South London rap duo Krept & Konan headlined the BBC 1Xtra stage on Saturday (August 27) – paying a loving tribute to their late friends and family.

This marked the group’s first live performance since their Revenge Is Sweet tour,  with Krept telling the Reading crowd that they needed to “light this place up” with their phone torches in tribute before playing the emotive ‘Broski’ from their second album, ‘Revenge Is Sweet‘.

“If you’ve ever lost someone, I need you to put your lights up,” he said ahead of the track inspired by the passing of the duo’s long-time friend and business partner, Nyasha “Nash” Chagonda. Chagonda took his own life days before the opening of the three’s restaurant, Crepes and Cones. After the track, Konan gave a brief statement of condolence: “Make some noise for all the fallen soldiers”.

Krept followed the statement by saying: “I can’t talk about Nash without talking about Cadet“. Cadet, the late rising grime star that passed away in a 2019 car accident, is also Krept’s cousin. He continued to introduce Cadet’s biggest breakthrough hit, ‘Advice’, telling the crowd: “Right now we’re going to celebrate Cadet’s life right fucking now… We need to party. We need to have fun. We need to celebrate Cadet’s life, so when this one plays, I want you to go fucking crazy”.

Before the rappers ended their set, they brought out fellow south London drill star, K-Trap, to perform his popular ‘War’ track and verse on the Top 40-charting ‘I Spy’. Krept also promised that new music is on the way: “We know we’ve been away for a very long time but new music dropping very fucking soon”.

Reading Festival concludes today, with The 1975, Halsey and Charli XCX while Bring Me The Horizon, Wolf Alice and Arctic Monkeys are set to close Leeds Festival.

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