PS HITSQUAD

PS Hitsquad was born and raised in the Peckham depths, the place locals call the ‘Narm - a dark pun that equates the crime-plagued South London blocks with wartorn Vietnam. This mix of dry, gallows humour and easy wordplay is mirrored in PS’s own output, his lyrics a head-spinning whirl of metaphor, double-jointed rhyme schemes, jokes, and violence.

Raised on the music played in his Sierra Leonean family home - a mix of rap legends such as 50 Cent and the reggae of Yellowman and Bob Marley - alongside the homegrown rap of the likes of Giggs that ran South London’s streets in the late 00s, PS started his recording career as a core member of Peckham’s iconic Zone 2 collective. Coming together ‘round 2015 with Kwengface, Trizzac, Skully and Karma, the crew (alongside other South London institutions 410 and Harlem Spartans) were instrumental in laying the foundations for the meteroic rise of Drill, taking the sound from it’s early roots as a pariah genre, demonised in the press and the courts, to its present chart hammering status as globe-spanning youth cult.

Devilled by issues with the police, his recorded output hit fits and starts, before 2020 saw him returning stronger than ever, with a series of freestyles for Charlie Sloth, Fumez the Engineer, Kenny Allstar and grime legends Tim & Barry, each one demonstrating a high energy flow and lyrical skill that had fans clamouring to name him the greatest in the game - and in the case of his Fire in The Booth(which saw him easily switching between drill’s hectic rattle and slower rap tempos), giving the series it’s highest viewed freestyle for years.

Now he’s entering 2022 with a renewed ambition, determined to make good on all his years of promise.

“I can do what these other guys are doing all day, and better,” he points out “-it’s what they’re not doing that I’m interested in, that’s what I’m gonna do. Man don’t wanna do the average, cos man’s not the average. I saw how [Giggs classic] Talkin the Hardest went off at the O2 at the Wizkid show, 12 years after it came out and wheeew… That’s mad, that’s what I wanna do, timeless shit. Big man ting, I’m trying to make timeless music.”