20
It would be ridiculous to talk about London rap and all that without putting Ard Bodied in here, especially Track 9/Talking The Hardest. I can't pretend I was on it from the very start, I think I actually first heard the tune off RWD forum or VIP2 which is another story in itself I guess. There was also a period where Wiley uploaded it to myspace (!) which exposed it to the wider UK audience and all that. This was when there was the myspace downloader site and you could get the tune as a 320 if they'd uploaded it as a wav!
I was living in Lewisham at the time and as I said earlier on, rap was the dominant sound there really. There were a few little phone shops or whatever that had a little cabinet full of yank rap DVDs, a few London one; I remember one of them had some Blue Borough CD double pack that was so hard, but its been lost somewhere in the melee of early 2010s afters etc
Anyway, Ard Bodied was so hard to find for some reason. A little later on, SN1 had their shop in Peckham arcade so you could get good tapes in there, plus SN1 t-shirts, hats, baby grows...
But this was before then and I was lazy plus all the dealers were in Lewisham so why would I get the 136/436 to Peckham all the way for a CD. Anyway I managed to download it off some moody site but it was only a 128 so very little bass. But fucking hell its a good CD, pretty much every track bangs, the nihilism, Pain Is The Essence I have already posted. I may be jumbling up years but I feel like I was getting a lot of lemon then but occasionally a bit of ammy, my flat stunk of green, banging out Giggs and loads funky on Rinse/Deja, DJing at 140 because i didnt have enough funky for a full set yet, lashing loads of grime in. The neighbours must have loved me
As for the tracks, it's quite obvious to me that John Wayne tried to take the Dubz flow and jack it, though they have enough differences to stand out between themselves, but both him and Giggs do smash out the tape, it still holds up I think
Re: Talking The Hardest, if you weren't around at the time it's really hard to describe just how big it really was. This XL Recordings post isn't the original upload, it got pulled off youtube by Trident request if I remember right; Giggs couldn't get booked anywhere as the Form 696 meant he would get pulled off a line up. Every time I heard it out in the clubs it was just rewind rewind rewind. Madness really, very few tunes like it in my years going out; hard to imagine it happening again but then again I am getting older, it wouldn't resonate the same with me anyway
It's a shame it's been co-opted now- the first comment is "Boiler Room: All Stand For The National Anthem"
As if a youtube DJ channel started by Blaise fucking Belville and bought out by venture capital has any fucking clue about 2009 street relevance or whatever. Not that i can talk, I've been to loads and benefitted myself, but in retrospect these entities have helped remove something integral to the internal mechanism of the city. Its easy to observe as an quasi-outsider, if I was born in London the sense of loss would perhaps be even more acute
What a tune anyway. It's not really 19 should be higher, i just felt like writing about it right after the John Wayne one
Eventually i found the Ard Bodied CD on the little reggae stall in Lewisham market weirdly, not sure it was a real one, it looked so cheap but whatever that's half the point of it right
