so solid crew

905. ’21 Seconds’ by So Solid Crew

/ UK #1s blog / 4 Comments

Garage music continues on its mission to be as annoying a genre as possible…

21 Seconds, by So Solid Crew (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 12th – 19th August 2001

The three hardcore UK garage number ones – ‘Bound 4 da Reload’, ‘Do You Really Like It?’, and now this – feel like the musical equivalent of a teenager playing their music out loud at the back of the bus.

I could argue that I’m just an old fogey; but actually, I was fifteen when this made number one. I could easily have been that twatty teen. And while I’m sure me and my schoolmates were plenty obnoxious, none of us were ever into garage music. It felt very inner-city London; not small-town Scotland.

Like the two earlier garage #1s, this has lots of MCs spitting rhymes over a minimal 2-step production. The title refers to the fact that each performer gets twenty-one seconds to deliver their verse. Which at least keeps things quite fast-paced, and if one rapper doesn’t grab you then you know they won’t be on for long. Problem is, none of them grab me. And this isn’t me speaking as someone who doesn’t like rap music. There are rap songs I love. I named a rap song as my most recent Very Best Number One. It’s just that none of the rappers involved on this track have anything interesting to say.

What the title doesn’t refer to is there being twenty-one MCs on this track, though it starts to feel like it. There was actually a mathematical formula involved in creating the record. According to Wikipedia: “21 seconds is arrived at as the song’s tempo is approximately 140BPM, has a key of G minor, and each rapper has 12 bars of 4 beats (48 beats at 140BPM, when worked out to the nearest integer, rounds to 21 seconds).”

So Solid Crew had, at any one time, somewhere between nineteen and thirty members. Which makes them by far the biggest group to reach #1, although fewer than ten were involved in this track. The one member of So Solid that I can name with any confidence is Lisa Maffia, who is the only MC who sings her verse. Turns out I also recognise Romeo and Harvey, who had decent-ish solo careers away from the Crew. Interestingly, Oxide & Neutrino (of ‘Bound 4 da Reload’ fame) were So Solid members but didn’t feature on this track.

Of the three garage chart toppers that I mentioned, I would rank this in the middle. It’s not as intentionally annoying as DJ Pied Piper, and there is a lot of cultural relevance here. It’s punk for the new millennium, the sound of rebellious youth. It’s extremely modern, and there’s a clear line from this through to modern UK rap hits from the likes of Stormzy or Central Cee, while the I got twenty-one seconds to go, I got twenty-one seconds to flow chorus went just as viral, by 2001 standards, as Do you really like it, Is it is it wicked... I don’t like this record, but that’s down to personal taste. I must say, when I reviewed ‘Bound 4 da Reload’ I never thought I’d be placing it top of any list, but there was a joie de vivre in its ‘Casualty’ sampling novelty that is lacking in this song’s charmless slog through five minutes’ worth of identikit rapping.

One other thing worth mentioning here is the first appearance of the N-word in a number one single, in Megaman’s opening verse. I’m a big fan of tracking offensive language in chart-topping singles, from Lonnie Donegan’s ‘bloomin’’, to John Lennon’s ‘Christ!’, to Paul Weller’s ‘bullshit’. It feels like a switch was flicked the moment we hit the 21st century, with Oxide & Neutrino, and then of course Eminem, cramming their chart-toppers with vulgarity. All that’s left is the debut appearance of the c-word on top of the charts (and I don’t mean Coldplay…)

857. ‘Bound 4 da Reload (Casualty)’, by Oxide & Neutrino

/ UK #1s blog / 11 Comments

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 1st and only solo #1s)

1 week, from 30th April – 7th 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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