Since "In & Out" blast onto the UK Garage scene, 3rd Edge have been the most talked about Urban pop band of the last 12 months. With shout outs from Ms Dynamite, So Solid and Misteeq - JTee, Thomas Jules Stock and Dan Grant kicked off the garage and breaks scene in Gillingham, Kent of all places before heading out nationally on the Urban club circuit. With an album already in the can which mixes up drum & bass speed MCing with R&B melodies the band are heading out on the road with 2 scratch DJ's for the Sugababes tour in which they promise to deliver the best in old skool breaks. Designer Magazine caught up JTee as the band were in rehearsals the week before they hit the road.

Q: Over the past 12 months you've had support off everyone from So Solid Crew to Ms Dynamite and now you're heading out on tour with the Sugababes. How does it feel to get all these shout outs from the dons of the UK Urban scene?
A: We know the Sugababes quite well and always have a giggle with them so it's going to be quite good fun. We've done Smash Hits and other tours, but this is our first proper supporting tour because the Oxide and Neutrino tour we were meant to be doing got cancelled. Sugababes is a totally different thing and it would just be good if we can reach out to their audience.

We've done a few Urban Tours and seen people that we've looked up to and they're coming out for us and liking what were doing. The reason we get asked to do a lot of gigs is because we so energetic and know how to hype up a crowd. Normally we do the drum & bass nights, but this time were having to do something a little different because we don't know what the crowd will be. We've got 2 scratch DJ's coming out with us and it's all old skool breaks and a lot of beatboxing in there. When you're used to coming from the clubs you've got to do it live and you can't do it any other way. We just want to show people that were not fakers!!!
 

Q: You all grew up in Gillingham in Kent - not the most Urban bling bling friendly place is it?
A: I took it upon myself to try and organize a Garage and R&B night in a club and I hooked up with a guy called John Jules which is Thomas' uncle. We launched on a Sunday night and the first night had 50 people in there and by the end of the month we were packing out 1200 people in a 800 capacity club. So we kind of brought that thing to Gillingham, there were a lot of people following it but before us you had to go into London - but we brought to London to Gillingham but in a Gillingham way!!!
 

Q: Your dad was a DJ as well. Please tell us he wasn't one of these Wedding DJ's playing "YMCA" and "Celebration"?
A: He actually got me into garage music. I was purely just R&B and hip hop cos I used to be a scratch DJ and I used to love rare groove and old soul reggae because that's what I grew up listening to. My dad used to play rare groove and when the whole speed garage and 2 Step thing happened it was kind of cool because it was R&B in it's own right.
 

Q: The thing that separates 3rd Edge is that it is totally organic and not manufactured. How important is that for you?
A: We met in the club and me and Tom were more friendly at first...Dan used to just come up and try and get on the mike and eventually when we let him he blew us away. It went from there and at the time Tom was scouting for a deal so his uncle just filmed us 3 together and the record company loved us. It was really just a case of being there at the right time.

When "In and Out" came out it hardly got any radio or TV because the lyrics were quite a risqué. But when it went in at 15 in the charts and number 1 in the garage charts it was wicked.
 

Q: We've spinning the album sampler for the past 6 months. Like a lot of the garage acts have been moving away from that sound, the album is more R&B and hip hop based than people would expect. What can we expect from the full album?
A: We completed the album a little while ago, but we've just been in the studio recently doing our own thing and we've got to reorganize the album a little bit. Primarily we were labelled as a garage act, but we never was a garage act, but at the time beats and the bass had the garage sound. Were more into the R&B thing with the drum and bass feel on it - the whole R&B tempo and soulful music with the fast tempo raps on it.