GRIME- breaking news, gossip, slander, lies etc

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
I just searched Hadouken on Youtube and I can't believe I'm even watching this.

Dear god. Fucking hipsters and their culturally appropriating parasitic force of skinny jeans, tight banadas and eye make up.

This is some total wasteman business and I feel sorry for the mums of any child who likes it.
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
I feel I need to post again to end my thought.

I live in Toronto, and if these guys ever play in my hometown, Dissensus has my personal guarantee that I will rob them.
 

MATT MAson

BROADSIDE
I have to agree with Bun-u on this. People appropriating sounds help spread them further. Always has, always will.

And as an aside, I think Sway is better than about 90% of the grime MCs out there.
 

mos dan

fact music
I just searched Hadouken on Youtube and I can't believe I'm even watching this.

Dear god. Fucking hipsters and their culturally appropriating parasitic force of skinny jeans, tight banadas and eye make up.

This is some total wasteman business and I feel sorry for the mums of any child who likes it.

i'm so effing scared of how awful hadouken must be - from the descriptions by ppl on here and elsewhere - that i've actually resisted looking them up. i really don't want that extra hate in my life.

re: grime becoming nothing more than uk rap/hh, come on... that's an unsupported cliche right now which a lot of ppl are reiterating without good reason, as far as i'm concerned. the beats on logan's show (and on those few grime shows left on rinse) are as forward-thinking as they were five years ago imo.

'grime was better back then' is defeatist and unhelpful, and more importantly it's just WRONG.
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
I have to agree with Bun-u on this. People appropriating sounds help spread them further. Always has, always will.

And as an aside, I think Sway is better than about 90% of the grime MCs out there.

Sway ISN'T a grime MC though, so I don't really see what you're trying to say.
 

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
i'm so effing scared of how awful hadouken must be - from the descriptions by ppl on here and elsewhere - that i've actually resisted looking them up. i really don't want that extra hate in my life.

re: grime becoming nothing more than uk rap/hh, come on... that's an unsupported cliche right now which a lot of ppl are reiterating without good reason, as far as i'm concerned. the beats on logan's show (and on those few grime shows left on rinse) are as forward-thinking as they were five years ago imo.

'grime was better back then' is defeatist and unhelpful, and more importantly it's just WRONG.

I don't think Grime was better back then but there are some things that were done better then.....

1) The big radio sets with like 8 or so MCs on. Nowadays it's more crew focussed, with just one or two MCs turning up. The live-o anarchic feel of the MCs just 'jamming' as it were has been lost. I have a set and the MC roll call is amazing, it was something like Wiley, Dizzee, Trim, Sharky Major, Kano, Doogz, Flowdan and DEE. Some of the biggest figures then and ever. MCs on radio are now more about karaoke-ing their own tunes (rhyming over the top) or spitting bars on their own beats. It has become less diverse i think. Its gone from a 'live' genre to an album genre (well kind of). Before at it's best it reminds me of jazz men bumping into each other and thinking 'why the fuck not' and just jamming for the sake of it, totally spontaneous.

2) What first grabbed me about Grime was that it combined my two favourite things in music - dance beats and rapping/rhyming/poetry/lyrics/wordplay. It is now undeniably closer to hiphop and further from garage than it was say 3 or 4 years ago. The ravey, dancey vibes with the occasional really driving 4x4 tune (musical mobb, alias etc). Most grime to me does not sound like a form of dance music and thats one thing i loved dearly about it before. I think maybe important in this has been the move in focus more towards the MC and away from the DJ. I mean MCs leaning backwards to rwd tunes is just rude in my opinion! Or shouting 'next one next one' until they get a riddim they like. Guess this has totally happened in hiphop over the years too....

The feminine pressure exerted then was from 'cheesy; female vocals from 2steppers of 4/4 grimey garage. It was drawing from our UK dance heritage. Now the feminine pressure is sped up helium female vocals where are clearly drawing from a US hiphop tradition. I LOVE Ruff Sqwad but i just can't stomach the two tracks near the end of GNR2 (i think its 17 and 18) and have to skip them. And they do them better than most. Slix's tape mixtape has far too many on also i think.

Hope i have conveyed my points, sorry seems a bit rambling. They are just rough ideas really. And i LOVE where grime is now, the other side of this move towards mixtapes has blessed us with gems such as GNR 1 and 2, 2nd Phaze etc etc. Just afew reflections.
 

Logan Sama

BestThereIsAtWhatIDo
Saying people appropriating the music helps is spread is one thing.

But Lady Sovereign's album doesn't sound like Grime. This is a mis-appropriation and the big acts within the scene are responsible for it too. The mainstream has no idea what Grime is. To them it is just UK Hip Hop. British kids rapping about stuff.

That is not what Grime is.

Sovereign does not make Grime, but by the token of her rapping in a london accent she is considered Grime. Sway does not do Grime, nor does he really do that good Hip Hop, but he garnered a huge amount of interest because at the time there was a void of UK 'rappers' waiting to go through after Kano, and to the media one black face rhyming on a beat is the same as a next.

I really cannot warm to Sway, he comes across as trying too hard. He has taken the formula of Eminem's success and twisted it into his own contrived semi-humourous style. I think he makes some decent beats though.

He is never in a million years better than 90% of the top tier Grime artists.

Until people have the courage in the convictions to actually let the world hear proper Grime music when they come out, much like JME and Lethal have done, we will never see success as a genre, merely individual artists doing well enough to get by on the "British rapper" ticket.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
Sway ISN'T a grime MC though, so I don't really see what you're trying to say.

yeah but even though as logan says hes contrived, simplistic, gimmicky, and not as humorous as everyone seems to think (i do wonder about some peoples sense of humour), he does know how to write songs, stick to the topic, can stick to a flow over the course of more than eight bars, and things like that.

anyone heard the aftershock album yet? its a bit dissapointing - a real mixed bag of a million different styles, and not that uptempo. some of the production is still great as youd expect but a lot of the MCs are just underwhelming. its recorded like a mixtape (is it an album or a 'street album', ie mixtape?) as well - vocals quite loud and 'over' the beat rather than inside it. i think my favourite track is track six, this funky house type of track. i hope it blows up.
 
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Logan Sama

BestThereIsAtWhatIDo
"Work" with the Barrington Levy sample? I think it's a great prodction.

I've not heard the Aftershock album in full yet, so I can't comment, but I know there isn't a huge amount of hype on it's imminent release for whatever reason.

It is a shame because Terror Danjah has always been very consistent and I would have liked to have seen him have some wider success.
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
Until people have the courage in the convictions to actually let the world hear proper Grime music when they come out, much like JME and Lethal have done, we will never see success as a genre, merely individual artists doing well enough to get by on the "British rapper" ticket.

I'd say Dizzee Rascal's first album can be included here.
 

MATT MAson

BROADSIDE
I'd say Dizzee Rascal's first album can be included here.

I'd second that - and add that this is going to keep on happening, as victorvaughn rightly points out the sound has moved closer to hip hop than ever, plus the novelty factor of grime has worn off in the mainstream.

I was defending Sway simply because I think he's a great artist. He never claimed to be part of the grime scene, he shouldn't be lumped in with Sov as a bandwagon jumper. Lazy journos and PR people might have described him as 'grimy' or whatever, but I've never heard him make any such claim.

I'm just happy to see good British artists like Sway come through. Imagine if he had gone the grime route, joined Roll Deep and just done war bars and radio or whatever, he'd probably have got nowhere. But he did his own thing, he made some very smart moves and the mainstream supported him. I respect that.

If more grime artists dared to break the mold a little more, move away from whatever the current Oxford definition of "proper" grime music is, maybe the scene would be a little more dynamic than it is today. I'm all for artists trying new things that piss people off.

On that note, good luck to Hadouken as well. I only heard one of their songs, but I quite liked to be honest.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
i like hadouken as well. not so much for their vocalist, but just for their beats. they have that anger, and sense of fierce determination that - sorry - i dont hear so much in grime anymore. heard get me by bruza today for the first time in ages - made the aftershock comp sound really, really weak in comparison. sounds like a bunch of half hearted leftovers. a shame cos terror, big ed, and DOK are some of the best producers in the grime scene. they just work with some really shoddy mcs.
 

DJL

i'm joking
I think Hadouken are ok having listened to some of the tunes on their myspace once. The beats are pretty grimey. Some people need to be tricked into listening to things they will really like.

Sway is good lyrically but I think his beats aren't brilliant. He should be on more grime tracks.
 

Logan Sama

BestThereIsAtWhatIDo
The Hadouken beats are turgid intentionally poor sounding immitations of those weird LOK type of beats that got played on Deja in 2003.

Listening to them and being convinced i recognise half the melodies and ALL of the sounds used from back then annoys me even more.

And to be honest, the only thing I have gained from the Hadouken et al experience is that Grime acts should do exactly the opposite of what Mr Mason suggests.

"If more grime artists dared to break the mold a little more, move away from whatever the current Oxford definition of "proper" grime music is, maybe the scene would be a little more dynamic than it is today."

This resulted in Wifey Riddim, 75% of the Roll Deep album, the average hip hop on Kano's album, Dream and Off To Work by Dizzee, and all other manner of mainstream flops. People get the deals in the first place for "proper" grime, so I would like to see people have the courage to actually shock the world and put out proper grime on a wider scale, not music tailor made with the intention of pleasing some faceless imaginary "mainstream listener"
 

MATT MAson

BROADSIDE
I wasn't suggesting artists need to make awful mainstream crap. My problem with grime right now is it sounds a little too formulaic and hip-hoppy. Anyone moving away from that I think is going in the right direction.

Just so we're clear, what exactly is "proper" grime Logan?
 

zhao

there are no accidents
Just so we're clear, what exactly is "proper" grime Logan?

surely I'm not the best one to answer this question, being an outsider to the scene and having very limited knowledge... but here's me taking a stab anyway:

1. around 70/140 BPM, with snare on the 4, not 3.
2. low production value, badly mixed
3. 8-bit video game console electronic sounds
4. heavy cockney accented rap
5. boastful of UN-popularity with females
 

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
Cockney? Yardie more often.

The only heavy accented cockney i can think of is Bruza and Fender (of Mastermind Troopers) where it comes across like a bit of an affected gimmick.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
the problem with grime now is it just doesnt know what it wants to be. i find most of the tunes im hearing now not fast enough. theyre not really hip hop per se, but theyre not really uptempo either, which was the thing that previously made it defiantly 'not' hip hop. so you just have this wavering in-limbo sound thats not quite hip hop, not quite grime, which sounds like a copout. thats not new in grime but it seems to have affected 90% of the genre now. so you just have all these tracks made by guys that are aware the scene isnt going to blow up like they thought, so they seem to be retreating into the perceived safety of urrrrban mainstream hip hop/R&B type stuff (a lot of the interviews i read, artists seem to be encouraging the idea that you need more sing a long hooks, more glamour, more radio friendliness, where is the hardcore attitude?!) but keeping a little of the 'griminess' just in case anyone says theyre imitating which is neither here nor there. you can say its great now cos its so diverse and its all over the map etc etc but for a scene this small, that just seems to equal fragmented, unsure of where its going and lacking much of a cohesive identity. the collective forward momentum is nowhere to be found. even rules and regulations, i find it a bit dissapointing so many tracks are in that 65/130bpm mould. you can say they just FEEL 65bpm when really theyre 130 but all that half time thing can be a bit annoying IMO, i personally like the tunes to FEEL fast. i dont need another uk hip hop scene. i hate to say it but im starting to think blissblogger might have been right.
 
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zhao

there are no accidents
i find it a bit dissapointing so many tracks are in that 65/130bpm mould. you can say they just FEEL 65bpm when really theyre 130 but all that half time thing can be a bit annoying IMO, i personally like the tunes to FEEL fast. i dont need another uk hip hop scene. i hate to say it but im starting to think blissblogger might have been right.

feel fast like... "what do you call it"? I personally think the fast/slow tension is one of the basic features which makes the sound exciting. I love tracks which alternately speed up / fill the half time , and slow down to the skeletal 65 BPM, maybe split between verse and chorus.

sorry, but what did blissblogger say?
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
i dont mind tunes that split up the fast/slow dynamic between choruses but tracks that are right on that line between fast/slow aka half step, can either be great when its something like wonders what, but most of the time, i just think theyre cop out tracks, designed to trick listeners into thinking they are hip hop as well as grime or just not grime at all (maybe on some levels, this is cleverer - gets more people on board for one thing, in theory anyway, but just ends up being MOR). yes i know the syncopation and rhythms are still tweaked slightly differently but often i find its not different enough.

blissblogger made some big dramatic post a year or so ago saying that he had enough of the genre and that he wasnt paying attention to it anymore as it was doomed now that its mainstream breakthrough had been stunted. its funny, everyone cussed the press for making too much of uk garage and blowing it up before it was ready or ruining it cos it came under too much scrutiny - grime never got that, and its still gone into a lull. or you could argue the mainstream pressure/expectation/hype post-dizzee was too much and created expectations the genre could never realistically meet.
 
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