“The reaction has been so crazy. I’ve never seen such a reaction in the club,” Lethal Bizzle told the BBC.

Each time, the grime artist’s debut single, Pow! blasted through the speakers of British nightclubs in the early 2000s, chaos reigned on the dance floor.

Adrenaline-fueled clubbers pushed and punched each other. Drinks flew through crowded, sweaty rooms late into the night.

“Basically it was people having fun mosh-pitting – which is very normal at festivals – but in the clubs I used to play it never happened back then ” says Bizzle.

“A lot of club owners were like, woah, woah, woah, what’s going on here!”

The three-minute barrage of energy, which begins with Bizzle before the mic passes between 10 MCs, became so notorious that clubs banned it across the country.

Signs in DJ booths began to appear, stating: “All Lethal B tracks are banned from this room (including instrumentals). »

A sign of repression, it was never played live with all the MCs together.

That’s about to change, two decades after the song’s release, as Bizzle and the whole crew prepare to perform Pow! at the Roundhouse in London in December.

It’s a surreal twist for the rapper that would have been unimaginable in 2004, when he created the piece.

Ugh! was a track born out of frustration with the music industry.

Major labels weren’t investing in grime – despite hopes they would after Dizzee Rascal’s debut album, Boy In Da Corner, took off the year before.

“Dizzee was having a fantastic time – he won the Mercury (Music Prize) and that gave us a bit of hope. It was like, ‘yes, they’re recruiting artists again,'” Bizzle says.

“Nothing happened. It was just Dizzee. The rest of us were back on pirate radio.

But London’s pirate radio stations were where Pow! created a frenzy, even before its release on iTunes.

And that’s where Bizzle honed his craft, clashing with other MCs on the airwaves.

With Pouw! he wanted to “create the atmosphere of pirate radio on a song”.

“When we were in the studio, there was just a constant energy. Everyone spits their bars, everyone goes crazy. I was like, ‘I don’t think that’s ever happened on a song before.’

Bizzle began searching for beats and calling his favorite underground MCs.

He finally managed to gather 10 of them in a room to record the single including D Double E, Flowdan and Jamakabi.

He played the rhythm he had chosen – but most of them weren’t very enthusiastic.

“I was like buzzing, like, ‘bro, wait until you hear this beat, it’s going to blow your mind’.

“I played the beat – no lie – 80% of the MCs were like, “Huh? What is this?'”

D Double E remembers that he wasn’t blown away at first. “It wasn’t like it was rubbish… I just remember not really feeling the vibe,” he told the BBC.

After a rallying cry in the studio, which Bizzle compared to Sir Alex Ferguson at half-time in a Champions League final, the other MCs reluctantly agreed to record their verses. When they listened again, their opinions began to change.

“When I heard the beat, I knew I had killed the beat,” D Double E explains.

It didn’t take long for Pow! to take off on pirate radio and on Channel U, dedicated to underground British urban music. In December it entered the top 40 at number 11. The following year it won the Mobo Award for Best Single.

Labels started calling and gigs started getting booked.

What led to the song being banned from clubs isn’t entirely clear – but Bizzle believes a fight broke out when Pow! was played in a hall and word spread. It happened again and again.

DJs started sending him photos of signs in booths warning them not to play the track.

Then some of his shows even started to get cancelled, including one in Leicester after police warned the club could lose its live license if it was allowed to go ahead, Bizzle recalls.

“Then I thought this is really, really serious, this is getting out of control.”

At the time, London clubs had to fill out a form when hosting events with DJs and MCs. It included the question “Is there a particular ethnic group present?” » – which was dogged by accusations of racism.

Police said they had reduced gun crime at clubs and played a role in reducing serious violence – but even though the ethnicity clause was removed in 2008, the form targeted a disproportionate number of events organized by black and Asian artists and was eventually removed.

Bizzle recalls how efforts to remove his music began to fail after music magazine NME compared Pow! to God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols.

“Once in a generation, a record comes along that makes people sit up straight, a rallying cry to the masses, a barometer of social discontent that turns places into mad riots,” the magazine reads.

Festivals then started booking Bizzle and he played sold out shows in Reading & Leeds.

Jay-Z rapped on the Pow! instrumental. There have even been discussions about the American superstar being featured on an official remix of the song.

Memphis Bleek, a rapper close to Jay-Z, confirmed in a podcast this year that a version had been recorded but never released.

In 2010, the song was once again making waves on the streets of London.

Tens of thousands of students were protesting against an increase in the tuition cap. On December 10, a stone’s throw from Big Ben, a sound system was installed and the demonstrators began to play Pow! The crowd went wild.

Bizzle says he was proud when he saw the images.

“We got along. I made Pow! because I was almost fighting against what was happening with the police and the industry trying to shut us down,” he says.

“It was a similar message to the students, I was happy to see it used in the way I wrote it. It was the perfect backing track for this moment.

Bizzle says the inspiration behind the December show, which will celebrate 20 years of Pow!, came from an unlikely source.

“It’s so random. Last year I was chilling out watching Netflix and saw the Robbie Williams documentary,” Bizzle says.

Inspired by Williams’ reunion with the other members of Take That, Bizzle thought it was time for him to do the same.

“I was sitting there thinking, I miss the boys.”

Some of the Pow! MCs have left music, including boxing promoter and manager Chris Eubank Jr. Napper, but everyone will be on stage on December 1 alongside special guests including Roll Deep.

“Everyone has drifted to other horizons, but the main thing is that everyone is still alive and healthy,” Bizzle says.

“When the show happens, it’ll be emotional, man – 20 years later and seeing how people react to the song like it just came out today.”

“We need to give people what they want and what they’ve been missing.”

Revealed: The True Story Behind Jay Z’s Guest Verse on Pow! by Lethal Bizzle

For 45 minutes, Radio 1’s Lethal Bizzle and Target discussed everything from 90s drum’n’bass to East London, More Fire Crew and met the rappers who inspired him.

He also revealed the true story of Jay Z’s involvement in his iconic (and controversial) track Pow! following a performance at the Royal Albert Hall.