top piece from Blackdown on Pitchfork
- Thread starter appleblim
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3underscore
Well-known member
logan is On the Money
I like the point he is presenting. Kano and Roll Deep can't go balls out Grime - the label would throw it back at them. They need to bring it in for the others, or for their future albums. No band has ever really put out the sound they want to on a major until their second or third albums if they are doing owt exciting.
Grime is a scene of a few. It may upset the apple cart of the core, but for it to become big, you have to swallow a bit of your pride about the sound and let it get exposure, however it is. XL are a pretty open label, but following the Wiley situation, it is only fair to accept these folk may want to be careful. Dizzee made it, but everyone else now has a different game to play.
I like the point he is presenting. Kano and Roll Deep can't go balls out Grime - the label would throw it back at them. They need to bring it in for the others, or for their future albums. No band has ever really put out the sound they want to on a major until their second or third albums if they are doing owt exciting.
Grime is a scene of a few. It may upset the apple cart of the core, but for it to become big, you have to swallow a bit of your pride about the sound and let it get exposure, however it is. XL are a pretty open label, but following the Wiley situation, it is only fair to accept these folk may want to be careful. Dizzee made it, but everyone else now has a different game to play.
3underscore said:
well taking the softly softly approach is one thing, putting your album out with only one or two tracks indicative of grime is another thing entirely. its like if the sex pistols released never mind the bollocks with god save the queen and anarchy in the uk intact but filled the rest of the album with gentle folk ballads and soft-rock weepies!
Some examples off the top of my head:
Wu Tang Clan
Roni Size
The Clash
Run DMC
M.I.A
Anyway...
Emerging genres are defined by their audience. If I play the Roll Deep album to someone, tell them "This is grime, you know, like Dizzee Rascal; there's this whole scene... etc" and they don't like it, will that hurt or help the scene? I can't help but get the feeling they are aiming at too wide a target market, and in doing so, alienating their potential REAL fans.
IMO, albums should contain the greatest tracks you have ever recorded. If enough people like the music, they will buy it. The distribution and marketing should be handled by the label - that's their job - not the artists'.
in essence this debate seems to me to be about whether as mass market audience will accept challenging sounds, in this case from the grime scene.
Dizzee, So Solid and, ahem, Public Enemy suggest it is possible. Thousands of rejected/lost albums (Pay As U Go, Teebone and Terrah Unit etc) and commercial/watered-down LPs suggest it's not.
Dizzee, So Solid and, ahem, Public Enemy suggest it is possible. Thousands of rejected/lost albums (Pay As U Go, Teebone and Terrah Unit etc) and commercial/watered-down LPs suggest it's not.
hint
party record with a siren
Blackdown said:
they also suggest / demonstrate that it's about so much more than just the music when it comes to to mass market - the way you look, the things you say, the things you do... that's what gets you the attention of big labels, influential press and TV.
hint said:
yes absolutely. to reach a mass audience you need mass marketing. key to that marketing is the most valuable asset an artist has: personality. unfortunately innovative music will only get you so far.
(look for example how far Pete Doherty got as a the lead singer of the Libertines. then look how far/famous he got for being a drug addict and the boyfriend of kate moss).
this is why i think people are wrong, previously on this thread, for cussing Wiley for focusing on being 'an artist.' he saw that this was the way other artists had taken their sound to a global audience.
Logan Sama
BestThereIsAtWhatIDo
And as an aside.
Danny and Wiley got together over the summer of 2004 and actually just sat down and made a bunch ofmusic they liked the sound of. And it ended up as the Roll Deep album.
It wasn't actually made with an eye to it being marketable.
Danny and Wiley got together over the summer of 2004 and actually just sat down and made a bunch ofmusic they liked the sound of. And it ended up as the Roll Deep album.
It wasn't actually made with an eye to it being marketable.
Logan Sama said:
thats a fair point, and one we shouldnt forget, but it was still compiled and put together with an eye to being marketable. roll deep had the final say on it and thats the type of album they wanted to represent them.
as for blackdown's dissapointment with the idea that personality will get you further than 'merely' innovation, pete doherty was doing quite fine before the papers caught wind of his drug addiction. their first album was a critical favourite, they had a strong core base, they were on top of the pops, they had played brixton academy. and they did that without the mass media obsessing over pete being a slave to crack. so 'innovation' (if thats what were calling the libs' music) did get them to an enviable stage before the cult of personality took over.
it just depends on whether artists are satisfied with having a strong, faithful core base that you can make a living from, that gets you great reviews and keeps you in business, or if you want more than that - if you wanna be on pop world and on radio one every hour and be on the front page of the sun every day etc etc.
i didnt cuss wiley for wanting to be an artist, just that i found his bars on tracks like 2 far with dizzee more effective than some of the bars he spat on his own album. he sounded slightly timid on his own album, a little reserved, not totally confident like he is on radio. he didnt maximise on what makes him so great. just cos one MC does one thing and tries to be 'an artist' (what is that exactly?), doesnt mean others have to go the exact same route. whats good for dizzee isnt necessarily good for wiley. doesnt mean the only other alternative is going some sort of black eyed peas route either.
It seems to me that this debate is centred around the fact that some people think Grime is commercialising itself and losing some of its edge as a result. I've only heard 3-4 tracks of In At The Deep End and Home Sweet Home so far and none of them seem watered down to sell more copies particularly. Remember no rules in Grime - do what you want, spit over what you want etc. If its genuinely good then it will be successful regardless of the calibre (read 'cost') of studio engineers and/or equipment. Grime's position to date embodies that previous sentence entirely.
If the public pick up on the Roll Deep or Kano album then it'll blow things wide open commercially with Dizzee no longer being the sole commercial success. On the downside you potentially have another UKG situation on your hands where it all gets ruined by greed. If Grime wants to keep its edge than it needs to stay underground. The mainstream media are interested in money first and foremost. Grime artists just want out of a shitty life and rather than go to prison or work in Sainsburys forever have turned themselves to music in the hope of making money to get out. Those few artists who make music because they have something to say beyond the reality of their situation through clever wordplay are the only few who have any real hope through mainstream commercial avenues though.
As I said before, ultimately the mass media isn't interested in getting a message across other than: "buy what we produce so that we may sustain/better our lifestyles/egos". I think a lot of artists in the Grime scene generally exposed to nothing but the mass media only want to go as far as this and their place is the underground, hyping up raves and making people forget their worries - there is still plenty of cash here if done properly. Those few who have a message that they have to get out of them have the possibility of making p's through a big deal with albums but ultimately will be stifled creatively. This stifling of creativity could result, for example, if the artists started lyrically attacking the real targets such as the worlds corrupt elite who maintain and increase the gap between rich and poor which the artists have witnessed first hand. The actual stifling occurs when these same people realise an artist who is on the payroll of their own company is attacking them effectively.
I feel confident in Grime due to its key players attitudes however. They have learnt the lessons from underground dance musics flirtations with the mainstream and arn't handing everything over to them this time. The artist in control of his empire is key. This won't stop them testing the waters in other directions in the hope of a few bites but this time there is one hand firmly on the shore.
Your own situation.
If the public pick up on the Roll Deep or Kano album then it'll blow things wide open commercially with Dizzee no longer being the sole commercial success. On the downside you potentially have another UKG situation on your hands where it all gets ruined by greed. If Grime wants to keep its edge than it needs to stay underground. The mainstream media are interested in money first and foremost. Grime artists just want out of a shitty life and rather than go to prison or work in Sainsburys forever have turned themselves to music in the hope of making money to get out. Those few artists who make music because they have something to say beyond the reality of their situation through clever wordplay are the only few who have any real hope through mainstream commercial avenues though.
As I said before, ultimately the mass media isn't interested in getting a message across other than: "buy what we produce so that we may sustain/better our lifestyles/egos". I think a lot of artists in the Grime scene generally exposed to nothing but the mass media only want to go as far as this and their place is the underground, hyping up raves and making people forget their worries - there is still plenty of cash here if done properly. Those few who have a message that they have to get out of them have the possibility of making p's through a big deal with albums but ultimately will be stifled creatively. This stifling of creativity could result, for example, if the artists started lyrically attacking the real targets such as the worlds corrupt elite who maintain and increase the gap between rich and poor which the artists have witnessed first hand. The actual stifling occurs when these same people realise an artist who is on the payroll of their own company is attacking them effectively.
I feel confident in Grime due to its key players attitudes however. They have learnt the lessons from underground dance musics flirtations with the mainstream and arn't handing everything over to them this time. The artist in control of his empire is key. This won't stop them testing the waters in other directions in the hope of a few bites but this time there is one hand firmly on the shore.
Your own situation.