The garage revolution picks up pace. All three so-called ‘garage’ chart-toppers that we’ve met so far, though, have been light and fluffy. Garage with the edges softened. Garages that you might find on a semi-detached house in a middle class suburb (Craig David did sing about a jacuzzi, after all).

Bound 4 da Reload (Casualty), by Oxide & Neutrino (their 1^st and only solo #1s)

1 week, from 30^th April – 7^th May 2000

Here though is some proper garage. A garage covered with graffiti on an inner-city estate. Sirens. Gun shots. The theme tune from a long-running BBC hospital drama… Okay, that last bit doesn’t sound too street, but the sample from the ‘Casualty’ theme lends this record its name. It adds a dramatic energy to parts of the song, and works interestingly well when repeated on staccato synths. And it’s the only good thing about this record…

The rest of this song is abrasive nonsense. Bound for da bound bound for da reload… is the hook, repeated over and over, against a simple two-step beat. There’s some rapping, toasting, scatting, call it what you will. There’s a jarring spoken sample from the film ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ (Ah! Shit! I’ve been shot…) I was fourteen when this came out, and yet hearing it now I feel like an old fogey. It’s borderline unlistenable.

Having said that, the sweary sample above meant that ‘Bound 4 da Reload’ received little radio play, and so this probably passed me by unnoticed at the time. It does mean that it becomes one of a handful of chart-toppers so far to have featured swearing, and only the second after The Outhere Brothers to feature an F-bomb. But we’re on the precipice of swearing in number one singles becoming commonplace. Glancing down the list I can see the imminent debut of a certain bleach-blonde rapper, which will contain more swears than any previous number one combined.

Oxide and Neutrino were members of garage/hip-hop collective So Solid Crew, a group of anywhere between nineteen and thirty singers, rappers, DJs and MCs. In just over a year the group will score their one and only chart-topper, but it is Oxide & Neutrino who struck first here. Leading me to wonder, is this the only instance of someone enjoying a solo number one before their group has had one…?

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