Pitchfork reviews Run the Road

I like Lady Sovereign.

She is like the secret entrance exam for anyone who wants to like Grime. If they like her, they don't get it.

She's a nice way of weeding out the fashion followers.

Thankfully Run The Road isn't a Lady Sovereign mixtape, and utilising the skip button on your cd player is only required for one track.

lol @ logan!

brrrrrap!

DigitalDjigit said:

You are forgetting that most of their reviews are still firmly in white college boy indie rock territory.

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Not to be rude, but wasn't that exactly his point? This might be overly presumptuous of me, but I imagine the Pitchfork world mouths off a lot of criticism of the mechanics of the mainstream media while they end up playing exactly the same game. That Run the Road review is just shit, for pretty much exactly the reasons Logan said, and maybe even more reasons too. It's the same story that was told by everyone and their pet lizard last summer in the US when Dizzee Rascal appeared, only if my memory serves me right he was given no real context (other than that he had really been stabbed by So Solid Crew or whoever, and he's from the London streets where 'guns are really starting to become a problem'), and that perfectly sets up Pitchfork and the like (who else? XLR8R for one) to break the story of the scene that 'spawned' Dizzee's 'natural street genius.'

DigitalDjigit said:

You are forgetting that most of their reviews are still firmly in white college boy indie rock territory.

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Not forgetting it at all, I just think it's funny how most (not all) reviews of grime in more traditionally rock outlets follow those lines. It's lazy.

I think lady sovereign has benefitted greatly from being picked up by a label that's run by a respected "eclectic" london DJ... and a label that's prepared to spend a bit of cash on artwork and promotion mailouts etc... this certainly makes a big difference when it comes to getting a reviewer's attention, unfortunately. there's a lot of people in positions of influence out there waiting for the next big thing to drop through their letterbox with a press release announcing the fact that it's the next big thing.

I like the landslide remix of ching ching, but that's more a production thing - it'll sound a lot better with a new vocal on it. sovereign has an alright flow, but her lyrics and tone of voice / accent don't quite do it for me.

that medasyn 12" on casual was better.

street knowledge

sorry chaps you're all talking out of your arses

have you ever actually listened to a grime lyric?

90 percent of grime lyrics, the manifest content is:

--- street soldier bizniz (grisly threats, my crew's ruffer than your crew)
--- assertions of knowing the streets, coming from the streets, and other urban surroundings type stuff
--- expressions of hunger to make it, uncontainable and explosive drive to succeed and get out of the ghetto


if journalists are writing about this stuff, they are simply responding to the MANIFEST CONTENT of grime, writ large in not just the lyrics but the name artists choose or their label names etc etc


if these things are cliches, it's because they are grime's OWN CLICHES (and very potent, and compelling, and sadly abiding, and resonant cliches)

i would further argue that the actual sonics of grime are inseparable from its urban surroundings, and in some ways reflect or are twisted by the experiences of living in a city most parts of which is by and large pretty fucking grim (especially in winter, which means the whole year really apart from a few months in the summer)


as for the other line of argument in re. Lady Sovereign... apart from her being great and there being room in grime for a bit of quirkiness and different kinds of character.... well it's just funny to see the self-appointed custodians of the scene getting a bit worried that their preciously accrued subcultural capital is
going to be devalued because finally, after several years of faffing about, the scene looks like it finally might make it. And deep down you don't really want it to make it, to get what should rightfully be its, do you?. And so it starts, all the bollocks about "who's real grime", and who should cover it, and how.... you'd rather have the media ignore it so you can complain about being excluded... typical UK undergroundism self-sabotage. except that the people who ARE actually in the scene all want to make it and cross over, they practically talk about nothing else!

wotwot

oh shit.... blissblogger going on mucky...

Simon OTM

blissblogger said:

A load of exaggerated assumptions used to make a hackneyed point

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No, obviously I don't want grime to get big. I like being poor. It's great fun spending my last £47 on 2 plates for the show on friday night knowing I shall be earning nothng for it while "Jack of all trades" former garage djs like Masterstepz pull in £450 an hour playing across the country.

And you seem to have missed my point. It's evident to anyone who spends more than 5 minutes looking at any sort of grime dvd that everyone is clad head to toe in labels, is usually driving something nice, and is usually holding weed. The myth that "we have no opportunities" and "life in the ghetto is so terribly hard" is perpetuated in such articles. People make music and shot drugs in Londonbecause it is firstly vastly more financially rewarding in the short term than perseveering with college/university and secondly because it allows them to continue their disorganised, haphazard lifestyles without putting too much effort into leading a structured life. It's their choice to live that way, not the "only way out of the hood". BUT THAT WASN'T EVEN MY POINT! My annoyance is that every article on the scene seems to be using this same template.

And some people have been lurking on rwd forums too much. "goin on mucky!" indeed!

Is there a roll eyes emoticon on this forum?

yes

I definitely agree. I was discussing it today with a leading journalist in the grime scene and hopefully it might actually see print in the future.

so where

does the massive amount of anger, hostility, paranoia etc in the music come from then if life is so hunky dory and full of "the finer things in life" (brand name goods!)?

as for your comments re career options for people on the scene, people choosing music or crime rather than further education or a proper career

i can't imagine that many but the top few people on the scene earn much money of it, with sales of 500 being the norm... your own point about the costs of making dubplates and djing music that isn't oriented to party vibes underlines that... really making it through music and making it last is hard work, to see it as people faffing around is kinda patronising, there's a lot of dedication and commitment involved. it doesn't seem like taking the easy option to me. especially with a vanguard music like grime that most people find too abrasive.


likewise, i always got the impression that crime in reality was rather a tough way of earning a living -- lots of pressure, boredom (imagine the tedium of selling drugs, all the weighing and waiting), paranoia, constant possibility of getting sent down, and once you've got a record it must be incredibly hard to get a job.... luka used to go on about this, crime being drudgery and tension rather than glamour and living large... that's why criminals tend to drop out when they got older, it's a dead end career.

again i can't see why someone would take this option if they really had other options, your presentation of it as being taking the easy way out rather than, er, enrolling in night school or something, is puzzling.

If you actually knew some of these people you'd understand why they see it as the easy way out. it is a lifestyle they understand, whereas the lifestyle you or I may take for granted in suburbia is alien to them.

logan: you complain you don't like the left/liberal/guardian journalist template for grime which implies that grime people who chose crime are victims of their own cirumstances.

god help the scene if the agressive right wing press (of which we have FAR more of in the UK) get hold of grime.

their template is that all criminals should be hounded and then punished. ask So Solid Crew: all they did wrong was have a gig in the west end. it took the scene two years to recover.

be careful what you wish for...

i know people living that life. they've all been stabbed and they've all been locked up.
you can make money when times are good though it's true. it's definietly not what i'd want to do, but then again, they're all much better dressed than i am. i think i can understand why logan is saying what he's saying, he knows it's not strictly true, not everything is hunky dory, there's no prospects, its boring and repetitive and dangerous but he's trying to redress the balance. the kids are not savages and, wioth some exceptions, they're certainly not stupid and as scratch says you can 'walk through any manor any estate, no tools no mates, everyone's safe' london is not a warzone and there have been things written (and it's true, as simon says, that the musics lyrics often perpetuate these stereotypes) which go a bit overboard with the urban deprivation, gunmen on every corner angle. usually in newspaper review sections.

ironically, many of the views expressed on this thread are very similar to those expressed on pitchfork. except, you know, more "street."

in my own wiley review (for, gasp!, a [possibly] major american publication) i made a point of talking up how relentlessly positive he really is at heart.