Yahoo News Bristol's Krush shares her remarkable story ahead of BS3 Live festival
When some of the biggest names in hip-hop, R&B, rap and soul music take to the stages at Ashton Gate in Bristol next month, there will be one name on the bill who might not quite be as familiar to the tens of thousands in the crowd as the rest.
For alongside the likes of Craig David, Ne-Yo, Jess Glynne and local legend Roni Size is a singer from Fishponds given the opportunity to play the biggest gig of her life. But when the email came through asking if she would like to play in front of a potential crowd of 32,000, there was more than a moment’s hesitation.
Because Krush, real name Selina Hall, from Fishponds, had to do some quick mental calculations. “Right now, I’m literally nine months pregnant,” she told Bristol Live last week. “The baby’s due in two weeks, but it could be any time. The gig is in June and I realised that I will have pretty much just given birth. I will have a newborn baby,” she said.
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“So I had to stop for a second and think ‘can I actually do this?’ Is it going to be possible? Am I capable of doing the biggest gig ever?’” she said. “And I sat on it for two days. I needed time to think. And I realised that I’ve been through way worse than that, way bigger challenges in my life. I said to myself ‘what are you thinking? God has put it right in front of me - motherhood and this in one go'. It’s a no-brainer, I have to do it,” she added.
That was back in March, and Krush’s name was duly announced by Ashton Gate in the second tranche of big announcements, alongside five other acts including such household names as Dizzee Rascal, Stefflon Don, Roni Size and 90s boyband Damage.
But among Bristol’s music scene the biggest buzz was for Krush, one of their own from back in the day who went away to London, got part of the way to ‘making it’, until life and circumstances and tragedy happened.
Krush was one of the first female MCs, DJs, rappers and singers to make a name for themselves in Bristol around the turn of the 90s into the 2000s. With garage music blowing up in the UK, she got her name because - as a young girl - she would have to wait until all the male performers had had their turn and then crash the set. That morphed into ‘Krush’ and it stuck.
She was just 16 in the very early days, living in the council’s young people’s hostel accommodation, the Bristol Foyer next to Bristol Bridge on Victoria Street, and part of a group called Ammo and the Female Regulators. By the end of her teens, that group fell apart and Krush was determined to make it in music, so did what so many Bristol talents have done before - and moved to London.
Initially, things went well - from around 2004 to 2007 she made a name for herself in the growing London garage music scene, working with the likes of Mike Skinner from The Street, the Mitchell Brothers and music legend MC Skibadee. Then the music career took a back seat when she had the first of her two children - soon to be three - and she moved to Stevenage to support her mum. Her two boys are now 17 and 14. “I’ve done this birth and motherhood thing before, but it’s long enough ago now for it all to be new again,” she joked.
Life has a habit of coming full circle. In 2020, her mum, oriiginally from St Paul's, had a stroke and passed away just before the Covid lockdown.
In fact, the 2010s ended with the passing of her grandmother, a member of the Windrush Generation who devoted her life to working as an NHS nurse, her brother and her mum, and it was that collective loss, and the need to recover from it, that brought her back to music and then back to Bristol. She moved back to the city in 2022 and instantly reconnected with the city’s music scene, relaunching her career, older and wiser but with a renewed hunger to make up for lost time, and with an archive of unreleased music.
She got Adrian Stone, her old manager, back again, and got a band together, and has since played pretty much every venue in Bristol and beyond, including launching a new stage at Boomtown, but perhaps the most poignant was 2023’s St Paul’s Carnival, which saw her play three stages across the day.
“It was just brilliant, one of the places I played was in the park, and I just looked out and saw all these young girls watching. I grew up in Easton and Fishponds, I was one of those girls watching once, and hopefully I was showing them that it’s possible, they can get up on stage too one day,” she said.
“Before I moved back to Bristol, I’d been doing everything by myself, and it was just great to have such great support, a great team around me again,” she added.
So what can the crowds at Ashton Gate expect? After making her name as a garage MC in the 2000s, what is the Krush of 2024 like now?
“I call it rap soul but I don’t stick to any one kind of genre or even two - it’s kinda hard to explain. I do a lot of dance, house, rap, R&B, reggae, jungle - I’m from Bristol, it’s what we do, mix it all up together - this is what Bristol represents. I sing, rap, MC, it’s all in there,” she added.
“This will be by far the biggest crowd I’ve played to, although Boomtown was pretty big. It’s going to be pretty mad. I know that there’ll be lots of people there who don’t know me, but they need to know I’m going to bring a big energy, lots of different genres and I’m going to take them on a journey with some surprise guests too - it’ll be a ride, with love, togetherness and a great energy,” she added.
Krush is promising some big Bristol names to join her as special guests. “This is a big event for Bristol and the music scene in the city, and I’ve been given the opportunity so I need to share it as much as I can,” she explained.
One thing Krush isn't counting on is still being nine months pregnant when the crowds flood in to Ashton Gate on the midsummer weekend in June. Her baby should be around a month old by then. "It's funny because people who see me and then hear that I'm doing this BS3 Live are like 'wait, are you going to be having the baby on stage?!' I have to reassure them that, no, I won't be bouncing around heavily pregnant," she said.
"A lot of people don't know who I am, a lot of people might've heard my music but not seen me. These pictures are going to show me still pregnant, aren't they?" she joked. "But don't worry, I've got this."
