yeah i don't see the issue with oneman, or anyone uk, playing hip-hop.
martin surely it being popular or foreign has nothing to do with being able to engage with it - oneman also plays loads of popular garage, i don't see how that's an issue. if it means something to you or moves you, then you're engaging with it. i don't see an issue with kode9 playing cameo, for instance.
me and a couple of mates played four hours of US hip-hop last night, never got bored once and the crowd were pretty much going wild the entire time. i enjoyed it a lot more than i would've enjoyed playing four hours of contemporary dance music.
having said that, re: oneman, yeah i kind of miss the long dmz/2step blends too (and the fabric tracklist doesn't look that exciting to me - i really liked his rinse mix tho). but you can't expect the guy to do the same thing forever.
Well, this issue is highly subjective i guess and i come from the viewpoint of a) being a very big oneman fan and 2) having quite firm views about what i want out of DJs I rate as much as oneman. i wrote my initial point quickly as i knew this would be a longer discussion.
what i like about the best pirate/nuum/uk djs is that they have their sound and they do this by taking hold of all the elements of the equation, from how they mix, to the tracks they select, the producers they back and which tracks from those producers, and even which tracks come out on their labels. yunx even sends tracks back if the mixdown is slipping or the arrangement needs an edit. they're writing history as they go, forging a new path.
i like DJs that make me like/want music I'd never heard before, that perpetual craving for the wot do u call it moments, not ones that i already know - and i know this makes me atypical in club land (tho less so here of course). some people just wanna get fucked and party, fair play to them.
for DJs to do this they need to go to the source, to the producers and labels and be there when the base pairs are going into DNA, and that DNA is going into the cell nuclei, so a new being is being built. but how is that possible for most UK DJs and, say, trap? if i want that from rap, i'd go to grassroots DJs in the US, right? that's the source for those tracks. people mention westwood and semtex but they've not had the effect on hip hop as a whole that say slimzee or hatcha had on their genres, nor say funkmaster flex had. they've been great local champions for it but they're merely passing on the output of the US rather having some meaningful input back into how it would sound next.
(i have the same trepidation about juke, and though i've played & released some stuff by or inspired by juke producers, i still havent ventured into making it for these reasons, though i noticed last week kode has, perhaps there's room to find new twists, he's usually a good measure of these things).
now of course oneman isn't just a dubplate DJ in the hatcha/slimzee style, he's a crowd pleaser, plays b2b anthems and always has, sounds like you guys did too for 4 hours - and that's fine, like i said up post, having a good party is fine with me. but i guess the way oneman mixed grime & dubstep he made them feel new (loefah's said as much too) and then built out of them with the post dubstep stuff from joy o, boddika et al, and that put him into GOAT category, so that comment was just holding him to his own high standards, of what he was and could be.