Gwent rap pair strike gold with Lady Sovereign support (From South Wales Argus)

Gwent rap pair strike gold with Lady Sovereign support

9:36am Friday 19th June 2009

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A Gwent rap act has completed a UK tour supporting top artist Lady Sovereign, playing to crowds of 500 and being besieged by fans wanting autographs.

The Binary Kids formed six months ago, but have already sung on a Bassment Jaxx track, are recording an album and have had much interest from record labels wanting their signatures.

Jenna Dickens, 17, of Thornhill, Cwmbran and Kitty Cowell, 22, of Handpost, Newport described their success as “insane”.

They met when rapping at an event last December. After forming a mutual respect for each other, they became a duo.

They uploaded demos to Myspace which producer Semothy Jones heard and offered to become their manager.

He circulated their work and Bassment Jaxx chose them to sing a segment on track Twerk.

Mr Jones also worked with rap artist Lady Sovereign and she watched them play a Levi’s One to Watch event in London. They were stunned when one of their heroes then asked them to support her on a UK tour.

London-born Miss Sovereign is known for her aggressive delivery of rap music.

Her single Nine2Five reached number six in the UK charts in 2006 and album Public Warning has sold over 250,000 copies worldwide.

The tour took in six venues from June 6th to 12th - which Miss Dickens had to juggle around her final year art work at Coleg Gwent.

They played gigs in King's College, London, Brighton Concorde, Birmingham Academy, KIng Tut's, Glasgow and Manchester Academy.

“We were playing in front of 500 people who were going mad.

“We didn’t realise we had to run away backstage after and were just besieged by people wanting photos and autographs,” said Miss Dickens.

She started writing rap music, putting her life into words at 11 and came third in a UK freestyling event.

Miss Cowell started writing poetry to counter her dyslexia at a young age.

She saw rap as a natural progression and last year was in the final 14 of thousands of entrants in Channel 4 music competition Road to V.

The Newport University fashion graduate said: “The amount of exposure in our first six months has been unreal, insane.”

They both play keyboards, rap and sing. Their songs are about life and having fun, using metaphors.

They also use the digits 1 0 0 in a trademark Binary Kid rap - which is binary code.

"People say we look geeky and we should be in the library. So we called the EP Party in the Library," said Miss Dickens.

They circulated 150 copies of the EP and are now working on an album at studios in Cardiff Bay.

Manager Semothy Jones is supporting them and there has been interest from several record labels about signing them.

For information, visit www.thebinarykids.com.

Lyrics: Robot Dance: I'll do the robot dance for you forever until my batteries run out and my memory erases."

Library: "Specs on, braces up, shirt and tie, I'm geeking out. "

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