Can UK Hip Hop/Grime Blow Up In The States?

[joeschmo]

ps does timbaland even have double-time programming? really? where? isn't it just that he has jittery beats, and drum 'n' bass has jittery beats, and there's a superficial similarity there... always remember mr. reynolds claiming that get ur freak on was a drum 'n' bass ripoff, but really, if you listen to it, the beats sound nothing like drum 'n' bass... the only bits that do sound anything like drum 'n' bass are the tablas!

 

[dominic]

one could just as easily argue that the persistence of the timbaland-stole-from-jungle-meme is due to the desperation of uk urban music heads to see the music they believe to be so ahead of its time validated outside of its own back yard, because really, it hasn't been to this day....

whether timbaland ripped ideas from d'n'b or not, the music has rec'd plenty of validation

maybe not from black america, but parts of white america and many other parts of the world

and i hope you're not suggesting that validation by certain others is a sign of a music's worth?

 

[Cornflake]

well i wouldnt go on about how kano emptied out the park since at the end of the roll deep set it started to rain and ppl booked it afterwards other than the ppl that were diehard juelz fans because if you really wanted to hear kano you would be going to the show on the saturday night...

but i do agree thats its gonna be hard to get grime over in north america...i dont know if the wave of hipsters of ppl that crave the underground when it comes to rock and that stuff would do the same for grime....yes the lady sov and the mia do well but thats because its not that grimey....its the poppy version of it...

im hoping it gets large..but its gonna take time....small scenes are being developed and hopefully it'll move from there...

 

[joeschmo]

<i>and i hope you're not suggesting that validation by certain others is a sign of a music's worth?</i>

oh no, i'm not obsessed with the idea that a 'certain' producer stole his style from jungle...

but isn't it funny how people are endlessly wondering whether grime can 'make it' in the states, and simultaneously getting all defensive about how it doesn't need to?

hardcore, d'n'b,2-step, grime... i love em all, but none of them have ever been more than hipster tastes overseas

ps oh. my other favorite meme in this area is the one about how hip-hop is too 'insular' to get grime... yeah, you don't care about our music, you must be 'insular'...

 

[dominic]

hardcore, d'n'b,2-step, grime... i love em all, but none of them have ever been more than hipster tastes overseas

i think we sometimes have a hard time understanding each other on this board -- i.e., americans and english . . . .

i understand that hardcore, jungle, etc, were "massive" working class and people's movements in england, unifying all races around music, etc, etc -- and yet at same time, i find it hard to believe that jungle could have been as ubiquitous in england (or urban england) as hip hop is in the states -- i.e., i cannot imagine how anyone into hardcore, jungle, etc, could not be "hip" to the music and drug culture, which is what such mass support implies (i.e., how can masses of people be hip and cool???) -- unless the culture had become routinized and devoid of edge very early on -- or is the majority of the under-40 population in england cool??? [i'm using terms hip and cool w/ some irony, but not complete irony]


AND YES, none of these uk-initiated music movements has ever had the same kind of mass support in the states as in the uk -- HOWEVER, it doesn't follow that the only support for this kind of music in the states has been from the much-despised figure of the hipster -- concededly, i'm probably a hipster or, fuck knows, at least a quasi-hipster -- but at least with hardcore and jungle, most people at raves and jungle nights in america, post-96, could not be classed as "hipsters" -- more like teenagers and early 20-somethings, and certainly not exclusively or even predominantly middle class

ALSO -- i don't think people in uk realize who the leading junglists are in america -- look at the djs!!! -- a hefty proportion are "colored" -- black, mexican, native american -- and from working class backgrounds, especially on the east coast -- but even in st louis, where i spent the late 90s, the leading jungle djs were black americans -- so i'm not sure where this perception that all americans into jungle are white middle-class "hipsters" comes from???

AGAIN, were hardcore and jungle ever mass populist movements in america? no. does this mean they were simply exotic/imported fads supported by nomadic, rootless hipsters? no

as for 2-step and grime, these have not and likely will not catch on in america -- though for different reasons

(1) 2-step -- this failed, in part, b/c the 2-step tracks with the highest profile were too similar to commercial american r'n'b, such that the people into jungle were not going to migrate to 2-step -- they want dark underground music, not commercial r'n'b sounds -- AND 2-step also failed b/c american djs either failed to pick up on the more underground 2-step sound (i.e., the darker and more wicked stuff, which i've only recently started to research) or distribution networks failed to ship the more underground 2-step sounds to america -- i wasn't buying records during these years, so i can't really say -- ALSO, another reason for the failure of 2-step is that speed garage was crap!!! -- i mean, how many good speed garage (4x4) tracks were there? -- most speed garage was repetitive, 4-to-the-floor, oppressive nonsense, w/ that really dreadful snare sound -- and this is what 2-step came out of, such that it had no immediate constituency

(2) grime -- i'm not sure if i necessarily *get* what grime is about, so i'm probably not the person to address its prospects in america -- but i suppose it's a sonic descendant of uk hardcore dance music while being divorced from dance music culture and ecstasy culture -- as such, it's music that's being sent to america w/o any kind of cultural packaging -- it's not being sent to the same people as were into hardcore rave and jungle (even if these are the people who are in fact most receptive) -- rather, the hope is that the raw sounds and the issues raised by grime mc's will somehow resonate with urban america -- i myself am a grime skeptic -- i just don't see enough energy behind the grime movement, not enough subcultural action -- no new drugs, no new clothing styles, no new modes of celebration -- for it to sustain itself on these shores -- HOWEVER, if grime does catch on, it will likely be through certain american hip hop producers making alliances with certain grime artists -- i.e., even if grime ain't the same ting as uk hip hop, it will have to get in bed with hip hop to make it stateside

 

[dominic]

also, i should say that i'm not too keen on this whole "shanty house" movement

or rather, i'm not keen on what seems like a new class system in music

this is how it goes . . . .

(1) cosmopolitan middle-class music = dfa, broken beats, house, techno, familiar hip hop -- same music gets played to the same hipsters in every major city the world over

(2) shanty house music = (2a) hip hop in all its regional manifestations across america; (2b) baile funk; (2c) reggaeton; (2d) grime; (2e) dancehall; (2f) miami bass; (2g) baltimore breaks; (2h) ghetto tech -- you get the idea!

(3) trance and commercial house = for the unwashed heathens everywhere

the problem w/ shanty house is that if you are located "outside" the area of production, why choose one variety over another??? or do you simply become a kind of cultural tourist, such that you play 5 reggaeton tracks in your set, followed by 5 grime tracks, followed by 5 crunk tracks? -- as a punter, i don't enjoy hearing djs do this -- it seems very false to me

and yet, i also get restless hearing djs play strictly category 1 music

what i'm nostalgic for is music of universal import -- or at least, music that appeared to have such import

that's what was so great about house music -- it was music that came from a very specific place, the gay black nightlife of chicago and nyc -- and yet it was everyone's house music -- it was universal

(and universal import is what the rave movement had in spades -- or is this a middle class conceit???)

or does universalism culminate in empty, worn out music???

and is shanty house, i.e., category 2 music, an attempt by people at the so-called margins to hold on to what is theirs?

ANYWAY, seems to me that grime is simply one regional variety of shanty house -- and that's what it will remain, unless it becomes more "universal" in its orientation -- and yes, it will find america forbidding soil, b/c unlike many of the other kinds of shanty house listed above, it has no ready-made community of support in the united states

 

[joeschmo]

that's too much for me to bother responding too, but i'll just note that i did not say anything about "white middle-class hipsters," i just said hipsters. i understand why you might overread that, but on this occasion i wasn't really bringing race into it.

i will say, however, don't believe this "unifying all races around music" schtick that the uk puts out... uk heads like to believe there's no race problem there, it's all sweetness and light, that's a us thing... just like us heads like to believe class is just a uk thing...

i will also note that in the new rolling stone, chris rock puts Boy in Da Corner at #25 in his list of all-time greatest hip-hop albums, saying "This shit is so ahead of its time, I don't know why they told him to do it slower and make it sound American or whatever they did on his next album. It's hard, man. I'm surprised no American rappers were smart enough to have him produce them. When you hear those beats, you think, 'OK, if blankety-blank was on this, it would be a hit.' That Dizzee Rascal is just fucking ridiculous."

just another reason why chris rock rocks

 

[captain easychord]

with regards to the hipster shanty town thing i blame diplo entirely (jk)

but in all honesty i stil can't figure out the embrace of "Street" music by hipsters (and what gets constituted as "street" is another matter... the current wave favours a certain bombastic, poppy kind of "street" at the exclusion of street shit that's not as FUN!)

to me it seems like there's no one movement to get behind so people have to settle for this kind of piecemeal assembly of different bits.

 

[Logan Sama]

Grime has a unique sound and culture behind it.

But I really am not bothered by other countries getting it yet. Any international interest helps us bring in revenue and establish an infrastructure and build up from the grass roots.

Grime isn't a "big" music in the UK yet, it don't expect it to be a big music anywhere else in this generation. There isn't a generation's worth of culture to export yet like Hip Hop and Reggae.

 

[dominic]

There isn't a generation's worth of culture to export yet like Hip Hop and Reggae.

so maybe people have the wrong set of expectations when they judge grime against the uk dance explosion of 90/93 or the punk-to-funk explosion of 77/83

i.e., a slow cultivation of the subterranean soil, not a pop explosion

i.e., maybe grime will simply take its place alongside reggae (dancehall) and hip hop as music of the urban streets, w/ grime the sound of urban london and other uk urban areas, hip hop for the various american cities, dancehall for kingston = so-called "street" music

and then running parallel to grime, there'll be the uk dance culture -- broken beats, uk garage, house, which will continue to carry on

 

[Freakaholic]

also,
the problem w/ shanty house is that if you are located "outside" the area of production, why choose one variety over another??? or do you simply become a kind of cultural tourist, such that you play 5 reggaeton tracks in your set, followed by 5 grime tracks, followed by 5 crunk tracks? -- as a punter, i don't enjoy hearing djs do this -- it seems very false to me

Is this happening elsewhere in the world?

As a DJ who started in DnB, i have always had a bass oriented taste in music. once i got into 80s electro then breaks, it seems like a natural progression to miami bass (lowest frequencies on earth when you get to car audio bass) and then to baile funk. now they seem to be, along with grime, the newest hipster catch-phrases.

ive managed sets including all of the above only minimally, and not up to my standards 100%. usually i pick 2 or 3 and go with those (ie, electro/bass/breaks or grime/breaks/dubstep). the difference in beats can be a bit too diverse for a dancefloor, but i hold as an ideal a set that not only seamlessly blends the genres, but utilizes their differences in beat structure to give dancers something they both love and have never heard before.

 

[Logan Sama]

so maybe people have the wrong set of expectations when they judge grime against the uk dance explosion of 90/93 or the punk-to-funk explosion of 77/83

i.e., a slow cultivation of the subterranean soil, not a pop explosion

i.e., maybe grime will simply take its place alongside reggae (dancehall) and hip hop as music of the urban streets, w/ grime the sound of urban london and other uk urban areas, hip hop for the various american cities, dancehall for kingston = so-called "street" music

and then running parallel to grime, there'll be the uk dance culture -- broken beats, uk garage, house, which will continue to carry on

This is all I hope for Grime

 

[tate]

i will also note that in the new Rolling Stone, chris rock puts Boy in Da Corner at #25 in his list of All-time Greatest Hip-hop Albums

I noticed Chris Rock's article this weekend as well, and was pleasantly surprised

Lady Sov is on the cover of the US magazine Venus this month, too, with a lengthy feature article

fwiw

 

[joeschmo]

<i>i.e., a slow cultivation of the subterranean soil, not a pop explosion

i.e., maybe grime will simply take its place alongside reggae (dancehall) and hip hop as music of the urban streets, w/ grime the sound of urban london and other uk urban areas, hip hop for the various american cities, dancehall for kingston = so-called "street" music</i>

The problem with this theory is that it presumes grime will stick around. Trend-driven nature of the UK music scene--to a far greater degree than the US--mitigates against this possibility.

Put it this way: If hip-hop happened in the UK, it would have splintered into a thousand subgenres a long time ago because everyone is so obsessed with naming/hyping the new thing. In the US, people are fine with letting it all co-exist under one name/tradition. In the US, Dizzee Rascal can fit in at #25 in the greatest hip-hop albums list; in the UK, everybody would be throwing a fit about how grime isn't hip-hop, no how, no way...

 

[Logan Sama]

The beauty of Grime is that as a name it merely describes the environment it is created and performed in.

It has no real preconceptions about what it should sound like other than it is a bunch of young kids rapping on beats that dont sound like traditional hip hop.

And Dizzee's and Wileys albums are pretty much pure grime albums which throw out the notion of everything having to sit in the 135-142 bpm bracket also.

I believe that while artists may well venture out into other genres to test the waters, Grime can exist as a unique british street music and not have to be split into sub genres as long as it remains artist and vocal centric. It has enough unique characteristics to stay separate from Hip Hop and Dancehall.

 

[joeschmo]

that's a pretty weak definition

personally, i don't think grime is distinctive enough to be considered truly separate from hip-hop. yes, that argument is boring, doesn't really matter at the end of the day, all sorts of great reasons why it should have a different name and be treated differently, but...

the thing about reggae is, it started out of jamaicans covering US r&b, but they created a new rhythm--emphasis on the three, not the one of funk--and they did absolutely everything in that style. they could be doing heard it through the grapevine and you know it's reggae right away because you hear that rhythm. it was derivative, but it created its own identity nonetheless.

grime needs something a bit more consistent and distinctive than "no real preconceptions"--that line is pure hip-hop anyway, all the way back to Afrika Bambaata.

anyway, i hope it sticks around, i really do

 

[gumdrops]

this argument will never die...

personally, i don't think grime is distinctive enough to be considered truly separate from hip-hop.

yeah, you can justify that the beats arent trad hip hop, and that the flows are different, the language is uniquely london, etc etc, all of which is true. there is a reason many hip hop fans truly loathe grime - it does sound different even to the neptunes, timbaland etc etc, but brilliant and unique as someone like wileys beats are, as soon as soon as MCs jump on it and rap on it, put it into the basic song format, it works as hip hop. for one thing, theyre still rapping in english, not dense patois like dancehall artists or in portugese like baile funk MCs which means its more easily comparable.

and it doesnt help that for every amazing alien-sounding beat like grand theft auto, what, what have you done, pulse x or underground, etc etc a lot of beats arent as radically different from US hip hop as you might hope, despite the slight tweaking. not enough grime reworks US hip hop and dancehall as radically as say, what jungle did with the hip hop and ragga of it's period.

of course, if youve been following grime through from garage, you can see its obvious roots and trace how its developed, but most of those roots have been obliterated by people who essentially wanted to make hip-hop. and using the grime=uk's answer to hip hop analogy, well it looks like not even grime has been capable of proving as a genre - rather than a few select artists - that hip hop travels or works that well in the hands of non-americans. not as a recorded music anyway. we'll see though....

anyway, here's what skepta says on blackdown's blog -
"The LP’s gonna be called ‘More Than Grime’ because grime’s not a good enough name for our scene. Everywhere I go in the world they use the name ‘grime’ but it’s just UK rap at a different speed."

grime needs something a bit more consistent and distinctive

i agree, a lot of people think its better that grime has no 'grime beat' or a real 'template' as such, but i think it needs one for it to have some identity for everyone to work with. but it seems like the artists dont want that. even though grime hasnt gone pop, most of them seem to believe in this mainstream-hip-hop-derived 'something for everyone' idea, which might be why they still arent comfortable with the term grime (or any term) - they still want big success so dont wanna potentially alienate anyone. in short, there's little 'hardcore' ethos.

 

[Poisonous Dart]

Nope.

That's exactly why I think that it WOULD be embraced in the States...and by blow up I don't mean become "popular". I think it can become a scene just like Crunk, Screwed, Hyphy or Reggaeton. It isn't completely separate. There isn't a music form that exists that isn't a derivation or amalgam of another or other forms of music. One.

 

[Logan Sama]

If you think that sidewinder or eskimo dance or rinse sets sound like hip hop, i would love to experience this new form of hip hop you think it sounds like which has never been reported before.

This is the problem with internet exposure to this music. When you download any old tunes off the net or listen to shows which arent really representing the actual sounds of grime music properly and are being told this is what is the best we can do, I don't blame you for not comprehending the music.

Go to some events and then decide what the music is like. Don't listen to mp3 rips or radio shows.

As a whole I find artists are ignorant in this country. They don't want to be associated with a name because everyone thinks they are unique and "I just make music man".

This music is Grime. Everything about where the music comes from is accurately described by the word grime. Everything about where the music is performed is accurately described by the word grime. It is grime. Anyone who tells you different is simply deluding themselves as to their own uniqueness as a "musician".

The one reason Grime music won't be big is every artists fucks off and doesn't give any credibility to the music by acknowledging it. Again because "I am a musician, not a Grime artist"

 

[gumdrops]

If you think that sidewinder or eskimo dance or rinse sets sound like hip hop, i would love to experience this new form of hip hop you think it sounds like which has never been reported before.

i dont think those sound like hip hop at all (theyre also grime at its best IMO)- i meant vocal tracks. they could quite easily qualify as hip-hop.

i dont know about everyone saying grime isnt going to go anywhere - i think the gap between great to rubbish tunes is quite wide, but the good stuff makes it all worthwhile (i mean, the slimzee segment of the underground express CD has some of the most amazing tracks on anything this year). its not surprising that the industry here really doesnt know what to do with grime's talents, but few would have got signed anyway - its up to the artists now to decide where the music/scene goes...