Teenage Kicks

HIP-HOP teen sensations Rizzle Kicks play their third show in the region this year when they arrive in the city on Wednesday.

Southend-based duo Jordan "Rizzle" Stephens and Harley "Sylvester" Alexander-Sule burst onto the scene just over a year ago when their debut album Stereo Typical charted at number nine.

Three top-ten singles were spawned: Down With The Trumpets, When I Was Youngster and Mama Do The Hump, while collaborations with Olly Murs, Ed Sheeran and Jessie J further broadened their appeal.

With a nod to the old skool, the boys also embrace everything from country, ska and hip-hop to straight-up pop with ridiculously catchy tunes. They've been compared to De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest.

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But accurately pin-pointing their sound is tricky as Harley explains, ahead of their Plymouth Pavilions gig.

"We've slaved to find a definition of our sound because it's more edgy than pop but it's not pure hip-hop either – it's somewhere in between. We used to say indie-hop but that sounds really lame."

Their approach to music making is anything but lame and the lads followed a DIY path, maximising their YouTube channel by creating lo-fi videos.

It was their film for Down With The Trumpets – made with Tony Lockerbie, a wedding photographer they met at a party "who had this really amazing camera" – that caught the attention of Island Records.

Released as a single, the fabulous feel-good party tune hung around the top ten for weeks notching up about ten million views.

The duo played their first headline tour of the UK this spring and triumphed at major festivals including Hyde Park in July in front of a crowd of 80,000 people to celebrate the Olympic torch relay finale.

Support at the Pavilions next week comes from Londoner Mikill Pane who has been taking hip-hop on all sorts of interesting journeys through his collection of self-released EPs as well as working with Ed Sheeran, Paloma Faith and Example.

He was snapped up by Mercury Records recently after taking Reading Festival by storm.