Chapter 1: Who are Gavin Bain and Billy Boyd, and what is their story?
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I got in the water in the very early morning before the sun had risen, and the water was pitch black. I started swimming, and I felt the water hollowing out around me and felt like something really big was swimming below.
I'm Phoebe Judge, and this is Love, a show about the surprising things that love can make us do. More than 100 episodes, available now on This Is Love. This episode contains language that may not be suitable for everyone. Well, let's just jump right in and let's just start with you introducing yourself.
Oh, God.
And it's not a trick question. It's like a very simple, just what's your name?
You just started off with the hardest question.
This is Gavin Bain. But for years, he went by another name. It all started in 1998 on his first day of college in Dundee, Scotland, when he met another student named Billy Boyd.
I was running late. I was skateboarding in, and I saw this guy standing outside the campus just nonchalantly. I mean, I'm Russian. This probably sums up both of our personalities. I'm Russian. I'm thinking, God, you've messed us up already, you know? And he's just standing there. He's got, like, a bag of jeans on, hair cornrolled. A Hanson t-shirt. I don't know why he's wearing that.
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Chapter 2: What inspired Gavin and Billy to create their rap group?
And I'm like, hey, have I got the time wrong? Why aren't you inside? And he's got Nirvana. I can hear that that's blasting. He's got it so loud. And he looks at me and he's like, what do you want? He's so offended that I've interrupted Nirvana. And then I kind of rush off in and I'm like, oh man, first person I meet looks really cool. And I've just like made an enemy of the first person.
But then I get lost. I go into the wrong class.
After a while, he managed to find the right classroom. He was 45 minutes late and the only seat left was next to the guy he'd met out front.
And when we were in close range, he was looking at my bag and I was looking at his bag. And I had Rage Against the Machine, Cypress Hill, Wu-Tang Clan badges on my backpack. And he had the same, but he had Korn and he had some other metal bands mixed in with Tribe Called Quest. So it was like together we covered the entire gamut of the coolest bands in the world at the time.
And he had Limp Bizkit. So yeah, we just kind of cracked it off. We started to talk in quotes from kind of rap films from the early 90s. Yeah, it was just straight in with the flow. And by lunchtime, we were freestyling. Quietly at first, and then by the end of lunchtime, we had performed our first gig, in a way. Everyone was kind of gathered around us, and we were... We were rappers.
And on the way home, I turned to him and said, hey, do you want to be a rap group? And he was like, abso-fucking-lutely. And that was it. We were a rap group.
They practiced all the time, competing with each other to make up the smartest and funniest lyrics they could on the spot.
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Chapter 3: How did they prepare for the audition in London?
So we created a game called Porcupine, and that was a way for us to battle rap each other, but then also throw each other words, and then we'd just start freestyling off the word.
And why did you call it Porcupine?
Because some people think that's a hard word to rhyme with. But when someone throws a hard word like porcupine, it can make the game funner. But also, we would use it as, like, that would be the last word to try beat the other person with. You couldn't win the game unless you ended with something to do with a porcupine.
They started performing gigs in bars near their college in Dundee. And their friend Oscar joined the group. Gavin says their main influence was, quote, the best white rapper we could think of, Eminem. Eminem released his major label debut album, the Slim Shady LP, in 1999, not long after Gavin and Billy had met. One reviewer wrote that his lyrics are so clever that he makes murder sound funny.
One night, Gavin, Billy and Oscar stayed out very late and ended up going back to Gavin's room. Oscar got on the computer.
I mean, the internet was kind of early days, so he just randomly found this thing that was on a website called undergroundhiphop.com. And it was just this kind of flyer, this poster for Are You the Next Eminem? And as soon as we saw it, we thought, yeah, of course we are.
A record label was holding open auditions in London. Gavin, Billy, and Oscar took a 13-hour bus ride there, playing porcupine most of the way. But when they finally got to the audition, the line to get in went around the block twice.
it was quite apparent there's just no way we're going to get in because there's far too many people here. And so what we decided to do was to go and ask if we could battle people for their spot. So knowing hip-hop people, once you get challenged to battle... You can't say no. If you say no, you essentially step aside and let us just take your spot. So at first, most people would say yes.
And then we started battling. And eventually after you beat like 10, 15, 20 people, the seas part, you know. And by the time we got to the front, there was so many people behind us kind of rooting for us. Like, oh my God, these guys actually are like eminent. So the feeling outside is that these three Scottish kids are just going to walk this.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did they face during their first performance?
And so our confidence is so high. Well, as soon as we get in and we're going past these dance studios and it starts to become very commercialized and we start to feel like, you know, so we're kind of shrinking as we got closer and closer and closer.
When they got to the audition room, they handed the sound guy their CD. Gavin remembers there were Xs on the floor for them to stand on, in front of a table with three English talent scouts from the record label, A&Rs, sitting behind it.
And then we said to press play, and the guy presses play, but he hasn't turned the volume up, so by the time the beat comes in, it's already halfway into the song. So we're like, no, no, no, please put it back to the start, and now we're just shaking because it's all going wrong. So then we start to rap, What can numb the impact of a fat drum? I'm smacking my spot. The rapper's acting handsome.
I'm out of this. And as soon as we start to rap, you know, you're hyper aware. The situation, you're so focused on everything. You're looking around the room. And when you're a rapper, you're constantly making eye contact with people because you feed off their, you know, their response.
And the three of these A&Rs were just like kind of looking at each other at the side of their eyes and kind of trying to stop themselves from laughing. And then about 30 seconds in, 30, 40 seconds into my rap verse, they just kind of put their hand up to the sound guy and said, cool, cool, cool, that's enough. And then they just were kind of like laughing. And one of them said, is this a joke?
You know, did Dave put you up to this? And we said, no, this is serious. They said, this is a cool comedy act, but not quite what we're looking for. You know, Scotland is Groundskeeper Willie. It's Braveheart. It's Sean Connery. You know, it's drunk ginger people in skirts. Scotland is not rap. We can't sell that.
Gavin says they all went straight to a pub after that. And while they were there, they decided to go and try to see someone else before they left London.
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Chapter 5: How did their American personas affect their careers?
I just thought, they don't get it. So then, let's go somewhere to someone who gets it. And there was a guy called Dave Loeb who ran Wordplay and the biggest hip-hop magazine in Europe, Hip Hop Connection. So I thought, let's go and see Dave Loeb and we'll ask him. You know, so we go there. It's kind of like this security, you've got to get past a security gate. So we wait for ages.
Eventually, a guy bringing records comes up the road. He goes in, we sneak in. We get to their office. Billy's trying to flirt with the lady on reception to buy his time to get in until he walks past. And eventually he walks past and we're like, Dave, you know, and we kind of like just don't want to leave. We're like, look,
it's taken a lot to get here we're not leaving until you give us like five minutes so eventually we go into his office and um we're like here's our songs like let us know what you think and he's like all right you know so he starts playing the cd and he plays the first beat and he's like Oh, God, yeah. And you can see he really loves the beat.
And then as soon as one of us starts rapping, he's like, nah, skips to the next one. And then the same thing, he's like, loves the beat and then skips to the next one as soon as vocals come in. And the third one, he loves the beat again as soon as we start rapping, pulls the CD out. And he said, don't make me say it. And I said, no, say it.
And he's like, you fucking sound like the rapping proclaimers. And the Proclaimers are great. They're an amazing Scottish group. They sing that classic song, I Will Walk 500 Miles. And they're Scottish heritage, but he's meaning it in a, like they're a bit of a joke. You know, like no rapper would ever listen to that, you know.
Gavin says that he and Billy didn't say a word to each other for the whole 13-hour bus ride back home.
I kind of was really just trying not to cry. And a part of me was like, they are right though.
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Chapter 6: What led to the downfall of Syllable and Brains?
You know, I saw that if your job is in marketing at the time and hip hop was all about your credibility, what you've gone through, you know, like what street you come from, you know, like the branding of rap in America was so powerful. And Britain didn't quite have that yet. And Scotland definitely didn't have that. So they were right. They can't sell it. So I understood that.
But then that left me with the predicament of, well, then we can never do this.
When Gavin got back home, he started spending more and more time alone. And he wasn't sleeping well. And then one night he was watching TV and a movie came on.
a film that I'd seen loads from the 80s called The Secret of My Success. And there's a scene where Michael J. Fox's character, he's trying to get this job, but he's a little small town boy and he's trying to make it in New York City. And he's just getting turned down everywhere, you know, because he doesn't fit. He doesn't fit in their world. And...
He goes into this one office to get changed because he's not wearing the right thing, and he's trying to go to this meeting that he's got. And in this office, the phone rings, and he picks it up, and the person says, is that so-and-so? And he goes, yeah. And he starts to just pretend he is. And he gets so empowered that he can be that person.
And I think, well, why don't we just become someone else?
If being Scottish was the problem, then they'd become Americans. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal+. Thanks to Squarespace for their support. Making a website can be intimidating, especially because it's often the first thing people see about your business.
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Chapter 7: How did Gavin cope with the aftermath of the group's breakup?
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Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. Gavin Bain started recording himself rapping his lyrics with an American accent, just to see what it sounded like.
So the first few times, sober, that I tried to record myself in the American accent, it didn't sound good. It sounded fake. Like, the way the tongue moves isn't the same as when you switch to another accent. So I was struggling with that, and then I was thinking too much when I was sober. So then I took...
certain uppers with certain downers to knock myself off center so I could stop being hypercritical about myself and allow myself to flow. And it sounded so good. It sounded real.
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Chapter 8: What lessons did Gavin learn from his experiences in the music industry?
It sounded like this kid is from California and he sounds like Eminem. I liked the song so much that I took it to a party. My friend Brian was throwing this big party, and he used to throw really cool parties where he'd have DJs and everyone who was into hip hop in the area would be there.
And so I go into the party, and I gave our DJ at the time, Skinny, I gave him the CD, and I was like, I'll play this. It's a new American rapper I just heard play this. And he played it right after an Eminem song. And everyone was dancing and loving the Eminem track, and then he played that song, and nobody
Like no one batted an eye.
They were like, is this the new Eminem track or something? Like they just thought it was Eminem or they thought it was an American rapper. And so I'm watching the room and I look at Billy and he looks over to me because he knows they're my lyrics and he's just like mind blown. He's like, oh my God, it sounds real.
And then Gavin told Billy about his idea to pretend to be Americans. Gavin says that Billy said no, but he did want to see what it sounded like, and he experimented with recording some of their songs in an American accent. A few weeks later, their friend Brian, who had thrown the party where Gavin played the song, died in an accident. Gavin and Billy drove to the funeral together.
On the way there, they listened to the radio. And then one of their songs came on, with them rapping in American accents. Gavin says they each thought they were playing a trick on each other. But when they got to the funeral, Brian's brother told them that before Brian died, he'd entered the song into a national radio competition as a surprise, and that it had won.
We'd beaten every single rock band, every single folk act, every pop act. We won it. And the song was getting airplay. And Billy finally kind of turned around and said, OK, let's do this for Brian. And so we were on our way.
Someone from Sony had heard the song on the radio and had gotten in touch to see if they could meet with Gavin and Billy in person in London in two weeks.
So we had two weeks to perfect the accent. And so we made this agreement that we would speak to each other all the time in American accent. Everything we did, we did in American accent. We would have sex in American accents. Um...
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