Kray Twinz, Lethel B, Gappy Ranks & Twista - What we do - out now!

Text by Ashanti OMkar

Exclusive pictures at Gizmondo Store, London by Akin Falope (www.aworan.net)

The world stopped and listened, when ‘Beware of the boys’ (Mundian To Bach Ke), Coventry based Punjabi MC’s flagship track hit the sound waves, this was back in 2003! Little did people expect a ‘Bhangra’ phenomenon to occur - after Timbaland fell in love with the ‘Tumbi’ and Dr Dre decided to sample Bollywood, Asian music took a forefront, rising from underground, to the mainstream. Since then many a musician has come out with Asian sounding tunes and beats, especially with a few going into the top 10, from Punjabi MC at the time, to Jay Sean and Raghav more recently.

Set to hit the charts with a never before achieved production of US and UK artistes together are the Kray Twinz (not to be mistaken for the criminal underworld Kray twins, of the 60s), the producers behind the tune that’s hitting all the clubs and hotspots -”What we do”. These Coventry brought up identical twins of Sikh origin got together with the ‘fastest rapper in the world’ (that’s what the Guinness book of world records says about Twista) and British ‘grime’ rapper Lethel B, along with ‘ragga’ musician, Gappy Ranks, producing what is set to be the Asian single of 2005.

Back to Punjabi MC (AKA Raj), though his name has been synonymous with the whole ‘Asian’ re-emergence in the mainstream, years after Apache Indian made waves in the charts - little did people know who did the work behind the Bhangra tune to beat all Bhangra tunes, all we saw was the Jay Z rap and the joint MOBO award, but after 2 years, no more real offerings have come from that camp. On pondering over this and looking through the production credits, one would notice that the ‘Kray Twins’ are attributed. A little known fact also is that BBC cameraman; Eqbal Surae also co-wrote and produced the track and even sang it on Top of the pops. The original vocalist of the track was a singer (Labh Januja, who has sung for Tigerstyle, Sanj, Zeus, RDB, Surinder Ratten e.t.c), in the depths of Punjab, who couldn’t be flown to the UK in time for the Top of the pops performance. But, I digress. What has all this got to do with the Kray Twinz - well, they were the ‘ghost’ producers of the track, their name got left out of the US and UK releases of the single, for some strange reason, it wasn’t even spelt wrong (twinS), but not put there at all. They also worked on the remix of Mark Morrison’s ‘Backstabbers’, also with Punjabi MC.

Silently, the ‘twinz’, Jaz & Jat watched the Asian music scene evolve, while making pertinent contacts, there seems to be no Hip Hop personality these guys haven’t mingled with and their much awaited album, ‘Indian Summer’ is due for a 2006 release. It boasts a plethora of top Hip Hop artistes, the first of which is Twista, with their already Top 20 selling release, ‘What we do’. Tight production, the right contacts and the ability to draw artistes to their talents have paid off, when people like Truth Hurts, Elephant Man, DMX, and Snoop and also Alicia Keys in the pipeline, all feature on their upcoming album. The fruits of their labour have shown with this timely release, as the Asian scene has been quiet for quite a while now, with many artistes not knowing whether to be Asian sounding or not and the record companies not knowing where to place them! So, to coincide with Diwali and Eid, their ‘What we do’ single is making its rounds at all the parties and being loved by their growing fan base. Wikipedia have even coined a term for this type of fusion music, as ‘Indian Hip Hop’. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_hip_hop).

Having started out as DJ’s, the Kray Twinz have done their rounds in the UK as residents at Shaanti and many other widely acclaimed club nights, particularly in the North of England - “We’ve been Djing form the age of 12-13 and about 5 years ago, we went into production, especially in terms of remixes. Mundian was our 1st”. They now have their own production company, having picked many talents from all over, making their base from London to Coventry to USA - it’s becoming a global operation. They have their own artistes, producers and remixers. In terms of artistes, they tell us: “We have some of the cream of the crop involved in our company, Krazygroove, we do everything by ourselves, we are self funded and the package is done in a fully professional manner. Krazygroove is the record company that our record is released on. Alison and Sisters Apeksha and Shibani will hopefully be forming a girl group to be the Indian En Vogue!”

In terms of tours, the Kray Twinz have indeed toured with many of the top Hip Hop acts, not to mention, many of them are going to be featuring on their future album, ‘Indian Groove’. On this, they say: “We’ve toured with pretty much every big US act there is, on hearing us live, they heard in more depth what we do and we made a kind of friendship with them, not like a business relationship, anyone we’re worked with, like DMX when he comes to the UK, he joins us on stage, Truth Hurts always looks for us when she comes down, Black eyed peas - really good friends of ours - all these people have been on an informal level - people do find it weird that they see 2 Sikh guys hanging out with all these hip hop bods, but that is just ‘What we do’! We have tried to build new content and we feel that we are achieving this on a daily basis, taking our vision worldwide. Of course our Parents were sceptical at first, but that have realised that we are making progress and even though they are very religious people who don’t follow our music, they are inconspicuously supportive of us.”

If the track ‘What we do’, which is already in UK’s top 40 mainstream chart, sounds familiar, it is because another Krazygroove talent (on the grime side of the label entitled Colourful State), Luton based Low Deep had a club hit with ‘Straight flush’, which is essentially a remix made with the beat of ‘What we do’. Having been in possession of the tune for the past 2 years, they remixed it for Low Deep with a garage style beat and with it being released with the big guns, they took the base beat, made it more ‘hip hop’ and added some live strings sections to it. Hence this is a rich, moderately Asian sounding, but also very unique track. The idea was “to properly unite the UK and US, with an Indian flavour in most stuff - would you believe, Twista did this track for free!” Gushing about how much hype the track is causing, they say: “We’ve managed to do what no one has been able to do, uniting UK and US and we have it all done with no egos, they [the artistes] do justice to the song, in the UK, they stick together and work so differently. We’re thrilled that there is so much airplay about this track, so much on the cable channels and also in print media - it’s a great response.” They speak of B2, their percussionist with such flair: “He plays everything from the Tumbi to the Tabla, he has even designed his own 3 notes up and down Tumbi, a one of a kind. The add: “We do the production, we put all of it together and want to make a unique sound for every track we do. It happens spontaneously, we build up on ideas as twins and as long-time DJ’s and we know the track will be DJ friendly - we use samples or instruments only if there is a reason for it”. Asking about sibling rivalry, they both decidedly say: “Certainly not - we have never had competition - we work as a team and share and we know we can’t conquer the whole market by ourselves, UK is based on many talents and many styles and we want to bring our vision to the world. All our artistes are ready to perform live and are ready to be put on the spot - the proof’s always in the pudding - this is what the UK should be about!”

On the track, ‘Why’ by Jadakiss, one very interesting aspect was that Lee Ryan, of band Blued did the vocals - “Lee is an English guy who picked up the lyrics in the ancient Sanskrit language, which was a message of peace and wouldn’t offend anyone. He had got them off a Tamil guy and some publications have mistakenly printed that the lyrics were in Tamil. Lee learnt the lyrics by himself and did it all himself - no guidance no nothing, but sadly, as he was signed to Blue at the time, we weren’t able to release the track.” They also revealed that they were keen to work and mix all sorts of other languages and mix them into Hip Hop, which is a type of music that accepts and works well with all kinds of world lyrical content. They have an ‘urban sound’, which is their ultimate aim, and armed with a mobile studio, not just Alicia Keys but look out for jazz guitarist, Ronnie Jordan who is also to feature on the album - making it an album of eclectic and varied styles. Armed with oodles of confidence and talent, it is no doubt that the fresh talent the Asian scene has been awaiting is here, in form of these extremely cute, doe eyed Kray Twinz!

More on the Kray Twinz at: www.kraytwinz.co.uk and their album Indian summer, which is to release in 2006.

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