To celebrate the birthday of “The People’s Prince” aka Charlie Sloth, we have collated 7 of our all time favourite Fire In The Booth’s to take a trip
down memory lane for the great platform Charlie has given artists over the years!
The Movement
This FITB was legendary. As a grime fan growing up, The Movement played a big part in the genre I loved. We as fans hadn’t heard from them as a collective for ages, so to see them back for this was great. The Movement hadn’t come together like this in so long that it created history and educated the grime fans of today on one of the most influential grime crews in history. In a recent NFTR with Ghetts, he revealed that they haven’t ruled out the possibility of a Movement album so fingers crossed!
Bashy
“All this Louis V but bruddah you aint been to Paris? you should be embarrassed”. We hadn’t heard from Bashy in a long time, and he came back with some fire for sure. Bashy has been one of the scene’s favourite yet elusive artists, but moving into the acting world a few years ago, his attention to music faded a bit. He definitely showed he doesn’t mess about on this FITB though.
Potter Payper
This FITB cemented Potter’s place in the UK Rap scene. After causing a buzz for months, this FITB showed how talented Mr Payper was. Potter had been known for killing every freestyle he appeared on, as well as releasing a solid body of work in his mixtape “Training Day”. Arguably, he is one of the most viewed rap artists from the UK, all his freestyles and videos hitting well over 100,000 views. This FITB definitely carried on that pattern, sitting on 600,000 views and counting.
Youngs Teflon
This is one of the most enticing and best bits of storytelling I’ve seen on FITB. The whole story about Melissa in the second half of the FITB showed Tef is a force to be reckoned with. This was over 3 years ago and is still one of my favourite FITB’s to this date, the way Tef has the capability to make his lyrics paint a picture, as well as staying cool and charismatic, is a skill a lot of rappers lack. Since then, Tef has released two great bodies of work in The Renaissance and The Jungle Book. Now whatchu saying Youngs?
Devlin
Devlin got one of the only reloads to ever happen on a FITB, and it was well deserved . Now on 2 million views, in this FITB you could see the venom and aggression in Devlin’s spitting which fans had been asking for since the Fuck Radio days. This was at the time of Devlin getting commercial love with his single “Brainwashed”, while many people doubted whether Devlin was the same vicious grime artist we all knew before, and this freestyle more than clarified nothing had changed with the Dagenham MC.
Akala
Akala has a gift. The gift of conveying very important social and political messages in rap, and manages to leave us in awe. Akala has released great pieces of music but has also since worked with charities, held seminars, spoken in schools and very much become a great leader and role model for the youth of today to look up to. Not only is he a great lyricist, he has a very intelligent mind and when we listen to his freestyles we all seem to walk away learning something or seeing something in a different light.
K Koke
Now we couldn’t do a list of the best FITB’s without the most viewed could we? K Koke killed his Fire In The Booth, and there’s not much more to say than that. Since this FITB, Koke went on to become one of the main names in UK rap. The most memorable part of the Fire In The Booth was the second verse where Koke used a girlfriend as a metaphor for a close companion of his, “She help me out when I’m in need of some funds, she’s the main reason I’m the g I’ve become.” If you haven’t been a fan of FITB, and you want to know where to start, Koke’s FITB is probably the best place.
Who would you have put in your top FITB’s? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts!