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

[Light Touch]

Oh, absolutely. But what you're talking about is the influence that those factors have on the creation of the music, not the commercial success of that music.

There are certainly factors that go into grime being a "London thing", poor kids from the city, racism, etc. -- but that's not something that's going to affect, one way or another, the eventual popularity of the music. All you have to do is walk into a suburban nightclub/bar and see blonde-haired rich girls dancing to dirty south hip-hop to know that it's not about culture.

Thus far, grime gets good marks for authenticity, but lousy marks for marketing savvy.

 

[SIZZLE]

just because blonde haired rich white girls are dancing to the dirty dirty how does that mean it's not about culture?

I'd argue that a lot of the dirty, ignorant call and response shouting stuff appeals directly to fans like that. Those white girls have been told by their parents to 'stay away from those negros' and now their rebelling by letting their hair down to some of the most ignorant raunchy black music they can find. It makes them horny because it's taboo, and that is ALL about culture. Not hiphop culture but american culture on the whole, racism, exotification, fear/attraction etc. ESPECIALLY in the suburbs where the music exists divorced from actual cultural situations and becomes more symbolic of an imagined lifestyle/culture etc portrayed by MTV and BET.

Those same girls have no idea how to relate to grime in that kind of context, I find that it's usually when some bashment-y vocals come in that they're like 'oh, ok I'll put this in my dancehall category' and then they start getting down.

 

[Poisonous Dart]

That's the problem...

Yes, they usually gravitate to the baser side of the culture and think that represents the culture as a whole...that pisses me off. One.

 

[Poisonous Dart]

Happy New Year!!!!

Happy New Year and a prosperous new year to all of the users on Dissensus! Look out for Hellfire Club Inc./Hellsenda Productions in 2006!! One.

 

[Light Touch]

just because blonde haired rich white girls are dancing to the dirty dirty how does that mean it's not about culture?

I'd argue that a lot of the dirty, ignorant call and response shouting stuff appeals directly to fans like that. Those white girls have been told by their parents to 'stay away from those negros' and now their rebelling by letting their hair down to some of the most ignorant raunchy black music they can find. It makes them horny because it's taboo, and that is ALL about culture. Not hiphop culture but american culture on the whole, racism, exotification, fear/attraction etc. ESPECIALLY in the suburbs where the music exists divorced from actual cultural situations and becomes more symbolic of an imagined lifestyle/culture etc portrayed by MTV and BET.

Those same girls have no idea how to relate to grime in that kind of context, I find that it's usually when some bashment-y vocals come in that they're like 'oh, ok I'll put this in my dancehall category' and then they start getting down.

I think that's a gross overgeneralization of the basis of the popularity of music. That may have been true in the past, but so-called "black music" has been so far at the forefront of musical taste for such a long time, I think it's a bit odd to say that it's a rebellion against things "white". Music certainly doesn't sell the way it does or carry the broad spectrum of popularity in America as a rebellion against white culture.

I do think there's an aspect of cultural rebellion in the popularity of raunchy music, and generally raunchy behavior today, but I don't think it necessarily turns on racial lines. Would the same song be more or less popular if made by someone of a different race? I'm not sure. In some cases, a white artist does better than a black (Eminem), in other cases, not so much (nearly every other white rapper ever).

But I'm still not sure how I see this as a reason why grime can't become popular in America. I watched a mainstream, multi-racial holiday crowd get down to grime and hip-hop together when Sushi came to town this year. (Pretty tough grime shit, too, not the borderline accessible shit.)

I think the larger issue is giving the listener a context into which to place the genre. The beauty of dirty south marketing is that it portrays itself as coming from poor black folk in the south, who just want to get down, get "crunk", whatever. It's something that is immediately understood and that a large subset of the population can relate to. Race can come into play, but I don't see it as the first thing on the list. If anything, the fact that grime is generally more multi-racial than hip-hop would seem to make it more marketable, rather than less.

 

[Poisonous Dart]

Village Voice (NY) article about Kano

Here's an article printed in the NY paper The Village Voice on December 30th about Kano and the Grime scene in general. One.

I'm not quite sure how this happened, but I guess Lady Sovereign is the one, the first UK rapper with a legitimate shot to cross over to the US mainstream, the only person to emerge from grime and find a place on a huge American rap label. She walked into Jay-Z's office and freestyled for him, and now she's got a contract with Def Jam Records. I like Lady Sov. She's a good rapper with strong presence and a distinctive voice and insane levels of novelty appeal (short, white, young, punky, female, goofy, bratty). But I don't see her popping up on BET anytime soon; Jay is going to have to market her like the Gorillaz or something if she's ever going to break even. I'm glad she got her deal, but it seems weird that Lady Sov is the one to break through when there's a really serious star-in-waiting, someone who can hang with just about any American rapper, just waiting for someone to sweep in and turn him into the major star he deserves to be. Kano is ready, and I hope someone notices.

Grime's moment in the media spotlight seems just about over, but the thing that critics seemed to like the most about it was its slight otherness, American rap conventions fed through rave culture and impenetrable London slang and heavily off-kilter low-tech production, refracting and distorting the guns-and-money talk to the point where it sounded just alien and different enough. (There's plenty of stuff like that in America, too; Atlanta's minimal click-rap scene is just as weird and self-contained as grime, but that's a topic for another time.) But what I like about Kano is how easy he is to recognize and take seriously as a rapper in the American sense. He's not squawking berserk West-Indian guttural nonsense in dense little clumps; he's riding beats and talking shit lightly and confidently, making pop music instead of souped-up death-dancehall. He has an accent, but you can still understand what he's saying. He works harder at his live shows than Sov does at hers. And like maybe only Sov and Dizzee Rascal, he's managed to craft himself a persona beyond the usual grime crazy-guy-who-will-kill-you thing. His album, Home Sweet Home, had gleaming grime production but also weird Latin flourishes and Sabbath samples and slick little love-jams and self-doubting emo-rap. And even after a Fader cover and a high-profile US debut and a Diplo collaboration, his album doesn't even have a US release yet. People are sleeping.

Kano's bigger than grime, and his new mixtape, Beats + Bars, proves it. It's weird that rap-friendly foreign artists looking for American audiences don't exploit the mixtape form more often. It worked for MIA on Piracy Funds Terrorism, even if that was just Diplo throwing her vocals over different beats. Dizzee and Sov and Wiley would probably be well-advised to do something similar. Beats + Bars doesn't have a whole lot of quote-worthy lines, but it does prove Kano to be more a rapper in the American mold than a grime guy; he sounds better over rap tracks than grime ones. The original beats on the mixtape are all simple and clipped and sharp, not heavy or squelchy or unhinged. Even better, he gets on big American rap beats both old (Dre's "The Watcher," the Youngbloodz' "Damn") and new ("Welcome to Jamrock," "Dear Summer," "Only U") and just murders them. And he talks American rap-nerd stuff the way only an outsider can ("Murk like Cassidy did to Freeway," "listening to BIG and Styles P"); you almost want to see him get signed here so he can get to meet all these guys. And the mixtape puts aside the "Brown Eyes"-type love stuff that he sometimes does for straight end-to-end battle-raps, still the thing he does best. I'm not quite sure where you can find Beats + Bars; I only have it because a friend gave me a copy. But if you can find it, grab it. Not too many American rappers have this guy's cool arrogance and impeccable timing and calm precision; it's a rare chance to hear someone who's already a star whether the world realizes it or not.

Posted by Tom Breihan at 01:06 PM, December 30, 2005

 

[gumdrops]

strange that that guy at the voice/status aint hood likes kano doing hip hop over grime. most grime-ists seem to have thought it would be the other way round for americans (ie they wouldnt wanna hear stuff that sounds more or less like what they do). i agree with his comments about kano's stage show though, he has one of the best shows and is one of the best performers of anyone in current british music. you can hear the difference between his well planned (but without losing spontaneity) show and roll deep's ramshackle set in the audio of their performances from new york earlier this year (maybe its true what someone else said about roll deep not being so confident when performing in front of actual people compared to when theyre on radio MCing only to each other and an imagined audience).

 

[Poisonous Dart]

Yup

I've personally distributed Beats & Bars and Home Sweet Home to many heads...as well as a couple of Klashnekoff, Jehst, Skinnyman and Genesis Elijah joints to heads to open their eyes to the talent across the water. Jay's gonna have to do some serious work to sell Sov to an urban audience. One.

 

[Logan Sama]

Kano is built for competing with Americans. I don't begrudge him going off and doing different music

Would be nice if there was a bit more Grime on his shit though, and if artists in general were more accepting of the name so the scene which produces this talent can get recognition.

 

[FanonFB]

RokkoFB returns

Grime deserves to blow up in the US. So long as i don't have to hear another reggaeton record.

 

[petergunn]

Grime deserves to blow up in the US. So long as i don't have to hear another reggaeton record.

zumbale mambo pa' que mi gata prenda los motores,
zumbale mambo pa' que mi gata prenda los motores,
zumbale mambo pa' que mi gata prenda los motores,

Que se preparen que lo que viene es pa que le den, Duro!

Mamita yo se que tu no me va quitar(duro!)
Lo que me gusta es que te dejas llevar (duro!!)
todo los weekenes ella sale a vacilar (duro!!)
mi gata no para de janguiar porque

A ella le gusta la gasolina (dame mas gasolina!)
Como le encanta la gasolina (dame mas gasolina) 2x

Ella prende las turbinas,
No discrimina,
No se pierde ni un party de marquesina,
Se acicala hasta pa' la esquina,
Luce tan bien que hasta la sombra le combina,
asecina, me domina
janguea en carros, motoras y limosina,
Llena su tanque de adrenalina,
Cuando escucha el reggaeton en la cocina.

A ella le gusta la gasolina (dame mas gasolina!)
Como le encanta la gasolina (dame mas gasolina!) 2x

(yo!)Aqui yo soy de los mejores
No te me ajores
En la pista nos llaman "Los Matadores"
Tu haces que cualquiera se enamore
Cuando bailas al ritmo de los tambores
esto va pa'las gatas de to'colores
Pa' la mayores, pa' la menores
Pa' las que son mas zorras que los cazadores
Pa' la mujeres que no apagan su motores
[su ver ke to barrio fino!]
Tenemo' tu y yo algo pendiente,
Tu me debe' algo y lo sabe',
Conmigo ella se pierde,
No le rinde cuentas a nadie 2x

zumbale mambo pa' que mi gata prenda los motores,
zumbale mambo pa' que mi gata prenda los motores,
zumbale mambo pa' que mi gata prenda los motores,
Que se preparen que lo que viene es pa que le den, Duro!

Mamita yo se que tu no me va a quitar (Duro!)
Lo que me gusta es que te dejas llevar (Duro!)
todos los weekenes ella sale a vacilar (Duro!)
mi gata no para de janguear porque

A ella le gusta la gasolina (dame mas gasolina!!)
Como le encanta la gasolina (dame mas gasolina!!) 2x

 

[qwerty south]

gasolina was a big choon in the uk this year

 

[SIZZLE]

"souped-up death-dancehall"

Citing that as a negative just shows what a fass this guy is. This guy moved to New York last year. He is not repping for my city no matter what he or the Village Voice says. Shut your mouth, DICKHEAD!

And no, kano should not crossover and do rap, that is BORING. His best chance is by maintaining his difference, not eliminating it. Why everyone wants everyone to come and do the same shit, same beats, same styles I will never understand. To me that is a strategy which serves to co-opt and lock off all the UK artists from way back, same thing that happened to shystie, craig david, ms dynamite. Now the grime generation is following their example doing the same dumb ass thing. Somebody put your fucking money up and make a GRIME ALBUM. I don't care if you're versatile or can do other styles, I want to hear something original NOT WATERED DOWN. I'm hoping skepta will do it, but his LP title 'More Than Grime' is making me pessimistic.

 

[Poisonous Dart]

I agree.

I'd like to see Kano stick with the Grimeness, especially the beats...he can do both but I'd like him to introduce Grime/Eski to the US as a whole. I personally like Reggaeton...it's just Reggae/Hip Hop hybridized and done in Spanish as opposed to English...I'm good with that. I think Grime has a place alongside it as opposed to instead of...that Crunk shit can go though. One.

 

[Light Touch]

I'd like to see Kano stick with the Grimeness, especially the beats...he can do both but I'd like him to introduce Grime/Eski to the US as a whole. I personally like Reggaeton...it's just Reggae/Hip Hop hybridized and done in Spanish as opposed to English...I'm good with that. I think Grime has a place alongside it as opposed to instead of...that Crunk shit can go though. One.

Yeah, I'd like to see Kano do whatever he feels. But grime is the key to his potential success, I think.

 

[Poisonous Dart]

Kano

Kano is a beast....somebody needs to stop screwin' around and sign his ass. One.

 

[petergunn]

Kano is a beast....somebody needs to stop screwin' around and sign his ass. One.

no, no you don't seem to understand, LADY SOVEREIGN IS THE NEXT FEMINEM!!!!!!!!

 

[Poisonous Dart]

I totally understand that!

no, no you don't seem to understand, LADY SOVEREIGN IS THE NEXT FEMINEM!!!!!!!!

I overstand that....THAT'S WHY SOMEONE NEEDS TO HURRY UP AND SIGN KANO!! One.

 

[bassnation]

mixtape form

could someone explain what mixtape means in this context. i'm guessing its a hip hop thing - something along the lines of freestyling over other peoples tracks or would it be his own stuff? sorry to sound so clueless but interested to find out.

 

[Poisonous Dart]

Huh?

could someone explain what mixtape means in this context. i'm guessing its a hip hop thing - something along the lines of freestyling over other peoples tracks or would it be his own stuff? sorry to sound so clueless but interested to find out.

When did I write that? All it says is "mixtape form"...I don't have any clue what context I used it in so how can I explain it's usage or what I meant by it? One.