top piece from Blackdown on Pitchfork

hint

hint

party record with a siren
Tactics said:
wiley isnt really a visonary though? he's actually taking a long time to realise something that I did when I was at uni....I don't understand why you hail him as such a visonary all the time when he's jus applying an idea that a lot of the US hip hop underground were doing for yonks....he's actually quite slow in my opinion and behind in a lot of respects except the music where he's still the top boy....
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to be fair, I imagine that the business with XL may have held him up a bit and it's likely that he might only now feel like he's in a position to really put himself through that process again and try and make it work 2nd time around.

I expect that he learnt a few lessons from the experience of his first LP "project" and is now making sure he does things properly and keeps on top of all aspects of his career, cos this album really counts. being cautious takes time, but it can have far greater rewards in the long run.
 
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gumdrops

Well-known member
honestly, i think theres an inferiority complex in a lot of UK black music makers - a real lack of faith in what theyre doing being accepted, and a lack of faith that it is as good as the americans' stuff. i understand it but i find it disheartening.

i hope wiley's words turn out to be more than that and that he puts his money where his mouth is. that is what grime really needs, its own infratstructure, or just its own proper indie label scene. if punk (a genre/scene people seem to like comparing grime to so often) artists could release mere 7"s and sell out of them up and down the country and make some money from it, why cant grime MCs or producers? i dont think they have much respect for that sort of thing - building yourself up from the underground, its all about fast money now now now, even if that means they might not be around next year.
 
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greeneyes

Bit Mangler
From an Australian perspective... (i.e. one who cannot go to the shops and purchase mixtapes... one who must kick and scratch to find poorly recorded mp3's of pirate radio sets)

IMO, Grime artists should make a conscious effort to release their best material on albums. It WILL sell. Dizzee has proven this. There is a market out there. Folks in my neighbourhood were expecting the grime equivalent to Enter The 36 Chambers from Roll Deep. It ain't gonna happen, it just won't happen. For whatever reason, the folks in the grime scene believe that selling product means releasing the most commercial of tracks. To foster a real worldwide SCENE, you need exemplary albums. Boy In Da Corner is one. Wiley's album is almost there.

I've heard sidewinder mixtapes where wiley is spitting intoxicatingly fluently. His album doesn't match (what do you call it is easliy the standout track though.) In fact, almost every rinse (or otherwise) set I hear involving Wiley is more cutting edge than his album. This is the music people want to hear. If you sell to the lowest commmon denominator, the lowest common denominator will determine the future of the scene. That's bad news. There are hundreds of thousands of people out there waiting to taste a bit of REAL grime. It's very hard to find when you're outside of the UK.

Call me a cynic, but i think there is more of a market for the "underground" sound than the commercial grime sound. "Commerical grime" won't make sense to anyone outside the UK who hasn't really experienced garage, jungle and dancehall records. Shake A Leg is good, but it's still just a looped sample with a bunch of mc's spitting amusing lyrics - almost an in-joke. If it does really well in the charts, it won't say anything about the actual scene.

UK Grime, eski, sublow, dubstep, 8 bar, dark garage, whatever you call it, is the most exciting music I've heard my whole life. It deserves a wider audience; and I don't like people selling it short. There's amazing talent out there, and so far it's not been exposed to the outside world. Dizzee Rascal has taken one step - who will take the next?
 
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Tactics

BBP!
*POST OVER* Gumdrops has summed this up nicely....

gumdrops said:
honestly, i think theres an inferiority complex in a lot of UK black music makers - a real lack of faith in what theyre doing being accepted, and a lack of faith that it is as good as the americans' stuff. i understand it but i find it disheartening.

i hope wiley's words turn out to be more than that and that he puts his money where his mouth is. that is what grime really needs, its own infratstructure, or just its own proper indie label scene. if punk (a genre/scene people seem to like comparing grime to so often) artists could release mere 7"s and sell out of them up and down the country and make some money from it, why cant grime MCs or producers? i dont think they have much respect for that sort of thing - building yourself up from the underground, its all about fast money now now now, even if that means they might not be around next year.
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excellent post.
 
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greeneyes

Bit Mangler
As gumdrops mentioned earlier, the UK artists just need to have more faith in themselves. It's that simple. I've heard tracks that have only been released on dubplates or half-assed mixtapes; tracks that would wreck dancefloors WORDLWIDE. Maybe it's difficult to get perspective when you're so close to the scene, but I offer it to you know - BRING US THE GRIME.
 
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gumdrops

Well-known member
exactly, green eyes. a song like stop dat on BIDC doesnt follow standard pop song structure or a typical hip-hop template, its as headrushing as a pirate set but compacted into a mere 5 minutes. i want to hear more songs like that.

the reason wileys album fell below expectations is because he sounded like he was trying too hard to 'write songs' and be an 'artist', whatever his idea of that might be. it seemed to reduce his confidence and fluency. grime artists just need to have more confidence. i dont want to hear hip-hop songs (nor hip hop beats, nor hip hop flowing) from these guys. i want to hear what theyre good at. stop trying so desperately to be 'versatile' and be all things to all people.
 
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Logan Sama

BestThereIsAtWhatIDo
You must remember that the average young MC is writing mythical bars about his strap and shank and how he runs his manor aged 16.

And then he gets on pirate radio and is going back to back with a dozen other mcs all saying the same thing. And there are a dozen pirate stations. So it ends up being a dead end for them.

And looking at Dizzee and the other successes from ths scene, they go from writing angry bars with little or no thought in them, to making commercial tracks about girls or whatever other clichéd subject matter they hear Cassidy or whoever making tracks about.

And then they begin to find a middle ground and end up writing personable, introspective tracks which retain the essential "grime" stylings while being polished up enough to appeal to more than just other tracksuited 16 year olds.

So it's just a matter of evolution and trial and error. Thankfully evolution is something which this Grime/Garage scene does better and faster than any other scene.
 
D

dominic

Beast of Burden
Logan Sama said:
Public Enemy were a gimmick act
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i find this statement staggering -- unless i misunderstand your meaning

surely they were one of the most sonically innovative acts ever = real substance in my book, not gimmick

how do you get to SUAD w/o public enemy?
 
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dominic

Beast of Burden
gumdrops said:
i dont want to hear hip-hop songs (nor hip hop beats, nor hip hop flowing) from these guys. i want to hear what theyre good at. stop trying so desperately to be 'versatile' and be all things to all people.
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hear hear

if they try to do the hip hop thing, they'll be irrelevant to america

the only way to have relevance is to be different -- offer something that others can't compete against

i for one am not so much interested in grime or dubstep or garage as i am in a certain kind of underground dance sound coming out of east london for past 15 years -- the ruffness, the rawness, the wicked beats, the "won't sell out" message and vibe

i see grime as just the latest expression -- errr, going on for four years now -- of this practice

however, to the extent that grime is a self-conscious break w/ this practice, then what is grime trying to become?
 
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Logan Sama

BestThereIsAtWhatIDo
Of course Public Enemy were a gimmick act. Just as NWA were a gimmick act.

Just because they didn't believe they were one, doesn't mean they weren't marketed as or considered one by the label which released their material.

And on a seperate note, Grime is a sound which is quite limited within it's own scene. Anything which strays too far outside the accepted boundaries doesn't really do too well within the underground sphere. 2 years ago Target and Danny Weed's beats were flying right over everyone's heads and not really getting any airplay.

It is an unfortunate situation in that sometimes in the grime scene you have to receive acclaim and approval from somewhere else before the people within the scene can accept what you are doing.

You should have heard some of the bitter people's comments about the Roll Deep album tracks when we were playing them as they were finished last Summer. Complimentary they were not.
 
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mms

sometimes
Logan Sama said:
Of course Public Enemy were a gimmick act. Just as NWA were a gimmick act.

Just because they didn't believe they were one, doesn't mean they weren't marketed as or considered one by the label which released their material.
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yeah but every hip hop band at that time had a gimmick of some sort , or a trademark style or look.
run dmcs addidas, beastie boys volkswagen badges, ll cool j's kangol, big daddy kanes flatop.
hip hop was and still is very gimmicky when it comes to style, im not sure that when russell simmonds signed pe he thought 'gimmick act', as all his bands had playful aspects to them, thats hip hop, it was how you singled yourself out and those rappers probably had those styles before simmonds signed them.

as for the content of what pe mced about being gimmicky i don't think it had the appeal of say 'my radio' or anything like that, it was difficult. like saying sonic youths sound and detuned guitars are a gimmick, it just doesn't work in their favour as a standard for commercial success but its what their careers were built on.
 
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gumdrops

Well-known member
wow, if PE were a gimmick act, then that means every single artist in the world was a gimmick act. rakim's 5% rhetoric was a gimmick, KRS' 'intelligent' schtick was a gimmick, marley marls's JB obsession was a gimmick too. moving away from hip-hop, maybe that means bob marley's conscious lyrics were gimmicky too, ditto for peter tosh's militancy. not sure what you think the PE gimmick actually was, but im guessing you think its cos their beats didnt sound like other hip hop at the time. thats bollocks though, cos everyone from 3rd bass to cypress hill copped from PE's production style.

as far as this idea that kano and roll deep etc will be regarded as the old school of grime, i would have thought that would have been so solid, more fire, heartless crew and pay as u go - that first wave of garage rap. or if were just talking about MCing, then wouldnt skibadee and co. have been the real old school? at least thats what kano says in 'reload it'. im not sure drawing parallels that closely with hip-hop is always a good idea with grime, tempting as that might be.
 
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Logan Sama

BestThereIsAtWhatIDo
Exaggeration and extrapolation of a comment to the point of ridicule is the easiest retort to conjur up.

Public Enemy and NWA were charicatures of themselves. If you find that point to be beyond your comprehension then fair enough.

My first point in this topic is that Kano and Roll Deep's "feel good" commercial styled tracks are ones which allow for the hard edged grime sounds to be slid into the main stream music industry's ears. Dizzee, as mentioned earlier, was one boy on his own and his aurally offensive music was often reported in a quiant and slightly condescending way by the music media.

When you have an entire scene of that music waiting in the wings however, it becomes a more difficult task to follow in Dizzee's footsteps without comprimising the style slightly.
 
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mms

sometimes
Logan Sama said:
Exaggeration and extrapolation of a comment to the point of ridicule is the easiest retort to conjur up.

Public Enemy and NWA were charicatures of themselves. If you find that point to be beyond your comprehension then fair enough..
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hmm i think public enemy had those extra extra elements, ie styles and all that flavour flav as foil for chuck d's stentorian voice, and security of the first world marching around, it makes righteous nation of islam rhetoric and issues of black nationalism easier to swallow. :D

I'm more willing to accept that some of nwa were charictures of the kind of voices they were trying to represent, dre and ice cube came from previous hip hop lives, ren and easy e were the real deal tho i think.
but by the second album they definitley knew they could make alot of cash from being kind of unrepentent stagolee figures though.
 
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gumdrops

Well-known member
Logan Sama said:
Exaggeration and extrapolation of a comment to the point of ridicule is the easiest retort to conjur up.

Public Enemy and NWA were charicatures of themselves. If you find that point to be beyond your comprehension then fair enough.QUOTE]

i really dont see how PE were caricatures of themselves. PE certainly are NOW, and arguably have been self-parodies since 94, but back in the late 80s, no. if you want to talk about gimmicky conscious rappers or hip-hop demagogue figures as being gimmicky by default, then theres plenty of other second-rate 'conscious'/'political' rappers that were pretty lame and simply jumping on the bandwagon. but most of those arrived in PE's wake. nobody thought PE themselves were gimmicky in 87/88, they were taken extremely seriously. if all they had was a gimmick, why on earth would chuck d bother to STILL standy by what he says, more than a decade on? they didnt exactly make novelty hits like the cheeky girls you know......

NWA were exaggerated, yeah, but caricatures? not really. at least, not until the niggaz4life album when ice cube left. at that point, yeah, they became cartoonish more or less one dimensional gangstas-to-order, but even on the niggaz4life album, they still had some wry self-awareness of how they were viewed by the mainstream which stopped them from being complete and utter buffons.

im not sure what im arguing here though, you still havent actually said what you think WAS so gimmicky about either of these acts. sure they went out of their way to attract attention in agitprop fashion, but they had more than enough substance to back it up. it wasnt just empty bluster.
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gumdrops

Well-known member
Blackdown said:
Dubstep producers aren't allowed that kind of dream because they make instrumental music and 99% of all commercial radio/TV is song based.
i hope loefah and plasticman pay attention to the charts cos they are about to be offered a beacon of light in the form of that crazy frog axel f tune hitting number one.

see, instrumental tunes *can* make it big!
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hint

hint

party record with a siren
keep it under your hat, but word on road is that terror rhythm are in talks with sweety the chick
 
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mms

sometimes
gumdrops said:
Blackdown said:
Dubstep producers aren't allowed that kind of dream because they make instrumental music and 99% of all commercial radio/TV is song based.
i hope loefah and plasticman pay attention to the charts cos they are about to be offered a beacon of light in the form of that crazy frog axel f tune hitting number one.

see, instrumental tunes *can* make it big!
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what do you mean?
that frog is toasting all the way thru, much better frog impression than the lone ranger!
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