MATT MAson
BROADSIDE
Or you could argue that it's just time for something else to take grime's place.
yeah the different neighborhoods in london and all over england, well, why not all over the world, should develop their own grime sound. maybe I'll make some chinese grime. the street slang sure is aggressive enough.
That would totally rule, I imagine it sounding like the hardest, most frightening music ever actually. Do it!
Or you could look at it like a genre like US hiphop, where the artists developed from using a DMX and a mic to sampling to being the biggest global force in the world.
I hate the kind of reductionism that demands artists keep doing what they did 5 years ago. People can't keep making 'Pulse X' forever, give the guys some slack and let them develop.
Or you could argue that it's just time for something else to take grime's place.
i doubt that would happen. yeah, grime has a lot of individual, musically unique stuff going for it, but its like something like ghetto tech or baile funk, its still rap music and basically just a regionalised reaction to hip-hop. and the fact even grime artists are saying they find hip hop boring these days doesnt bode too well. what are they going to get inspired by?
But boredom is surely the 'Mother Of Invention' for the young musician.Being bored by Yes and Genesis didnt do The Sex Pistols any harm in the 70's.
With regards to Baile Funk.The few tracks I have heard sounded like retro Run DMC to my ears.Certainly none of it sounded as fresh as standard UK Grime.Has anyone got any recent Baile Funk recommendations?
http://www.myspace.com/thekandytangerineman
one thing that does bother me about hadouken and all that lot, the alleged interlopers, is music aside, it seems like its so much easier to get signed right now if youre a white mc. all those rubbish guys getting signed to the beats label, its a slap in the face to guys that should have gotten signed like doogz, trim or riko or whoever.
i dont think he is signed to the beats. there were better artists to sign with mike skinner instead. you know, like the mitchell brothers, professor green and example.
i dont think he is signed to the beats. there were better artists to sign with mike skinner instead. you know, like the mitchell brothers, professor green and example.
the problem with grime now is it just doesnt know what it wants to be. i find most of the tunes im hearing now not fast enough. theyre not really hip hop per se, but theyre not really uptempo either, which was the thing that previously made it defiantly 'not' hip hop. so you just have this wavering in-limbo sound thats not quite hip hop, not quite grime, which sounds like a copout. thats not new in grime but it seems to have affected 90% of the genre now. so you just have all these tracks made by guys that are aware the scene isnt going to blow up like they thought, so they seem to be retreating into the perceived safety of urrrrban mainstream hip hop/R&B type stuff .
Now it is a much wider sound and you can get pretty much whatever you want from it. If you want bass driven jump up tunes, mid range melody driven skippers, hip hop-esque sample driven fare, or plodding half step wobblers they are all available from the many different producers working in the scene today.
now, you hear some really, really great stuff, but there's a weird shortage of huge tracks, played by everyone, that truly amaze...and i think a scene needs tracks like that. the last one was 'shank riddim' i reckon.
I think grime only getting going still. They have missed alot and I think people will be looking round for a music like grime more and more as time goes on.
Grime could do with getting into a warehouse rave type enviroment again like Sidewinders back at the Sanctuary. Most of the big anthem tunes like Pulse X and old Slimzee style tunes sound at there best in this sort of 3000+ capacity place imo (as appose to small clubs). Producers tend to produce for where they most likely think there track will be played so perhaps you would get more older grime styled tracks if something like this was happening?
it is actually totally shameless! how can he feel comfortable so entirely catting someone else's style?! its not even like he's drawn from it, he's just straight up jacked it
is it me or is Goodz hungry right now?
Word, they've managed to redefine the term "fucking awful".
But seeing all these artists who flirt with association with Grime and street to give their average music credibility like N Dubbz, Sovereign, Lily Allen and Sway, whilst actual pioneers of music are neglected and clueless mainstream djs champion a piss poor knock off with a better melody really irritates me.
Would it REALLY be that much effort to give some of these grime acts access to a proper producer who can rework a proper grime beat and a proper grime lyric into some semblance of a successful song? Stick Terror and Sadie in a studio with some musical svenghali who can turn the uncut diamonds of their previous tracks into hits. Put Rapid in a stdio with ANYONE and help knock out a fucking banging true UK anthem with some proper vocal production to it. There untold talent that isn't being nurtured. Really gets me down sometimes seeing so much creativity going to waste.
I was speaking to a mate yesterday who's a big record producer, and he doesn't do nothing he doesn't want to do anymore cos he was sick of working with majors who don't have a clue. No-one sells any records in the Uk anymore, really.
but if you look at the music industry right now, theyre very cautious about what 'urban' music theyre touching and developing. considering most of the majors here are global corporate companies, it doesnt look like anything rap-related is really high on their priorities. its a very conservative time.
The point though is that I've been actively involved in the 'underground arts' for like 20 years now, and only know a handful of people who make a living off of what they do fulltime. Everyone else I know - and it's not reflection of the quality of the work - either has jobs or does illegal activity or ponces off the state in order to fund their work. This idea that artists in any genre exist from their work just isn't true on a large scale in the UK especially London at the moment, the cost of living over here is fucking expensive. Even people I know who run studios or galleries have to whore themselves to pay the bills.
Me personally I don't think 'we' should be looking for 'their' support, fuck em
And seeing as in 2007 there are 6 Grime albums scheduled for a release in the first half of the year, I would say it is doing better than it has in a long while. Sales are up, output is up, quality is up. It just needs a helping hand to make it something which is marketable, without resorting to knocking out endless wifey riddims and heartbreak avenues.
Kano - Is This Grimey Enough - 679
Kano - Anger Management Freestyle - 679
Lethal B - Mr - Lethal Bizzle Records
Dirty Goodz - Smash - Dub
Roll Deep - Celebrate (Jme Remix) - Roll Deep
Jme - Serious Remix - Boy Better Know
Ruff Squad - Xtra - Ruff Squad
Ruff Squad Ft Bashy, Wretch 32 & L Man - Xtra Remix - Love Doe
Tinchy Styder - Breakaway - Takeover
Dirty Goodz - Switching Songs Part 2 - Dub
Ghetto - Top 3 Selected - Adamantium Music
Keedo - Top 3 Selected Freestyle - Dub
Wretch 32 Ft Ghetto - Fed Up Of Grinding - M.O.V.E.M.E.N.T.
Trim - Money Up Front Part 1 - Soul Food Vol 1
Dimples - D.I.M.P.L.E.S. - Reignessence
Jender - Nice - Dub
Dollar The Dustman - Bouces Road - Dub
President T - This Little Yout - Sounds Of The President T
Chronic Ft Wiley, Skepta & Esco - Bumbaclart Badman - Slew Dem
Scorcher - Fly Away - M.O.V.E.M.E.N.T.
Ghetto - Stage Show Don - M.O.V.E.M.E.N.T.
Doctor - Dun That - Dub
Aftershock - Work - Aftershock
Did most of those vocals really sound like hip hop? And did you listen to the mix? I always play the grimiest of instrumentals
I've been djing hip hop in clubs recently and the grime tracks which sound a bit like hip hop are great for slipping in and getting people interested. People are like "what is this?" and then I say "its grime". Before fairly recently people didn't know what it was but that is definitely changing with people looking enthusiastic when they are told nowadays
Whatever you say about their motives, the bandwagon brigade are usually the ones who will switch the masses onto the scene, making it viable in the long-run. As blissblogger was mentioning the other day - it's usually those people who come into the scene through this route that end up being more militant about the real deal artists/tunes (i.e. the people who get into grime through Hadouken will probably end up saying that proper grime is nothing except a Nasty Crew set from Deja in 03).
I’m not down with the Hadouken sound, but having thousands of indie kids being exposed to grime-influenced sounds can only be a good thing for the scene.
I live in Toronto, and if these guys ever play in my hometown, Dissensus has my personal guarantee that I will rob them.
And as an aside, I think Sway is better than about 90% of the grime MCs out there
1) The big radio sets with like 8 or so MCs on. The live-o anarchic feel of the MCs just 'jamming' as it were has been lost. It has become less diverse i think. Its gone from a 'live' genre to an album genre (well kind of). Before at it's best it reminds me of jazz men bumping into each other and thinking 'why the fuck not' and just jamming for the sake of it, totally spontaneous.
2) What first grabbed me about Grime was that it combined my two favourite things in music - dance beats and rapping/rhyming/poetry/lyrics/wordplay. It is now undeniably closer to hiphop and further from garage than it was say 3 or 4 years ago. The ravey, dancey vibes with the occasional really driving 4x4 tune (musical mobb, alias etc). Most grime to me does not sound like a form of dance music and thats one thing i loved dearly about it before. I think maybe important in this has been the move in focus more towards the MC and away from the DJ. I mean MCs leaning backwards to rwd tunes is just rude in my opinion! Or shouting 'next one next one' until they get a riddim they like. Guess this has totally happened in hiphop over the years too....
The feminine pressure exerted then was from 'cheesy; female vocals from 2steppers of 4/4 grimey garage. It was drawing from our UK dance heritage. Now the feminine pressure is sped up helium female vocals where are clearly drawing from a US hiphop tradition
anyone heard the aftershock album yet? its a bit dissapointing - a real mixed bag of a million different styles, and not that uptempo. some of the production is still great as youd expect but a lot of the MCs are just underwhelming. its recorded like a mixtape (is it an album or a 'street album', ie mixtape?) as well - vocals quite loud and 'over' the beat rather than inside it. i think my favourite track is track six, this funky house type of track. i hope it blows up.
I've not heard the Aftershock album in full yet, so I can't comment, but I know there isn't a huge amount of hype on it's imminent release for whatever reason.
It is a shame because Terror Danjah has always been very consistent and I would have liked to have seen him have some wider success.
I'm just happy to see good British artists like Sway come through. Imagine if he had gone the grime route, joined Roll Deep and just done war bars and radio or whatever, he'd probably have got nowhere. But he did his own thing, he made some very smart moves and the mainstream supported him. I respect that.
On that note, good luck to Hadouken as well. I only heard one of their songs, but I quite liked to be honest.
i dont mind tunes that split up the fast/slow dynamic between choruses but tracks that are right on that line between fast/slow aka half step, can either be great when its something like wonders what, but most of the time, i just think theyre cop out tracks, designed to trick listeners into thinking they are hip hop as well as grime or just not grime at all (maybe on some levels, this is cleverer - gets more people on board for one thing, in theory anyway, but just ends up being MOR). yes i know the syncopation and rhythms are still tweaked slightly differently but often i find its not different enough
or you could argue the mainstream pressure/expectation/hype post-dizzee was too much and created expectations the genre could never realistically meet
yeah, grime has a lot of individual, musically unique stuff going for it, but its like something like ghetto tech or baile funk, its still rap music and basically just a regionalised reaction to hip-hop
no one wants pulse x again and again. they just dont want kanye-pharrell-timbo sounding stuff
one thing that does bother me about hadouken and all that lot, the alleged interlopers, is music aside, it seems like its so much easier to get signed right now if youre a white mc. all those rubbish guys getting signed to the beats label, its a slap in the face to guys that should have gotten signed like doogz, trim or riko or whoever.
i dont think he is signed to the beats. there were better artists to sign with mike skinner instead. you know, like the mitchell brothers, professor green and example.
I havent decided whether Trim getting out was a good or bad career move. He has that tune i've heard on Rinse a few times, sounds pretty good. Can kinda imagine Roll Deep getting worse and worse from now on though....Trim has mad skills
it's true... at first the hip hop influenced stuff was cool, but it's gotten very draggy and reptitive and yes, bad fake Kanye and Dipset sounding... it can be done well, as a flourish, like i love Gangsters by Wiley and Guns N Roses by Ruff Sqwad and Wiley, but it's become the dominant sound of grime and it's dull...
although i love Virgo and Mr Slash, the whole "epic" thing is getting kinda retarded, too...
it's kinda funny that now that grime is getting more of a 70bpm emphesis, dubstep is coming out of that and going into more of a 140 feel... related to popularity and attendence of events, perhaps?
i reckon the lethal b album is the one most likely to really deliver out of all the grime albums this year.