I just heard Dizzee Rascal for the first time...

to which i reply, all hip-hop, ever, to thread.

I think nearly everyone who is uncomfortable w/ the hip hop comparisons (myself included) tends to change their album when they hear the album in full.

also jus a rascal is FAR more the insincere indie disco pick!

I don't think there's anything bad about it, I just like "Stop Dat", "Seems 2 Be" and "Live-0" more, and all of those tracks do something pretty similar. It's not a case of "this track must go" so much as "if I had to choose one to cut".

Dave I do still agree with you as well, but I understand better why everyone says "oh it's hip hop innit" so quickly, because Dizzee goes out of his way to make it sound like a hip hop album, such that, out of context, it is a hip hop album. I'd have a lot more difficulty equating, say, his Slimzee Sidewinder set with hip hop because it's much more obviously doing something sufficiently different to hip hop.

someday when all the doubters are nattering on about him/it, we'll be able to go "oh please, that's sooo last year"

no, i didn't! i keep trying to download it and it keeps crapping out on me.

If I had to pick one to drop I think it'd by Live-0, for exactly the same reason as Tim with Wot U On (which I think is marvellous).

not having listened to much acid house or idm, grime is the most explicitly computer game influenced music ive listened to. i've read on here people making similar comparisons to idm and acid house, but i see that connection as more of an ibm, microsoft, strategy game link, more sophisticated, as opposed to grime which is exclusively mainstream console based. dizzee rascal is about a year younger than me now, so his first proper console was probably either a snes or megadrive, but most probably a 64 or playstation. there are obvious audio influences, some probably sampled directly from a game like the Goldeneye reload clicks that punctuate god's gift's verse in hold ya mout. in brand new day, the bright twinkles and sparkles are a direct reference to mario 64, it's like the underwater music or the dream sequence at the end of mario 2. but the overall feeling of the album, the huge monster bass hits and the metallic robot gleam snares, are like bouncing platform heros and alien enemy cyborgs come to life in your head when you listen. even the futurism of the design of consoles is explicit, the angular. right down to the front cover of the album, where he's sitting in this fantastic yellow computer world.

"5. 'Ice Rink' - Wiley ft. Titchy Strider
This is without doubt one of the most fucked up noises i've heard in my life. It's also without doubt Wiley's masterpiece. What the fuck ARE these sounds? It's nothing music. It's just gonna fall apart if you don't listen hard enough! Mario jumps up and down for a bit, Bowser slams the door then "BANG" Mario's dead you fucker! And this happens for about 5 minutes. You've got infinite lives! Anyone who hasn't heard this, PLEASE try and get it as soon as possible. It will blow your head off. There's a few different mc versions of this, but my favourite is Strider's not only cuz he has the second best MC name ever, but he has a cool voice. It would be cool if he rapped about being in school a bit more. Tantrum!"

I'm not a massive fan of Stop Dat but the noise at the beginning is one of the best things on the album.

bbbbut bodenstandig 2000???????????????

its like that thai weed tune, but a million times better!

but, it shouldnt be called grime. its like circus music or something!

hahahahaha skimming through this thread and seeing:

a. People claiming Boy In Da Corner isn't a hip-hop album (uh WAHT)
b. People saying the album falls down towards the end (ie, the section of the album I consistently play)

Wow ILM, you have always been a precious ball of weird. xoxoxoxo

It isn't really a hip-hop album, especially where you consider the lineage he was coming from and how it jarred against most of the UK hip-hop of the time. And US hip-hop for that matter.

but it's not a hip hop album, it's a grime album ~

keep in mind that I'm coming at this from the perspective of someone whose brother is a part of a DC hip-hop collective that's been appropriating drum-n-bass/jungle and rave tricks and filtering them in with jazz and backpacker influences since 1998

i can't believe you just heard him for the first time

cosign this i guess:

Dizzee goes out of his way to make it sound like a hip hop album, such that, out of context, it is a hip hop album. (...)

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 23:44 (6 years ago) Bookmark Suggest

its just a hip hop album in that anything with rapping+beats can = hip hop basically. it can straddle grime/garage rap as easily as it can hip hop.

not sure who was worse really, the hip hop guys who didnt give a shit about it but felt they had to insist it was still hip hop, or the grime protectionists who were so insistent that there was no way it couldnt be hip hop just cos it didnt sound like jehst and rodney p at the time (or ukhh at well, any time).

name me one poster that's been banned from ilx that woulda made a thread revive this idiotically pointless and trolling. go on.

wagemann had untapped potential imo

name me one poster that's been banned from ilx that woulda made a thread revive this idiotically pointless and trolling. go on.

again, fuck you

ban me, pussyhole

Okay.

Now than, I assume that everyone else who read this understood where I was coming from which was:

a. looking at an old exchange on ILM with nostalgic fondness;
b. reasserting how much I like the second half of BIDC
c. implicitly suggesting that looking back on that exchange given what we know now about the directions hip-hop has gone in since this thread makes it easier to consider an album like BIDC a hip-hop album

If not, sorry I didn't make that clearer.

what are u british r something?

most people do see it as a hip hop album though. most americans who heard it didnt know about grime or garage. and these days, with dizee and tinchy and shitmunk in the charts, theyre just seen as british rappers, genre aside. its not 'hip hop' per se but obv linked to it. no point in trying to be all separatist. you sound like what i think might have been my first ilx post about whether grime is or isnt hip hop.

Yeah, from a US perspective, particularly if you spent any time straddling hip-hop and various house/techno subcultures, all of this stuff would have been like the intersection of a Venn diagram of those worlds; calling it "grime" doesn't actually preclude it from being "hip-hop" for me and I suspect a lot of others coming at it from that direction.

gunfight at the HI DERE corral!

lol @ FROM A US PERSPECTIVE

You can also fuck off, you know.

Yeah, I would consider grime a type of hiphop, hence Dizzee Rascal is both, not one or the other.

^^exactly

you could only think it's not hip-hop if you have a fairly narrow definition of what hip-hop is (which would exclude most regional variants of it)

obviously this doesn't deny the british lineage leading down to grime blah blah blah i'm so glad i somehow managed to avoid these arguments when this album came out

I note that I was in the "it's hip hop" camp at the time (and I still am), but I do kinda get where others were coming from, even if sometimes their arguments were empty or disingenuous - the problem with people going "what's grime? I shall listen to a Dizzee Rascal album to find out... (time passes)... okay LOL that was just British rap with typically rudimentary rapping, NEXT TREND PLZ" is that it's trying to pin down grime on the basis of hypostasising it at the point of its orbital swing closest to US rap.

Whereas (OBVIOUSLY) the really key bit of grime, if you had to choose only one such thing, is not Boy In The Corner at all, but, like, Nasty Crew DJ/freestyle sets from the end of '02.

Now even these still fall under the heading "hip hop" (i.e. rapping over beats), but a lot of the time the keenness to point this out is reflective of a mode of thinking that is kneejerk suspicious of any claims to a point of difference.

The same thing happens with UK funky obv - "I listened to that "Do You Mind" track and WTF it's just house, I shall adopt a pose of aggressive indifference from now on..."

I think there's a world of difference between "this is just hip-hop" and "wow, THIS is HIP-HOP" and a lot of times expressions of the latter (I can't believe this genre can go in this direction too, awesome) get interpreted as the former (wtf this isn't new, why are you acting like you've invented the wheel)

NB Dan I obv wasn't talking about you here - more the general debate at the time and why some people were maybe a bit defensive and frankly nonsensical w/r/t insisting dizzee wasn't hip hop.

And at the time there was a lot of "emperor's new clothes" fingerpointing.

I think you're right in general though - I think a lot of people see new genres (and genres generally) in very either/or terms - whereas I tend to think that most genres and sub-genres are pretty complex creatures of adherence and deviation, distinction and similarity, experimentalism and traditionalism etc. etc.

We need to be less afraid of genre terms, but also less in awe of them - whether something is or is not grouped under a specific term is a matter for discussion not cast-iron legislation.

And at the time there was a lot of "emperor's new clothes" fingerpointing.

IMO this backlash was largely due to BOTC coming out on Matador Records in the US when people were still hung up on indie.

"when"

"were"

;-P

IMO this backlash was largely due to BOTC coming out on Matador Records in the US when people were still hung up on indie.

Yeah, thing is, the backlash also makes sense to me - the critical treatment of grime was so totally indie, so different to the way in which, say, UK garage was treated that it was almost inevitable that it would set US hip hop fans' teeth on edge (though to be fair I don't think there was really much of any US crit on UK garage pre-dubstep... I remember a belated and excellent Andy Battaglia piece aside, and a Scott Woods article that kinda got it all wrong though I totally love Scott Woods as a writer).

BIDC was never marketed to the urban audience in the US - most probably cos they thought theyd go straight for the bigger indie crowd but also maybe cos non-US rap has never exactly been favourably received in the US by hip hop fans. and i dont think even with american producers using dancier sounds - which iirc is what everyone thought would make it easier for it to get accepted, cos yknow, uk hip hop artists were using TOTALLY diff samples to american ones lol - it made it a safer bet. so basically, p4kers hyping a british rapper + US hip hoppers hating british hip hop (and not even having an idea of what sort of a scene this came from in the uk, ie not some trendy hoxton one, which is what even some hip hop ppl in this country thought, cos of its backing from the vice lot etc etc - all the emp new clothes was cos people didnt know where this sound/artist had come from) = indifference/inevitable hatred. depressingly, BIDC is still the best grime album released.

actually i think i hate BIDC for making all other grime mcs think that was in their grasp too

making grime more of an album/mix-cd-oriented genre than live one i mean

Yeah I'd agree with Tim here - that Reynolds review of Run The Road in retrospect feels so unbelievably destructive and counterproductive in terms of getting grime taken seriously. Comparing D Double E to Eric B & Rakim or whoever felt ridiculous even at the time.

I sort of think of Dizzee as the equivalent of one of those bands that seesaw between punk and metal. Grime and hip-hop ARE different things but he does both - BIDC is still his least hip-hop record despite having Fix Up Look Sharp on it.

wow i just reread that -- terrible

Make no mistake, the MCs on this compilation - Kano, D Double E, Riko, Sovereign, Dizzee, Wiley - are our equivalents of Rakim, Chuck D, Ice Cube, Nas, Jay-Z.

he spends so much time shitting on rap music & reducing it to one dimensional caricature he doesnt even realize hes shortchanging 'run the road' by making it seem not much better. plus he doesnt actually talk about what any of the artists are saying/doing thats so interesting, aside from a brief line about 'chosen one' -- just speaks in vague generalities about 'jaggedly futuristic'

American rappers, once they've made it, can sound like bullies and tyrants when they reel out the same old lyrical scenarios: humiliating haters, discarding women like used condoms. From grime MCs, the endless threats and boasts, the big-pimpin' postures, somehow seem more forgivable.

wow ... sounds awesome.

a lot of grime writing over the years has expended so much energy on claiming it as a uniquely british phenomenon (which duh yeah, BUT) and also kneejerk slagging off any british artist perceived to be "trying to sound american" (often justified but "sounding american" isn't a bad thing per se) that the US influence on grime artists often seems totally written out of history in favour of bolstering up the empty cuntinuum idea. of course grime kids belong in the jungle/hardcore lineage but they were also quite obviously listening to and being influenced by a ton of US hip-hop acts. when i interviewed tinchy stryder just before he blew up, he spent 10 minutes going on and on about how the blueprint is the greatest album ever recorded, work of genius &c, and his ambition was to make an album like that.

grime and hip-hop are different things in the sense that classic narrative hip-hop and jerk are different things.

Also ELEPHANT IN ROOM = dancehall.

I am currently half-baking a theory about how Dance Wiv Me, while rubbish, is the most significant British pop record of the second half of this decade, in that it broke open a glass ceiling and British rappers now routinely score #1 hits - something that would have been unthinkable just 18 months ago.

Dizzee aside though, it's not any of the MCs Reynolds namechecked in that piece... there are kids young enough to have grown up with grime and that's the core market for yer Tinchys and Chipmunks and N-Dubz and the like.

Sure, the misogyny and gun talk can be hard to stomach, but, though outnumbered 20 to one, the female MCs give as good as their gender usually gets. No Lay, on 'Unorthodox Daughter', promises to 'put you in Bupa' and warns, 'soundboy, I can have your guts for garters/ Turn this place into a lyrical slaughter'.

trying to think of any female american mc post-lil kim who didn't "give as good as she got"

and i agree that a lot of blog-oriented grime writing was counterproductive and did little to reflect the reality of the scene or the music, let alone sell it.

xps

i don't think dancehall has ever been an elephant in the room when it comes to its influence on the various iterations of uk garage matt! if anything the elephant in the room is and has always been JAZZ.

I am currently half-baking a theory about how Dance Wiv Me, while rubbish, is the most significant British pop record of the second half of this decade, in that it broke open a glass ceiling and British rappers now routinely score #1 hits - something that would have been unthinkable just 18 months ago.

eh, i'd go with "fix up look sharp" which despite not being a huge hit at the time was kind of like "strict machine" in that it went on to have a really long shelf life, become a very well-known standard over the years, and lay the groundwork for everything to come. like if you were going to pinpoint goldfrapp's most significant record (and the one which broke open the glass ceiling for female electropop), you'd choose "strict machine" (barely scraped the top 20) over "ooh la la" (top 3 hit).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3Pp3V0N0hk

I'M THE GO-GO-GETTER IN THE BLACK HOODED SWEATER
MISS NO LAY DON'T U FORGET HER

a key difference between UK and US female MCs is that the UK ones never ever ever ever went the smutty ho-rap route. i only have a few half-baked ideas as to why this might be.

didn't "wearing my rolex" hit the charts before "dance wiv me" anyway

i could see female grime MCing becoming more sexualized if it became something that could be potentially profitable - all initial american female mc-ing was "one of the boys" type rapping as well

rolex is also better than dance wiv me.

the female mcs never went the trina route cos it prob isnt the best thing to do if your a girl grabbing the mic in a small pirate studio talking about your fellatio skills surrounded by about 15 guys... not going to get you much in the way of respect.

but yeah, agree with lex that the pride aspect of uk rave that seemed to really mature with grime has meant people try to forget how much it draws from US hip hop (is that your bitch!!). i think everyone was so scared of having it seen as just a new uk hip hop (just read some of those old run the road threads) that they conveniently forget all the influences from outside the - ugh - nuum. when in fact its always been how you UK-ize those US/carribean influences that have made this music fresh, not just cannibalising old london genres. tinchys favourite artists are jay-z and mary j blige! dizzee's favourite rapper is jay-z (i dont remember seeing any old shy fx tunes in the photos inside BIDCs booklet, but i did see thug life lol, well okay and so solid iirc) and wiley talked quite a bit about lil jon and mannie fresh and that lot.

didn't "wearing my rolex" hit the charts before "dance wiv me" anyway

Yeah Rolex feels like either a trailblazer or a one-off (especially given Wiley's own career arc) whereas Dance Wiv Me feels like a paradigm shift. Partly because Dizzee is, in all seriousness, the first and possibly only black British male pop superstar.

Also Lex I'm not talking about sleeper hits I'm talking about massive proper household name prime time TV type hits. Fix Up Look Sharp is more like Witness (1 Hope) in that it's one of those records that hardly anyone bought at the time but seemingly everyone now knows and likes.

there was a track on that last Lady Sovereign album where she was trying to act sexy and it was just...wrong

hope rtc isnt really banned

He was.

(He isn't anymore, in case that was ambiguous.)

I'll lose all respect for RTC if it turns out he was actually pissed off by that ban. You can't say "ban me pussyole" and not be prepared to take a bullet for it.

Incidentally the other day I discovered that my oldest friend's dad is a huge Dizzee fan. Prefers the early stuff lol. It's a really liberating feeling to be able to use the word "pussyole" in conversation with a middle-aged man you've known since the age of four.

Dizzee is, in all seriousness, the first and possibly only black British male pop superstar

I'm not talking about sleeper hits I'm talking about massive proper household name prime time TV type hits

I make Seal a British black male with 3 of those, but to my surprise only one UK #1 and a different US #1, so I guess you may be right. Weird!

(nothing to do with Dizzee, just was surprised enough to note it here. Certainly not arguing re paradigm shift in any event)

I had forgotten about Seal.

Seal went MOR very quickly and was never really youth-orientated. i was going to suggest Craig David...

I don't think Craig David qualifies since the world lost interest in him pretty quickly.

but it doesn't seem like there is really any more interest in Dizzee outside the UK still, from a commercial pov as opposed to 'edgy' blogs and websites in the US or elsewhere

Maxi Priest?

need a couple of #1s to qualify

but it doesn't seem like there is really any more interest in Dizzee outside the UK still, from a commercial pov

Except, weirdly, in New Zealand.

Billy Ocean?

a key difference between UK and US female MCs is that the UK ones never ever ever ever went the smutty ho-rap route. i only have a few half-baked ideas as to why this might be.

UK is too cold to get around in bikinis.

I think Britain needs its own Missy Elliott before it goes for full-on smutty ho-rap. British female pop stars first and foremost tend to be people the public would like to go down the pub with (Lily, Winehouse, Girls Aloud etc etc)...

Britain actually had its own Missy Elliott 13 years ago in the form of Phoebe One (she really did sound v American to my ears tho).

British female pop stars first and foremost tend to be people the public would like to go down the pub with (Lily, Winehouse, Girls Aloud etc etc)...

not just female. i'd argue that this is why our pop stars fall short. any nascent divas fall victim to tall poppy syndrome :(

...hang on, people want to go down the pub w/winehouse??????

Maybe not now, back in the day though.

Also, British people can't really do golden gods and goddesses, Beyonce/Justin style. It just doesn't work.

don't care about idols, just want good pop

any nascent divas fall victim to tall poppy syndrome

Leona?

Unless you mean "insufferable overgrown brat" in the Mariah Carey mold, in which case THIS IS A GOOD THING.

i mean someone who is totally aware that they are shit hot and unafraid to say it, which facilitates good pop, stevem. i want BRAGGING and ATTITUDE.

i don't want any more "likable" (ugh) pop stars

i want BRAGGING and ATTITUDE.

That way also facilitates Robbie Williams and Johnny Borrell.

Maybe not now, back in the day though.

Also, British people can't really do golden gods and goddesses, Beyonce/Justin style. It just doesn't work.

― Space Battle Rothko (Matt DC), Friday, November 20, 2009 4:51 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"Yo dogg, no disrespect but recognize"

http://z.about.com/d/classicrock/1/0/W/4/zep_3.jpg

Robbie Williams is a likable pop star!

i really like that Robert Plant song "I'm Fucking Incredible, My Solo Shit Rules And Anyone Who Disagrees Is Obviously A Jealous Hater Revealing Their Own Evident Shortcomings As A Human Being". Think it was B-side of '29 Palms'.

nah i mean he got up on top of a building and proclaimed "I am a GOLDEN GOD" per the zep bio so i think that counts.

bro was a peacockin' motherfucker to the core.

i mean he settled down and went newgrass and all but still

British people can't really do golden gods and goddesses, Beyonce/Justin style. It just doesn't work.

That goes deep though, only room I can see for a big star is a lil wayne style eccentric who ppl don't have to take too seriously.

you want bragging and attitude? that pretty much sums up every speech debelle interview actually.

"Britain actually had its own Missy Elliott 13 years ago in the form of Phoebe One"

not quite the same thing. both were fat obv, and decent enough rappers, but the similarities end there.

kasabian brag and have 'tude too lex, you might like them.

but the similarities end there

don't forget 'not sounding British'

Yeah, thing is, the backlash also makes sense to me - the critical treatment of grime was so totally indie, so different to the way in which, say, UK garage was treated that it was almost inevitable that it would set US hip hop fans' teeth on edge (though to be fair I don't think there was really much of any US crit on UK garage pre-dubstep... I remember a belated and excellent Andy Battaglia piece aside, and a Scott Woods article that kinda got it all wrong though I totally love Scott Woods as a writer).

― Tim F, Friday, November 20, 2009 12:38 AM Bookmark

I think something important to note here is that UK garage was getting played on mainstream radio in the US. American radio listeners might not have any idea what such a thing was, but Craig David and Daniel Bedingfield were having legitimate hits in the US circa '01-'02.

"American radio listeners might not have any idea what such a thing was"

prob a big factor in how grime was treated

Yeah, pretty sure C. David and D. Bedingfield were recieved by US audiences as simply r&b and pop, respectively.

iirc they remixed their albums to smooth out the more overt 2-step beats for the US market (à la shania twain's international releases)

i mean someone who is totally aware that they are shit hot and unafraid to say it, which facilitates good pop, stevem. i want BRAGGING and ATTITUDE.

This made me think of Oasis straightaway.

The difference with UK is not an absence of bragging and attitude.

If I had to guess, I'd say it's that in the UK establishing a "human" rapport with the media is much more crucial - you can be full of yourself and full of shit, but being seen to be above it all is deadly.

e.g. Mariah's demanding gonzo eccentricity (did you hear about her 20 white kittens request?? Love you M) would probably remind me people of the dysfunctional royals - her performance is not part of any courtship of the media (except in the reporting of a carcrash kind of way) so the media and its readers would resent it.

Yeah, the ultimate compliment for a female pop star in the U.S. is to be called a diva.

lex: wouldn't surprise me with Craig David's stuff, but there's no mistaking the version of "Gotta Get Thru This" that hit over here for anything else

Craig David's album as released over here was a big pile of shit; the only things on it that were listenable were the singles.

where can i hear the pre-smoothed 2step shania?

it doesn't seem like there is really any more interest in Dizzee outside the UK still, from a commercial pov as opposed to 'edgy' blogs and websites

i was thinking about this when the new dizzee came out, how as he's turned into a real star at home, the interest in him in the u.s. has gone down and down. he really was a hipster/blog phenomenon here, to the degree he was a phenomenon at all (not much). and he never migrated out of that niche into any more commercial/mainstream visibility. somebody i suppose could write something sort of interesting about why m.i.a. crossed over and he hasn't.

It would help if he had some distribution over here. The latest one isn't available accept as an import; Maths + English was an import for nearly a year before a US release, as was Boy In Da Corner. He's also been on three different labels for his three US albums; again, making it difficult for a PR push or build to carry over outside of those already tuned in.

Plus, we just don't do well with accents. Why can't you Britishers sing in good old American like the Beatles and the Stones?

somebody i suppose could write something sort of interesting about why m.i.a. crossed over and he hasn't.

But MIA is self-consciously internationalist, whereas Dizzee is even now very parochial, very London, especially lyrically. I'd imagine a lot of the references would just go straight over the heads of a lot of Americans. It helps that America doesn't have anything like MIA to begin with, whereas you guys have more rappers than you know what to do with.

Several years of ethnic rip-offs in mainstream rnb have probably helped attune people to MIA's thing as well, whereas I was under the impression that even the mainstream 4/4 straight-up poppy electro that Dizzee's been jacking hasn't been a big thing over there.

"I Gotta Feeling"

MIA only really crossed over because of Paper Planes on the Pineapple Express OST i thought

that got her a hook gig on a super star posse cut, tbf

but yeah our rappers are having trouble crossing over at the moment so things are only harder now. dizzee might have been able to push thru when dancehall was actually getting spins in top 40 here -- remember talking about how FWD rhythm got played on hot 97?? -- but even then it would have required the right track which i dont think he ever really made

It helps that America doesn't have anything like MIA to begin with, whereas you guys have more rappers than you know what to do with.

that's true.

it's still a little surprising to me that dizzee hasn't had more guest spots on american hip-hop tracks, if only for the novelty factor. has there been anything besides ugk?

i could see there being more chance of dizzee or someone like him producing for an american rapper than a grime MC doing well in the US. i think american audiences might be more inclined to check for london production styles more than a london sounding MC. surprised it never happened but im guessing when dizzee had more profile in the US it was just seen as too weird/diff, even when southern producers were changing the sound of hip hop.

trying to imagine twista or the ying yang twins or someone on a beat from BIDC. or outkast - BOB mixes well with grime/dubstep.

BOB the song, not the rapper