meaning good) collage of busy b-lines and Spaghetti Western samples coupled with their Hip Hop-influenced chatting, it’s already won props from EZ and The Dreem Teem. Not bad for a bunch of school-kids from the Home Counties. We caught up with Flava (loves Garage as much as R&B and Hip Hop), Rocky B (full name Rocky B the Platinum Badman, fact fans) and Kenzie (has been DJing and MCing since the age of 13) to chew the fat prior to their debut single.

“We’ve been listening to the pirates for years, since we were all thirteen, that’s where our love of Garage comes from,” explains Rocky B, one of three MCs we’ve managed to pin down in the studio mid-recording. “We’d be listening to So Solid, Pay As You Go, Heartless, all that, as well as lots of Hip Hop like DMX and Eminem.” As fully paid-up members of Generation Text everything goes, musically speaking, for the Squad. Be it Rap, R&B, Pop – even Nu-Metal gets its props from Flava: “Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit - any of that Rock stuff with a Rap edge to it”. It’s through this love of Rap in all its forms that the boys got into DJing, raving and the whole bling bling world of UKG. “We go to Atlantis in Epping, Eros in Enfield, a lot of those big under-18’s nights,” explains Rocky.

Over the last six months, however, they’ve gone from being just another bunch of Garage wannabes to the hottest act on the teen scene. It all started earlier this year when they cut ‘Standard Flow’ for the underground. This limited-pressing, released through their fledgling Weighty Plates imprint, made it to number three in the UK Garage chart and even found its way into East West Records’ in tray. A few phone calls and meetings later and hey presto, the boys had a deal.

Their first proper release is a double A-side of their aforementioned debut with ‘Crossroads’. “It’s a cover of an old Bone Thuggs ‘N’ Harmony tune,” Kenzie informs us. “Our DJ saw it on MTV and thought ‘that’s a catchy tune, we should do something with that’ and so we thought we’d try and give it an R&B spin.” As if the original ain’t enough to get you excited, the remixes should: Ras Kwame (with ragga MC Elephant Man) and D&B lord Andy C have both given it their unique treatment and club demolition seems imminent.

So how do the lads themselves think it’ll do? “We wanna go all the way,” admits Flava, “Top Of The Pops, all that.” “We wanna go to number one!” interjects an excitable Rocky B, no doubt hoping for the same overground success enjoyed by your So Solids and suchlike. Fame is, of course, a tricky business – just look at the paranoia, justified or otherwise, within the aforementioned Battersea crew. How do they feel about all that? Flava: “It’s quite intimidating. When you’re famous you can’t walk down the street without getting hassled and we’re quite young. We don’t wanna have to move houses and stuff because of that kind of pressure.” Kenzie: “There’s the good sides as well, like the girls!”

Ah, the ladies. It seems our young hopefuls have been attracting a lot of attention from the fairer sex when they’ve been touring the UK, as Rocky B tells us: “We played a club called Amadeus in Rochester, where we did ‘Standard Flow’ live. And it was just mad – girls were screaming for us and chasing us back to our dressing rooms.” A dirty job, but…

With a single already under their belt, an LP to follow (“we’ve done about 18 or 19 tunes so far, worked with lots of producers. We’ve done everything from a love song to a bashment tune,” says Flava) and a massive tour of England and Wales’ under-18’s clubs still to come, the next twelve months look peachy for the Blazin’ Squad.