Some of the world’s greatest music has come from Greater Manchester.
Indie. Electronic. Hip-hop. Whichever genre you explore, you’re sure to find Mancunian fingerprints in there somewhere.
Even in a category as niche as early mobile music.
Case in point: The Kersal Massive.
This infamous trio of MCs recorded a rap video in a Salford shed back in 2006 and cemented their place in history as some of the first ever viral video stars.
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Sure, their music was great for a very different – and unintentional – reason. But it was still great nonetheless.
Even today, the very mention of Kersal can prompt an impression of: “Get on the bus with me daysavahhh, smoke da reefa in the cornahhh”.
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In the mid-noughties, The Kersal Massive were as big as their name suggested – with their freestyle being bluetoothed between more mobiles than Akon’s “Smack That”.
The group – which consisted of Clio-driving leader C-Mac, helium-voiced bus enthusiast Lil’ Kev, and hypeman Ginger Joe (essentially Kersal Massive’s very own Flava Flav) – only ever shot one music video.
But whilst most media from the blurry-looking, scruffy-sounding world of mobile videos – which was largely populated by happy slapping and donk music – has died out, Kersal’s track lives on.
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With fingers in the air and frowns on their faces, the wannabe rappers managed to squeeze lyrics about drugs, money, cars, women, public transport and a hatred for Levenshulme into their 45-second freestyle.
Kevin Powder – a presenter known for his zany schtick – actually ventured up to meet the gang on their own stomping ground several months after the video appeared, asking Kersal to perform a second rendition of the song that became synonymous with the Sony Ericsson.
The gang – by this point a little older with broken voices – generously obliged, reciting the lyrics word-for-word.
Powder is then flagged out of the estate, the video ends, and poof, Salford’s young Gs disappeared.
The popularity of their video, though, was a sign of things to come.
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Little did they know it, but Kersal were the first faces of the original viral content boom – which suddenly began turning obscure figures in Britain into overnight celebrities via the magic of the internet.
One of the most successful examples was market trader Muhammad Shahid Nazir (AKA One Pound Fish Man), who earned a recording contract after being captured on camera singing about the price of seafood at Upton Park.
Still, despite the increasingly congested arena of viral stars, The Kersal Massive continued to resurface on social media from time to time. And, whenever they did, people would always ask the question: Whatever happened to those guys?
It’s been thirteen years since the gang were seen on camera together, and all signs seem to suggest their lives have taken very different paths.
The Tab claimed they’d tracked down frontman C-Mac in 2016, who didn’t appear to look back on his five minutes of fame with too much nostalgia.
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He apparently told the website: “The video still does the rounds now and then, but that’s about it. I don’t get noticed about it anymore so it’s done and gone for me.
“I am not in touch with the other two lads anymore.”
C-Mac’s sidekick Kev made his own headlines in 2017. But not for the right reasons.
GMP
Local police posted an image, whom the Reddit community believed to be Lil’ Kev, online in the summer of that year, appealing for information on his whereabouts after he was suspected of gun offences.
The enigmatic Ginger Joe, fittingly, has yet to resurface.
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But we like to think he’s still out there somewhere. Over in the corner. Being the main man he always was…
Sankeys shares sneak peek at new venue as legendary Manchester nightclub gears up for return
Daisy Jackson
Sankeys has given Mancs a glimpse inside its new venue as the legendary nightclub gears up for its return.
The club was one of Manchester’s top nightlife spots for years, before shutting down seemingly for good almost a decade ago.
Set within Beehive Mill in Ancoats, Sankeys was a true icon of Manchester’s global nightlife scene.
And while the old Sankeys Soap nightlife space is now full of co-working spaces, the spirit of Sankeys is about to be reborn.
The exact location of the new club is still being kept under wraps ahead of its reopening at the end of January, but new renderings have been released to give us a glimpse of how it will look.
Sankeys is promising ‘A reimagined space. New energy. Same legendary nights’.
The new Sankeys Manchester will be a 500-capacity venue, designed to ‘capture the raw underground energy that made Sankeys one of the most iconic club brands in the world’.
It will feature an LED matrix grid installation that will immerse clubbers in ‘light, sound and atmosphere’.
Sankeys Manchester officially opens on 30 January – you can see a glimpse of how it will look below and grab tickets HERE.
The most annoying songs of 2025 according to ‘science’ have been revealed
Emily Sergeant
A list of the most annoying songs of 2025 according to ‘science’ has been published.
Music fans have already been sifting through their Spotify Wrapped, which came out earlier this month, with searches for it surging an astonishing 5,000% in recent weeks, proving that 2025 has been a memorable year for music.
We’ve had record-breaking releases, viral TikTok hits, and artists pushing creative boundaries across genres.
Despite the hits though, some tracks have sparked debates over how irritating they are – from repetitiveness to ‘harmonic dullness’.
Interested to discover the most annoying song releases of 2025, the experts at SeatPick analysed the most popular songs of 2025 according to official top charts, then measured their repetition, shrillness, harmonic dullness, and filler lyrics to calculate the percentage chance that listeners would find the song to be so-called ‘annoying’.
The most annoying songs of 2025 have been revealed according to ‘science’ / Credit: Jonas Leupe | Ketut Subiyanto (via Unsplash and Pexels)
Unfortunately for one artist – one very popular artist, it has to be said – they have claimed both the top and second spot, and that artist is pop royalty Sabrina Carpenter.
SeatPick’s findings revealed that Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Sugar Talking’ and ‘Tears’, which were both featured on her latest album Man’s Best Friend, are the most annoying songs released in 2025, as the data metrics indicated that nearly half of listeners (46%) are likely to find these songs irritating due to they’re repetitiveness.
Lady Gaga’s ‘The Dead Dance’ ranks as the third most annoying track of the year, scoring high on the ‘annoyingness index,’ with repetition, brightness, and lyrical filler contributing to an overall 45.8% likelihood that listeners would find it irritating.
Rounding off the top four most irritating songs of 2025 is ‘Who’ by BTS member, Jimin, with there being a 45.5% chance that listeners would find his song irritating due to its repetitive hooks and bright, high pitched tones.
When it comes to the list of most irritating TikTok trending songs of 2025, that title went to ‘Dame Un Grrr’ by Fantomel and Kate Linn, with a 45.7% likelihood of being found irritating by listeners, closely followed by ‘She Twerkin’ by Ca$h Out in second, with a 44.1% likelihood of being found annoying by listeners.
One song we’re sure many of you won’t be surprised to find on the most irritating list is ‘Hold My Hand’ by Jess Glynne, which, of course, initially gained popularity through its use in a Jet2Holiday advertisement, and then later became widely featured in more than 3.4 million TikTok videos.
So, what do you make of these results then? Do you agree? What do you think the most annoying song that came out in 2025 is?
The Manc Audio -
22nd December 2020 
