In 2002, an S Club 7 spin-off was launched: S Club Juniors, a group of pre-teens singing similarly peppy pop tunes. Sadly, they won’t feature on this countdown (though seriously, ‘One Step Closer’ is a banger), but they’re here in spirit. For Blazin’ Squad, read So Solid Crew Juniors…
Crossroads, by Blazin’ Squad (their 1st and only #1)
1 week, from 25th August – 1st September 2002
A group of ten sixteen-year-old lads, covering a rap classic by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, #8 in 1995 (and eight-week Billboard #1). It’s easy to scoff – the band name is so clearly a teenage brainwave – and many did. “Self-proclaimed pioneers of chav culture” is a particular favourite. But I do like to take each number one we meet at face value.
And this is okay. It’s a lot poppier than anything from So Solid Crew, but that makes it better, in a way, for me. For someone so far removed from the target audience for an early-noughties hip-hop act. It’s also much poppier than the original, with the lyrics largely re-written. At the time critics mocked them for this, but it makes sense. They were ten boys from North London, not an American rap troupe from Ohio. Nowadays a largely white group like this would get in trouble for appropriating such a song if they didn’t change the words.
But that begs the question: were Blazin’ Squad real MCs, or posh boys cosplaying? I can’t find much background on the individual members, but their hometown was Chingford, which internet searches reliably tell me is a fairly middle-class suburb in north-east London. But then, many of the pop success stories of the 21st century are posh types who made it because they could always have been bailed out by daddy, so in that regard Blazin’ Squad were perhaps pioneers.
That may be pushing things but, as maligned as the Squad were, this record making number one set them up for a couple of years of chart success, and six Top 10 hits. I should mention here their second biggest hit, the genuinely fun ‘Flip Reverse’, one of pop music’s great odes to delivering via the tradesman’s entrance, as it were. If only that had made number one. We’d have had a great time getting to the bottom of it.
Anyway. One final question needs to be addressed. Were Blazin’ Squad a boyband? I ask that not because I particularly care – and yes, they were boys in a band – but because if they are then I think they mark the end of the golden age of ‘90s-‘00s boybands which had started with Take That in 1993, or even perhaps with NKOTB in 1989. The next new boyband we’ll meet at number one will be JLS in 2009. (And before anyone asks, I’m deliberately excluding Busted and McFly from the boyband equation, because they held – and I’m pretty sure used – guitars).
The UK Number Ones Blog 
What is this, proto-Brockhampton, lol. These boys look silly and goofy (and I meant that with the utmost of kindness, they look so endearingly youthful, if they went to my high-school in Western Sydney, people would’ve patted them on the head when they acted like thugs or stuffed them in a locker, you can only get away with that type of style and look when you’re young). The original is pretty great 90s hip hop (the best era of rap, I think most will agree, though 2000s and 2010s have some excellent hip hop) with excellent vocals. This is definitely a more kiddy version of that song, and I’m sorry, this is just my bias, but the heavy British accent combined with the rap style vocals I just find very silly. Not a British thing, I also find Aussie rap silly. American rap is really the only rap I find convincing, which is a shame I have that bias.
Anyway, ignore my ramblings, it’s a cute cover. I don’t think they’d want me to think that, but it’s adorable. It doesn’t even sound out of date since a lot of R&B music in the 2000s sounded like “Tha Crossroads” with the heavy mix of hip hop soul.
I don’t know how they would have gone down at my school, as that sort of hip-hop wideboy didn’t really translate to suburban Scotland. What’s for sure though is that I wore one of those hideous baggy, glossy shirts that they sport in the video back in 2002, aged sixteen, when I started trying to get into nightclubs. And I doubt I looked any better than they do…
kiddie-wanabee rappers kind of embarrassed me a bit when they popped out – I was charitable enough to chart it for one week at 69 (arf) but I’ll stick with the original thanks. Flip Reverse went top 40 for me, so I agree with you there! The Boy Band definition has always been a bit variable – The Monkees are often said to be the first boyband because they were hired to be a band/TV star – but they wrote their own songs from day one (not the singles) and played (eventually) on the records, where young doowop singers often did none of that, they just sang. Which is more of a boyband in the modern sense. All very confusing! My definition would be: do they play instruments or write songs? Not a boyband then!
Re: rap accents, British rap in the 21st Century has crossed the Atlantic with Dave, Stormzy and earlier rappers like Dizzee Rascal very much had the British accent and doing it well. I think the cringeyness prob comes from the schoolboy-vibes. Though RP UK rap would be hilarious, rappin’ about getting extra homework for missing Latin lessons and being down to dad’s last half million 🙂
I know you can argue the Monkees, the Beatles, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, but for me, a boyband is a particularly late 80s – 90s thing. Dance routines, ballads, key changes… The cute one, the tough one, the quiet one, the gay one… Probably manufactured, or at least auditioned for. Not so much writing or not writing your songs, as Take That had several originals and they were as big a boyband as you could get. That still doesn’t answer whether Blazin Squad were a boyband, but I’m erring on the side of ‘no’.