Whats the deal with Channel U?

Woebot

Well-known member
Everyone's talking about London's new cable channel dedicated to UK Hip Hop. I also know all the Grimey grimesters are getting videos made to show on it. Can someone fill us in on what its like etc? I haven't seen it yet meself...
 

ambrose

Well-known member
man i really want to get this.

i saw it once for about 10 secs, looked amazing.

is it on ntl or something?

i dont understand all this cable stuff. you can only get it in london, right?

fuck that eh.
 

luka

Well-known member
i've got it. its great in a lot of ways but not nearly as exciting as you might imagine. the vast majority of videos that get regular play are a)shit b)from people you've never heard of from faraway places like shepards bush or ipswich ('what you know about ips? we are the top boys in ips')
the bruiser video, get me is getting a little play, ps and qs not nearly enough. if the only people who could vote for tunes were from newham it would be a good little station but the shitty taste of the country at large makes it slightly disappointing. the videos are good though. all exactly the same. all your mates (must including one or two white boys, an asian kid with his hood up and one dread. oh, and at least one dangerous dog on a chain. which will snarl periodically) it has to be around a council estate. there has to be a couple of the local scrubbers trying to look buff. someone has to burn a zoot. if you are top boys your video will feature motorbikes. people will do wheelies and wheelspins on the motorbikes. your crew will walk menancingly towards a camera which retreats before you. if your video doesn't feature those elements you will get no love.
 

luka

Well-known member
incidently, they show american videos too. just not that many. westwoods tv show is also on the station.
 

robin

Well-known member
haha ive only seen this the odd time in other people's houses but all the videos were exactly as described by luka....
its a good channel for passing the time and its nice to see some of the grime people i'd only heard of before but like most music channels it seems to repeat itself a lot...
 

hint

party record with a siren
it's one of those things where when you first catch the good bits you think "yeeeeeah!"... but then you realise that the good bits are few and far between.

stuff like "the illout show" is great - exactly the kind of thing that I love to watch... some chat, some live performances... just some lightweight entertainment involving music that doesn't get enough airtime elsewhere

I also caught a solid programme once on there where they showed some shakey camcorder footage of freestyle sessions in one of the london record shops - baby blue was one of the MCs that I remember... I'd love it if they showed stuff like that more regularly.

but there's a lot of videos on constant rotation that are exactly as described above - I seem to keep catching one where it's a guy talking about writing to his g/friend in prison and the "what you know bout Ips?" one. I guess the material just isn't out there - i.e. not enough videos are being made cos no one has the money. would be great to get some footage of raves / battles up there, but I guess a lot of that kind of stuff is held back for DVDs.
 

owen

Well-known member
There was this track on raw fm on friday over 'nigga what, nigga who' where the chorus went 'all I can see is bare low budget videos on Channel U'. The MC had a very squeaky voice. 'It looks like it was made on Super-8!' was a particularly good line. Anyone know anything about this?
 
Channel U - 467 on sky digital.

The Southside Allstars video is the best thing on it at the moment - "You can Roll Deep, but not down here". Features Asher D and a cast of thousands with a combined age of about 30. I like the way the scene in the underpass degenrates into mad murking melee and the video ends... for a few seconds anyway.

The FWD video has shown up on there a few times in the last week too.

There's one from Kilburn which makes you feel really sorry for everyone involved. From a mangy dog on a string to an angry dog in a studded harness... things have changed a bit, haven't they?

And the Manolo video - (filmed outside his mum and dad's mansion in Guildford or what?) is just about the very worst thing you'll ever see.

What else - oh yeah - the Foreigner feat. Skinnyman video is worth catching too. Big shame the latter ruined his LP with way too many Made in Britain samples.
 

forclosure

Well-known member
It was the scrappy sometimes embarassing younger brother to MTV Base

lads trying to make their video fantasies come true but with significantly smaller budgets

Its only in the last 2-3 years i would say uk videos look like they have some money put into them also drones help
 
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