I loved [Roll Deep's new album "Return of the Big Money Sound"], but the beats on this are wack. I can totally understand wanting to sound like Madness if you're a pop band - what better? - but you gotta have the choruses first. It's a prime example of the problem of MC culture - that giving one's own experience is enough, and frankly it isn't. Chatting on beats - or acoustic guitar tracks, or whatever - is about giving over the meaning of your experience to a perceived audience. If you've lost that hunger and can't do the direct experience thing then you gotta try and take that to writing songs, killer choruses...you gotta go further. See rolex and dance with me for that, it's fair enough and good I think for development. But I dunno who wasn't involved - Trim, or some backstage people or what - on this one but it fails on all levels. Sad really. Sounds and feels like a crew falling apart, if that was the intention - and see the last track, it sounds like it was - then good. It's not even heartbreaking though, it just feels like people with a platform and nothing to contribute.
You know, I finally got around to listening to this in full today, and I really don't think it is all that bad. I was expecting much worse. As an attempt at this new "commercial grime" format, it is above and beyond In At The Deep End (although this might not be a fair comparison, most things are).
There are a few tracks that are terrible ('We Can See It', 'Movin In Circles'), but there are a handful of tracks that are really good ('Give Up' [easily the best tune on the CD], 'Night Life', 'Thunder and Lighting', 'Fat Mac 90'). I am loving the addition of J2K to the line-up, and though I'm not particularly a fan of the electro-house trend, they could've done a LOT worse than 'Do Me Wrong'. Roll Deep pulling off a pop record that actually works as a pop record is something to applaud in and of itself.
Most of all though, when considering the crews ever-changing line-up, it made me realize how integral Danny Weed is to Roll Deep. For me, his productions are what make Roll Deep unique and make their tunes
sound like Roll Deep tunes.
Biggest disappointment for me was 'Club 7' really not being done justice. Such a heavy riddim ruined by being made to fit a traditional song structure, seemingly just for the sake of it. Such a poor, ill-advised and unnecessary chorus on that one. They should've all just taken a break from the "song" format of the rest of the album and sprayed, a la Babylon Burner.