The Bash Street Kids is a comic strip in the British comic book The Beano. The strip, created by Leo Baxendale as When the Bell Rings, first appeared in issue 604 (dated 13 February 1954). It became The Bash Street Kids in 1956 and has become a regular feature, appearing in every issue. Since 1961, David Sutherland has drawn about 2,100 strips.
Like many long-running UK comic strips, The Bash Street Kids is frozen in the era when it began. It portrays Class 2B of the Bash Street School in Beanotown, where the teacher and headmaster wear mortarboards and gowns and the students sit at wood desks with inkwells. They are taught by a stereotypical "Teacher", whose wife is "Mrs Teacher". The characters were inspired by the view from the D. C. Thomson & Co. office windows, overlooking the High School of Dundee playground. According to Leo Baxendale, "In fact, the catalyst for my creation of Bash Street was a Giles cartoon of January 1953: kids pouring out of school, heads flying off and sundry mayhems. Straight away, I pencilled a drawing of 'The Kids of Bash Street School' and posted it from my home in Preston to R. D. Low, the managing editor of D.C. Thomson's children's publications in Dundee. I received an offhand response, a dampener. It was only after I'd created Little Plum (April 1953) and Minnie the Minx (September 1953) that the Beano editor George Moonie travelled to Preston on 20 October 1953 and asked me to go ahead with Bash Street (he gave it the provisional title of 'When The Bell Goes'; when it appeared in The Beano in February 1954, it was titled 'When The Bell Rings')." Over time, the Bash Street School's large number of students slowly shrank to its trademark ten. When they first appeared, the strips consisted of the kids outside school; the settings were increasingly inside the school, and the strip was retitled The Bash Street Kids on 11 November 1956 with "the kids" preparing for a pantomime.
From the crack of the whip I attack
Front to back in this thing called rap
Diggi dig it like shovel rhyme Devil on a heavenly level
Bang the bass turn up the treble
Radical mind day and night all the time
Seven, fourteen, wise, divine
Maniac, brainiac, winning the game
I'm the miracle Jesse James
I've got the power
I've got the power
I've got the power
I've got the power
Yea, yea, yea, yea
Quality, I possess some say I'm fresh
When my voice goes through the mesh of the
Microphone that I am holding
Copy written lyrics so they can't be stolen
If they are H-Blockx don't need the police
So try to save them your voice will sink
So please stay off my back
Or I will attack and you don't want that
I've got the power
I've got the power
I've got the power
I've got the power
Yea, yea, yea, yea
[incomprehensible]
Like a demon I'm steaming, like a crook I'm fiending
Tell the opposition color whip creaming
Shredding skim with the lyrics rhyme breaking the bone
Through your soul with the tone of my microphone
In this game of life I will try to survive
And take your time you bring us all nose jive
Superman's strong, even in my last hour
H-Blockx in the house T-Love we got the power
I've got the power
I've got the power
I've got the power
I've got the power
Sing along
I've got the power
I've got the power
Stand up, scream
I've got the power
I've got the power