About Rizzle Kicks
Rizzle Kicks are a British hip hop duo from Brighton, England, consisting of Jordan "Rizzle" Stephens and Harley "Sylvester" Alexander-Sule . Their debut album, Stereo Typical, was released in 2011. As of May 2012, Rizzle Kicks had sold over 1 million singles and over 600,000 albums in the UK.
Since 2015, Alexander-Sule has released music under the stage name Jimi Charles Moody, and since 2016, Stephens has released music under the stage names Wildhood and Al, the Native, as well as under his own name.
In 2006, Stephens began attending rap and performance workshops with the Brighton-based charity AudioActive, joined a year later by Alexander-Sule. The pair attended AudioActive's Hip Hop Foundation project and Stephens continued attending workshops and performances until 2010. Stephens is quoted as saying this work helped the duo "hone our skills and build a passion towards the career that we're in now. AudioActive did us a lot of good and without them we wouldn't be here!"
Stephens and Alexander-Sule both attended the BRIT School, where Stephens studied media and Alexander-Sule studied theatre. Stephens was in the process of making his mixtape Minor Breaches of Discipline where he rapped over samples of some of their favourite artists and asked Alexander-Sule to sing over some of the tracks. Realising how well their styles fitted together, they formed Rizzle Kicks in 2008. The name stems from 'Green Rizla', an early nickname given to Stephens by a football teammate after a crew of the same name from the school that he attended at the time. That nickname evolved into 'Rizzle', and the duo decided on the suffix 'kicks' due to their shared love of football.
As a newly formed duo, they hustled for beats from local producers, honing their sound, and created several bedroom demos, three of which ended up on their debut album. They also created a presence online; blogging on their website "Your Daily Kicks" as well as posting lo-fi music videos to their YouTube channel. The videos were co-directed by the band and made by Toby Lockerbie, a wedding photographer they met at a party. A video was made for a demo of "Down with the Trumpets" in the summer of 2010, closely followed by the video for "Miss Cigarette". During that time, they had finished college and Alexander-Sule went on to work as an assistant drama teacher, whilst Stephens was flipping burgers at the Corals Greyhound Stadium in Hove.
Their YouTube videos caught the attention of several record labels and in November 2010, they signed to Island Records, part of Universal Music. They continued work on their debut album and worked with several producers including Ant Whiting, Norman Cook , The Rural, Future Cut, and Craigie Dodds.
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