British bassline act Bad Boy Chiller Crew are suing their record label, House Anxiety, over unpaid royalties. Lodging a legal claim at the High Court, they said they had “no other option” but to take action.
The trio have been signed to House Anxiety since 2020 – they claim that their label was supposed to issue them royalty checks every six months, but they only received their first in October 2024. They also alleged this royalty statement had “vast sums” wrongly deducted, and failed to include £217,000 that House Anxiety had received in a licensing deal with a subsidiary of major label Sony.
In a statement for the BBC, the Bradford bassline stars said, “Like all other bands, we don’t look for litigation, but when faced with a label that won’t let us put our own music out ourselves for our fans and not pay us royalties owed from our own music, we felt we had no other option.” Their claim also explains that they can’t work out an accurate figure that they’re owed until they receive a full set of accounts but believe it will add up to £400,000 at least.
Jamie Hodgson, founder of House Anxiety, responded to the accusations against the label: “We totally refute these claims and welcome the opportunity to clarify these inaccuracies.” Speaking of the group and their successes, he said “As an artist-friendly independent label, we remain hugely proud of every element of Full Wack No Breaks and all the hard work that went into its campaign, then stepping aside to allow BBCC to pursue their dreams of being a major label artist. There will be no further comment at this time.”
The northern MC’s rose to prominence in the 2020s. Their full-length releases Full Wack No Breaks and Disrespectful, both distributed through House Anxiety, were met with critical acclaim, with their bassline and garage revival beats, grimey flows and rowdy, humorous lyrics sticking out in an underground scene more used to stone-faced seriousness.
They had to stick to their guns to see if their up-tempo regional sound could catch a bigger crowd. “There’d been other MCs from Bradford that’d tried, and it just hadn’t worked for them,” Gareth “GK” Kelly told The Rolling Stone. “When we started doing it, I was saying to Kane, ‘[Listeners] don’t want this.’ And he was like, ‘No, they do. We just gotta stick with it.’”
Their breakthrough track, “450”, reached the official UK Singles chart, and their mixtape Disrespectful hit number two on the UK Album chart in 2022, under the licensing deal with Sony’s Relentless Label.
The group has dropped new music independently, an EP in June and a few singles more recently, but these have since been removed from streaming platforms and Youtube as a breach of contract with their label. The crew shared a headline on their Instagram publicising their dispute, saying “Hopefully this clears up a few things for a lot of people. We need our fans support now more than ever!”
