The Scottish rap duo that pretended to be American in order to be taken seriously

Posted On December 14, 2024December 14, 2024

In the early 2000s, a brash young hip-hop duo called Silibil N’ Brains began cropping up around the UK music scene. They told wild tales about growing up in Northern California, meeting at a San Francisco rap battle, and rising through the ranks of hip-hop. They scored a record deal with Sony, opened for Eminem, and hung out with Madonna. They projected a kind of youthful bravado, electrifying audiences with their wild onstage antics and exuding the sort of shamelessness that was dominating American celebrity culture at the time.

Then, the lawyers stepped in. As it turned out, Silibil N’ Brains were not from California. They weren’t even from the US. They were two Scots named Billy and Gavin who had met at college in Dundee. Their career, however, was no joke. Through sheer force of will and conniving, they’d managed to fool the music industry and get away with it for a few glorious years.

Scotland has produced countless figures of cultural significance over the centuries. The philosopher David Hume, for example. Tennis star Andy Murray. One out of the five main hobbits. One thing the country is not known for, however, is its hip hop artists (the genre-bending Edinburgh group Young Fathers being a prominent exception). Instead, Scotland’s musical reputation has been overshadowed by the likes of Lewis Capaldi, The Proclaimers, Annie Lennox, and Calvin Harris.

When they first started making music together, Gavin Bain and Billy Boyd (not to be confused with the actor who played the aforementioned hobbit) were full of confidence. They knew their work was good, and as far as they were concerned, agents and record producers would be falling over themselves to work with them. In 2001, they took the train down to London to meet with Polydor Records, expecting a warm reception. Instead, they were laughed out of the audition. No one, apparently, could see them as anything other than “the rapping Proclaimers.”

Crushed, they returned to Dundee, where Bain had the sneaky idea of re-recording some of their tracks in an American accent. It fooled their friends, so they added in Boyd’s vocals (also in an American accent) and sent it off to a competition run by the BBC. They won. From there, the duo immediately landed a manager, got a lawyer, and snagged a record deal. Soon after, they were opening for Eminem and his group D12 at Brixton Academy.

“The show was our moment of glory,” Bain told The Courier decades later. “We were totally outrageous and the audience all loved us.” He even revealed that some of the fan forums for Eminem’s group said the duo was better than the main act.

The performance was also the beginning of the end.

“When we got off stage… our lawyer was waiting for us” Bain said. “And basically he said he knew who we really were.”

It wasn’t just legal troubles that they were facing. Both men were feeling burdened by the pressure to maintain their guise. Bain had developed a troubled relationship with alcohol and their relationship was crumbling. Eventually, Boyd ditched London altogether and went back to Dundee.

More than two decades after their ruse began, Silibil N’ Brains are getting the big screen treatment. Fellow Scot James McAvoy is making a film about them, marking his directorial debut. Starring Samuel Bottomley and Seamus McLean Ross, it’s expected to be released sometime next year.

In the age of internet sleuthing and fans’ sense of entitlement to know everything about the artists they follow, it’s difficult to imagine a scheme like Bain and Boyd’s lasting for a handful of days let alone a handful of years. Luckily, however, there is a much larger appetite for musicians to defy expectations and cultural stereotypes. Scotland still isn’t known for being a hotbed of hip-hop talent, but it’s more than conceivable that, if Silibil N’ Brains were to submit their music to a record label with their own accents today, they wouldn’t be laughed out of the room.

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