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Pete and Bas, they've been doing it for a while now, couple years at least started during Covid.
The story is one of their granddaughters showed them modern UK rap and they got into it. Some people say they used to be proper hardcore organized crime members in top of that.
They do live shows and everything tho, like it is really them doing it
Lately there's more rumors that their earliest stuff was ghostwritten by another (much younger) duo who just started up with incredibly similar music, Nine and Dex:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLW5rQe4ziA
Edit:
Went back and listened to a couple of there songs...
T-Pain and the one I linked both even start with a woman saying
Nine... And One...
And one of the younger duos has a dude named Nine. So he's probably producing both or something. It's weird I never saw anyone else mention that before.
But even if Pete and Bas didn't write their first stuff (they might have) them being old as fuck is why it went viral and the style is catching on. More variety in rap is always a good thing.
But if you want the first old British guys rapping, it's The Northern Boys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLLQFLXz6VE
And they're in one of Pete and Bas' first videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e5oKp-tCY4&pp=ygUZcGV0ZSBhbmQgYmFzIG1yIHdvcmxkd2lkZQ%3D%3D
So like, maybe it's all organic, but after watching the Kneecap movie, I really really really want one about how all this shit went down starring the actual musicians playing themselves