I know what you’re thinking…

How on earth did a couple of old guys end up being a powerhouse in the UK rap scene?
There’s a lot of “right place, right time” in the backstory. I should also mention that the boys intentionally keep their backgrounds a mystery, which leads people to come up with all kinds of theories about their past. And they like it that way.
They’re also kings of kayfabe (Intentionally putting out false narratives as if it were true, such as happens in professional wrestling), so it’s completely possible that some of what’s to follow has been manufactured. If so, then they did a really good job, because I fell for it.
When I got to hang out with them in Newcastle, I asked them about their alleged gangster past, how they met, and lots of other things. Considering some of the very personal discussions we’d had up to that point, and the number of assumptions and rumours about them that they shot down, I have no reason to believe that they weren’t honest with me that day.

That said, because they love the mystery about their past, I’m not going to post any spoilers here.
But I’ll tell you how it all got started, and for that we have to go back a year or more before “Pete and Bas” the rap sensation was even a thing.

Have a look at that Instagram post above. It’s from the account “Sindhuworld” and it was run by a small corner shop in Southeast London. The proprietor of that shop was a young Indian immigrant who called himself “Sindhu” and he would post random stuff, store specials, and personal anecdotes- always with an insanely positive outlook on life. It was quirky, the positive vibes were infectious, and the broken English was charming. The account developed a loyal following, with people checking in to get a daily dose of positivity.

“Uncle Bal” - whom I believe owned the store at the time, took Sindhu in several years before, when Sindhu (just a child at the time) showed up at Uncle Bal’s farm in India, saying that he had no family. Years later, they immigrated to London and eventually opened up the corner shop. In the post above, Uncle Bal is attempting to find their lost cat. Stories like this kept people coming back to the page to get updates.

They found the cat and adopted a couple more in the process. In the post above, they had made a t-shirt with Uncle Bal and the Cats, which they gave away as a door prize. Notice in that post that Sindhu mentions that Uncle Bal bought him a keyboard and that he wanted to learn to play piano. He set up the piano at the back of the shop and found a piano teacher. Guess who that was?

I should mention that Bas was/is a lawyer as his day job, but he’s been a musician all his life. He plays piano, trumpet, accordion, and a few others. He did some stints playing piano on cruise ships, he plays the organ at church on Sundays, and he even released a couple of piano albums with easy-listening songs several years ago.

As of this writing (November 2025), he’s still available as a notary public according to the firm’s website. No idea how he has time for that, though!

Anyway, back to the corner shop. Basil (Bas for short) became a regular on the Instagram, and he fit in well with the hyper-positive vibes that people expected when they logged in. At some point, they came up with an idea to give away “Basil Juice” to their customers. They marketed it as a healthy drink. I have zero idea what was really in it. The label simply showed a picture of Bas, a slice of watermelon, and a bagel sandwich.

That’s a problem, though. Even though they were giving it away, it was still required to have proper labeling with a list of ingredients and other things. It got the attention of the Trading Standards Board, who sent someone to investigate. They prevented them from giving away the juice anymore and a few days later, Sindhu received a notice in the mail.

Just before all of this happened, Sindhu and Bas had been writing a song. Sindhu hoped that if he could get the Trading Standards Bureau to just listen to the song, their lives would be filled with positivity and they wouldn’t force him to close the shop. Bas doesn’t sing on the song, but Sindhu does the chorus, frequent customer John handles a verse (heavily auto-tuned), and Uncle Bal does a short rap at the end.

They even made a video. This one is a shorter, edited version. The original is no longer available.

A few weeks later, the Trading Standards Bureau sent another officer to check up on the store to make sure they were no longer giving away the Basil Juice. He didn’t initially announce who he was with, but posed as a customer. While in the store, he heard piano music coming from the back and went to check it out. It was Bas noodling away on the keys, waiting for Sindhu to begin his lesson. The two struck up a conversation and were instant friends (according to both of them). Guess who that TSB officer was?

By all accounts, Pete and Bas are very, very different people - but sometimes it happens that you feel a connection almost instantly. Both of them have said “we’re lifelong friends that have only known each other for a few years”. And when you’re sitting and talking with them, it’s apparent that they care for each other very much. The chemistry there is unmistakable and Pete has said in interviews that he and Bas can talk about anything, even very personal things, without judgement. It’s great when you have a friend like that.

Fast forward a bit. Pete’s granddaughter Lily is visiting and she changes all the car radio settings to rap music. He changes them back, she changes them again and he finally just left it, figuring he’d change it back after her visit.

Bas rode in the car with him during this time and said, “what the hell are we listening to?” Pete admitted that it was growing on him, so Bas listened for a bit and said, “Well, I like the storytelling aspect of it, but I could write better lyrics than that.” Bas is a writer as well as a musician. He’s even written a couple of screenplays: “Age Cannot Wither” and “The Brazilian Investment” where he played the lead role and Pete had a bit part.

Even with Bas’ writing background, Pete was skeptical about writing lyrics. Bas was undaunted, however, and went home and wrote out most of their debut song, “Shut Ya Mouth”. Pete added a few lines, they tapped their grandkids (possibly nephews, possibly no relation at all) for the backing music, found someone with an iPhone to make a video, and put it on YouTube, hosted by the channel “Grime Report TV”. It was extremely low-budget. Even the Mercedes they pull up in was an Uber. They paid the driver extra to sit there until they got the shots they wanted.

It went viral almost instantly. As of this writing, it has nearly 2 million views. So they made another: “Do One” (British slang for ‘fuck off’). At one point near the beginning of the song, Pete breaks the fourth wall and addresses the people who assumed they were a parody act: “Look, right… we ain’t here for a laugh. This is serious.”

This video, with better-crafted lyrics, more polished delivery, and better cinematography, got even more views than the first. That’s when the interviewers came knocking. As I mentioned before, they are masters of kayfabe and they love the mystery surrounding their alleged shady pasts, so I won’t post spoilers. But people in the comments of their videos started assuming that these two MUST be actual gangsters from the old days of the Kray Twins and the Richardson family (notorious crime families in London several decades ago). Rather than dispel the rumours, the boys leaned into it, including a now-famous interview with Noisey Raps. They dodged the calls for the interview for awhile, then finally agreed to do the interview in Pete’s car with the interviewer riding in the back seat. It was that or nothing, they said.
During the interview, Pete drove all over south London, stopping occasionally to let Bas get out with a bag, then come back later empty-handed, or with a different bag. This clearly rattled the interviewer, and at one of the stops, he asked Pete, “should I be worried?”
Pete replied, “Not at all. If you’re in this car, with us, you’re safe.” (The auto-generated captions misquote the line)

Pete gets asked, “What is Bas doing?” and Pete dodges the question with “just a bit of business is all”
After several more such stops, the interviewer asks Bas, who just returned to the car, “what are you doing at all these stops we’re making?”
Bas delivered the perfect response: “Let’s talk about music instead”

And from then on, the fans of UK Drill and Grime rap - which is known for its violent lyrics, drug references, and criminal activities - were on notice. These two might be the most gangster of anyone else in the scene. The comments on that interview are priceless, with people assuming that Bas was dropping off drugs to his clients.

To this day, the rumours are everywhere and people believe them. “They were / are really gangsters”, “Bas used to be a bareknuckle boxer”, “Pete has ties to the Richardson crime family”, “their songs are about things they actually did”, “Pete is never seen shown holding a gun due to conditions of his release from prison”, and more.
As I said - no spoilers - but some of the above is actually true and some isn’t. I’ll let you decide.

During this time, they began to dig in and study the craft. The rhymes got more complex, the lyrics were more focused, the amount of wordplay, double entendres, and punchlines increased exponentially. They did a collaboration with established rapper M24 on a song called “The Old Estate”. That was great for them in two ways: [1] having an established artist take them seriously added a lot of credibility to them as a ‘real’ rap duo, and [2] the fact that their verses (writing and delivery) were better than M24’s verse, and it wasn’t even close.
And just like the famous 1932 World Series game where Babe Ruth pointed at the stands before hitting a home run, Pete’s first line after M24 does his verse is, “Look! The old boy’s winning…”

And THAT got the attention of Fumez The Engineer, who offered them a spot on season three of his “Plugged In With Fumez” series. This would be their big chance at a larger audience and it would either make their career or kill it. “Plugged In” is a serious platform that showcases up-and-coming UK artists, so just getting the chance to be on it was a huge boost to their street Cred.
It opens with the Plugged In logo and the opening strains of the Fugees’ “Ready or Not” as the backing music. In the hip-hop world, if you have the balls to rap over THAT sample, you’d better be good.

And they brought the goods. They crafted a nearly-perfect introduction track that showcased their clever writing, the surgical precision of their delivery (including a wild section where Bas goes into double-time and puts the rhyming words on the upbeat of beat two, an insanely difficult thing to pull off), the hard-hitting gangster lyrics, and a finale that has them delivering back-and-forth bars at lightning speed without even breaking a sweat. They out-rapped everyone who had come before them on that show and they made it look easy.
It racked up more than twenty million views in the first two years.
Suddenly, they were legitimately famous, people took them seriously, and they developed a rabidly loyal fanbase in the UK that began to spread across the world. Their writing got even better, their delivery got tighter, and they started selling out their live shows, eventually touring all over the world with concerts that can only be described as “absolutely bonkers”.

And yes, that’s me on stage rapping Pete’s lines at the Seattle show while he dances and shows off his nipples. That was a wild night.

So that’s the backstory of how two grandfathers became rap superstars, often called “one of the best rap duos of all time.”