On its first week of release, Goldie Lookin' Chain's single, Guns Don't Kill People, Rappers Do, went straight into the UK charts at No 3, guaranteeing them a Top of the Pops slot. But the producers pulled them because of the song title and the guys wouldn't give up their Thursday 'date' night in Newport to do a cleaned-up version. The Welsh ensemble talk to Brian Boyd
Though only a few months into an admittedly picaresque career, Welsh rap collective Goldie Lookin' Chain have already fulfilled one of their main ambitions. "We've been banned from Top of the Pops," one of them, I'm not quite sure which, says. "It's fantastic and it's an outrage at the same time. I mean, I know we're not Jimmy Tarbuck in Pro-Celebrity Golf or something like that, but it's still an outrage, even though we're thrilled".
On its first week of release, GLC's single, Guns Don't Kill People, Rappers Do, went straight into the charts at No 3, guaranteeing them a TOTP slot. But the producers pulled them because of the song title.
"Other people like Eamon and Eminem have done a clean edit of their song and got on that way, but we were too busy getting stoned to anything like that," another says. "But the main reason we didn't do it is because you have to be there on a Thursday night to do it and Thursday night in Newport, where we are all from, is 'date night' - it's when you go for a burger in Rocky's hamburger place."
Because the programme simply couldn't ignore Goldie Lookin' Chain, they arranged to screen an interview with the band. With nine core members who can be inflated up, So Solid Crew-style, to around 23 at any given time, and given their penchant for the weed, interviews with GLC can be haphazard affairs. "They put us in this nightclub in Soho during the day and interviewed us there. I think they're going to say the nightclub is in Newport, but anybody who has seen a nightclub in Newport during the day with the lights turned on won't be fooled, at all."
That is about as lucid as they get in a very wide-ranging conversation. GLC speak their own south Wales slang, have a very creative interpretation of language, and are self-confessed "total and absolute stoners".
The core members are friends from schooldays, and they all talk at once. "We're stoners because there's nothing else to do in Newport. We started off by getting a sampler and a keyboard and for about two years we would just put random words into the sampler and see what happened. Then we got stoned for the next three years."
Slowly they leaked some work onto their website, www.youknowsit.co.uk and began to attract a very small, very cult following in Newport. The central conceit with GLC is they transplant the dress codes, lifestyle and language of US hip-hop to south Wales. While label mates The Darkness may have played around with the iconography of metal music, GLC have conducted a thorough and most amusing deconstruction of rap. It's a bit like Spinal Tap with the lead roles being taken by the Wu Tang Clan.
"We're just having a laugh aren't we," one says. "We've seen some rappers on the telly and stuff like that. It's like when you're 15 and your friend's parents are away and you go around and you smash the gaff up - it's a bit like that. Have you tried that new Oxygen-flavoured water you can get at service stations? We tried the cola-flavoured one - drank it and threw away the bottle."
As Welsh bands go, they are decidedly not "4 Real", but their songs have a weird appeal. Over rudimentary beats they rap in a highly idiosyncratic manner. Song titles such as Your Mother's Got a Penis and Half Man/Half Machine offer clues.
Now that they're a bona fide touring band, their most-pressing concern is how to get their "smoke". "You can't bring it across borders because it's dangerous," one notes, "so you have to sit there and smoke it all up just before you cross. We used to have a big problem smoking weed on stage. There's a lot of us and we all wear casual gear, so there's a lot of nylon around. It's a fire hazard trying to smoke in that situation. We just have to eat it now instead."
There follows a long inter-band conversation about whether their upcoming début album should be released in the Ukraine on the same day as it's released in the UK, and there's a seriously discussed issue about whether the album should only be released in countries with the letters "uk" somewhere in their name.
They claim to only listen to salsa music and are dismissive of people who ask them questions about their musical influences. "It's like you read these advertisements in music magazines and they go 'Influences: Spandau Ballet, Steeleye Span and fishing' - it's just ridiculous. If ever we needed to recruit some new members we would have under influences: 'Smoking draw and hitting each other in a room'. At least then people would know.
"The only real way to understand what we do is to realise that we're a hi-energy dance troupe. Our only real influence is Acker Bilk's Stranger on the Shore, and on the album all we did was sample Hits 74 and we're going to make a TV programme, but instead of it being called Soul Train it's going to be called Dole Train. That would be great. Marzipan. Handbag."
GLC are still coming to terms with having such an instant hit single. "It's like people from the label try to ring us to make a video or something and we just don't answer the phone. We're a bit scared of them. We're the monkeys and they're the organ grinders."
Conversation turns back to the Ukraine for a while before the band suddenly realise what they wanted to say all along: "You know the way in the Happy Mondays they had the members of the band and then they had Bez as well? Well, Goldie Lookin' Chain are all Bez's. You knows it."
• GLC's Greatest Hits album is released on September 9th.
