Before you post yet another, ask yourself
- Thread starter k-punk
- Start date
k-punk
Spectres of Mark
labrat said:
lol, better that it's discussed here though than that another seven are started.....
Number 11 eh? Don't you get to number 11 now if you ask all your friends and family to buy your record?
blackdown said:
Just because it failed doesn't mean that it wasn't intended, does it?
Grievous Angel
Beast of Burden
Simon, you're such a hipster!
FWIW I think Grime is by no means all chewed out now -- seems to me that it's more interesting right now than it ever has been. Dubstep in particular has come on in leaps in 2005. 'Course, I'm not an exper and won't have your perspective... but most ppl on Dissensus won't have your level of expertise.
FWIW I think Grime is by no means all chewed out now -- seems to me that it's more interesting right now than it ever has been. Dubstep in particular has come on in leaps in 2005. 'Course, I'm not an exper and won't have your perspective... but most ppl on Dissensus won't have your level of expertise.
blissblogger said:
it just ain't good enough. i'm declaring war on grime's war on pop. it's bollocks. i'd rather listen to some proper grime. or some proper pop, for that matter.
blissblogger
Well-known member
Blackdown said:so it never intended to have a war and when it got there it wasnt even a real war cos it had changed itself so much. there isn't acually a war is there simon?
to keep on extending the metaphor to perilous degrees!
compared with 2step's utter anschluss on pop, grime has managed some scattered commando raids
'brown eyes' 's "potential" again reinforces the inverse ratio between pure uncut griminess and chances-of-being-a-proper-hit
and mark's right re. #11 in 2005 being equivalent to #41 in 1981... there's been a steady depreciation of the value of a hit
i really dont see this assumption that one of the original and primary intentions of grime was to attack pop. i think this is an assumption that's been retrospectively grafted onto the scene by people external to it.
sure dizzee and co wanted to make money, but to specifically go after the pop artform? i dont buy it.
sure dizzee and co wanted to make money, but to specifically go after the pop artform? i dont buy it.
Diggedy Derek
Stray Dog
Yes, I'd agree with that. One of the reasons I think I enjoy these pop "raids" is that they specifically aren't real grime, which is a solid genre in it's own right.
blissblogger
Well-known member
wiley and roll deep kicked off their recorded career with a sample of Puff Daddy going "sometimes you mutherfuckers don't understand where i'm coming from, where i'm trying to get to" and you're telling me it was never part of the gameplan to crossover/invade the mainstream/take over?!?! you only have to talk to someone like jammer or wiley and it's obvious they want to be in a Jay-Z like position, they don't want to stay underground forever
all the grime dvds (on which the artists appear for free, thinking it's building their careers), it's all a giant rehearsal, surely, for this moment of stardom, this individual/collective breakthrough, that always looks like it's about to happen... but three or four years on, hasn't really taken place
the internal dynamics of grime requires lebensraum .... the scene doesn't have sufficient resources of its own, only a handful of people within it make any kind of a living out of it... so grime needs to conquer audiences external to it (especially the case with grime where the audience is principally teenage and not well off) ... (if you think of American rap's prosperity, that's based in large part on the invisible 70 percent of its consumer base that is white.... the rap stars wouldn't be living nearly so large if hip hop was a self-sufficient and segregated black economy)
grime needs to move into pop and displace the current inhabitants of the charts, or some of them
those internal dynamics are economic, but they are also cultural and psychological -- the very engine of the culture, is this expansionist drive (all that imagery of coming through, blowing up, ain't nothing gonna stop us now etc)... the pressure has been building up and up, it's like cultural hydraulics....
but what happens to the culture, and the individual egos within it, when that drive is checked.... when the explosive thrust implodes...
all the grime dvds (on which the artists appear for free, thinking it's building their careers), it's all a giant rehearsal, surely, for this moment of stardom, this individual/collective breakthrough, that always looks like it's about to happen... but three or four years on, hasn't really taken place
the internal dynamics of grime requires lebensraum .... the scene doesn't have sufficient resources of its own, only a handful of people within it make any kind of a living out of it... so grime needs to conquer audiences external to it (especially the case with grime where the audience is principally teenage and not well off) ... (if you think of American rap's prosperity, that's based in large part on the invisible 70 percent of its consumer base that is white.... the rap stars wouldn't be living nearly so large if hip hop was a self-sufficient and segregated black economy)
grime needs to move into pop and displace the current inhabitants of the charts, or some of them
those internal dynamics are economic, but they are also cultural and psychological -- the very engine of the culture, is this expansionist drive (all that imagery of coming through, blowing up, ain't nothing gonna stop us now etc)... the pressure has been building up and up, it's like cultural hydraulics....
but what happens to the culture, and the individual egos within it, when that drive is checked.... when the explosive thrust implodes...
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if grime had 'poppier' or at least catchier tracks, a la davinches remix of MIA, rather than out and out commercial pop-hip-hop crossover bollocks, it's chances of maintaining its 'purer' form and cred while still penetrating the upper reaches of the charts might be higher.
I really do think the issue with grime sales is to do with the demographics. 2 step was always led by an older discerning crowd with spending power and with the ability to make the youngers think it was aspirational wannabe music - hence you still have mid-twenty-somethings now into this music with loads of club nights playing this stuff and dj ez mixtapes stilldoing a roaring trade. 2 step also tapped into 'older sensisbilities'...the soul boys, people into jazzy b and his ilk.
It was always going to be tough for grime to follow this because its core audience was the under 18s...people who (increasingly) don't buy fomat music because unlike in the past (where even poor people would beg/steal/borrow to lay their hands on music) they have a choice not to (they can rinse it burn it). Also the sounds were never going ton resonate with the older crowd - yer Norris Windrosses who were always going to do all in their powers to stop it being played out anywhere.
So you have this situation where even Londoners who like dancehall, hiphop, r'n'b and garage do not like grime. To me talking about a grime assualt on pop is way to premature...and is an unfair expectation. It's about the long game ...maybe 10 years or so before we have really big players in the scene.
The problem is about the expectations among artists themselves....but I see this as tempering already, with recent dvds showing artists proud of their unsigned status, talking about it as a badge of honour...a real change from 'we're gonna conquer the US and Japan' on earlier footage.
It was always going to be tough for grime to follow this because its core audience was the under 18s...people who (increasingly) don't buy fomat music because unlike in the past (where even poor people would beg/steal/borrow to lay their hands on music) they have a choice not to (they can rinse it burn it). Also the sounds were never going ton resonate with the older crowd - yer Norris Windrosses who were always going to do all in their powers to stop it being played out anywhere.
So you have this situation where even Londoners who like dancehall, hiphop, r'n'b and garage do not like grime. To me talking about a grime assualt on pop is way to premature...and is an unfair expectation. It's about the long game ...maybe 10 years or so before we have really big players in the scene.
The problem is about the expectations among artists themselves....but I see this as tempering already, with recent dvds showing artists proud of their unsigned status, talking about it as a badge of honour...a real change from 'we're gonna conquer the US and Japan' on earlier footage.
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blissblogger said:
this is why when Roll Deep went on Westwood for the first time this year, i thought it was so interesting that wiley talked about 'your own situation' ie setting up your own label business. the roll deep lp was <I>licenced</i> to Relentless not signed. seeing how wiley has fortold or lead nearly every grime landmark, perhaps this insight answers simon's question about what happens when all the MCs realise only a few of them will ever be signed?
k-punk
Spectres of Mark
I think the grime malaise is part of a wider teen fantasy structure that you can get something-for-very-little ... not that dissimilar to reality TV really... they see Jay-z and think 'well, I can spit rhythms, I will get that big'... everything that was necessary for that success, not only all the tedious labour and promotional grind, but the 'success infrastructure' of hip hop itself, is occulted... you just have to watch those grime DVDs, with their massive gleaming, whooshing title sequences that deliberately ape the most gargantuan blockbusters to hook into the fantasy... (course the contrast with the reality - a few blokes in a shed with a mic shot on a shaky video camera - tells you all you need to know about the distance of that fantasy from where grime actually is).
re: grime's war on pop
Yeah, I don't think it's a war on pop but people like Wiley want it to blow up... It seems totally normal to me... underground & experimental hip-hop came after it got big not before, yeah? It started as party music... wasn't grime started as party music? for people to dance to? mc's keeping the crowd hyped? I just read an interview with Wiley the other day where he was saying he wants to get someone like Missy Elliot on a grime track to move it all forward. Personally I'd like to hear some dancehall / grime crossover action like they had on some of those "bassline / speed garage" tracks with Elephant Man dropping vocals on a nasty grime riddim.
Yeah, I don't think it's a war on pop but people like Wiley want it to blow up... It seems totally normal to me... underground & experimental hip-hop came after it got big not before, yeah? It started as party music... wasn't grime started as party music? for people to dance to? mc's keeping the crowd hyped? I just read an interview with Wiley the other day where he was saying he wants to get someone like Missy Elliot on a grime track to move it all forward. Personally I'd like to hear some dancehall / grime crossover action like they had on some of those "bassline / speed garage" tracks with Elephant Man dropping vocals on a nasty grime riddim.