Post the best grime instrumentals ever

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
The ultimate failing of Boy in da Corner is it was sold as a rap album when its an Alan Lomax style documentation record in reality.

.... and that's why every Dizzee record after Showtime sucks. Because they're rap albums.
 
Ooh er madam...

This next tune in no way features Dizzee, it's an untitled dubplate by skream- it starts after 15 seconds



The little I have heard of Esco he sounds really good, is there any good radio sets of him. The ones I've listened to have him spitting for 90 seconds, leave for a smoke break for the next hour with the possibility that he may (or may not) jump on again towards the end.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
to be fair to boy in da corner most grime albums are rubbish. part of it's to do with the mixing. also the instrumentals tend to gravitate towards a new york sound palette (maybe because of the success of get rich or die tryin), which you don't get with pirate radio sets, although boy in da corner is less guilty of this than other albums (i think wiley's said he was a new york guy and dizee was a crunk guy, which might explain that).
 

luka

Well-known member
id been out the country for 2 or 3 years. left in '99 with garage in full swing and came back to this in '01.
relentless mcing with no space given to the music whatsoever. massive seachange. listening to Pay As U Go
round my mate's house was my first real exposure to the new thing. sounded mental and chaotic.
headfuck.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
to be fair to boy in da corner most grime albums are rubbish. part of it's to do with the mixing. also the instrumentals tend to gravitate towards a new york sound palette (maybe because of the success of get rich or die tryin), which you don't get with pirate radio sets, although boy in da corner is less guilty of this than other albums (i think wiley's said he was a new york guy and dizee was a crunk guy, which might explain that).

Its not just the production its the bars. The More Fire album basically does a lot of what by your definition a good grime album might be and then it flops. So Solid Crew albums, meh.

BITC only works b/c its preserving Dizzee at his peak. It's mixed well, but its a well mixed and marketed grimetapes comp really.

(No shots at Slackk)
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
i may be talking utter bollocks now (i usually am), but i wonder if grime doesn't easily lend it's self to verse-chorus structure. the choruses tend to feel awkward and forced. of course there are tons of exceptions to that rule; cock back, birds in the sky, gangsta toys, boogy man.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
idk, I think grime is fine with choruses, it has issues with hooks. there are exceptions (Ruff Sqwad) but in general they're really lacking. this is why grime lends itself so well to pirate radio or clashing, where dudes can just flow endlessly, but often struggles to craft memorable songs. it makes perfect sense, since grime comes out of the jungle/garage tradition of MC as track/crowd hyper rather than MC as artist.

granted a lot of rap has this issue too, more so in some kinds of rap than others. being able to rap and being able to craft songs are too different things. way more people can do the former than the latter.
 

luka

Well-known member
the song thing only came to prominence in rap with 50cent, at least thats the way i remember it.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Dizzee was another exception to that, which is why BITC was the best/most cohesive grime LP. As much as I love Wiley and for all his great moments, he's never been great at crafting songs (leaving aside pop crossovers i.e. Wearing My Rolex). You think about Wiley, you think about beats and bars, all his famous non-sequiturs, not songs.

I listen to BITC every 5 years or so, and it's aged pretty well I think. Not perfectly but better than a whole lot of things from 2003ish.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
the song thing only came to prominence in rap with 50cent, at least thats the way i remember it.

no way dude, it was totally there by early 90s if not the late 80s. Dr Dre looms large, for one. all the Native Tongues people with their jazz.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
that was the whole thing of Biggy, where Puffy actually has to get some credit, for taking a (technically flawless, hugely charismatic, etc) rapper and turning him into a dude who made songs
 
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