grime geniunely edging closer to US consciousness?

ambrose

Well-known member
ok well, in the aftermath of the roll deep/kano shows in NYC last weekedn (the pics on 1xtra determinedly dont show much of the crowd), im listening to the danny weed remix of jermaine dupri and wondering a) is this an official thing? or just a remix they cooked up? b) what with the twista/low deep tune, whats happening? is grime slowly moving in to US hiphop circles? how are these associations coming about? are they that tight?
you can listen to the jermaine dupri mix here on the aftershock pirate sessions show
 

petergunn

plywood violin
ambrose said:
ok well, in the aftermath of the roll deep/kano shows in NYC last weekedn (the pics on 1xtra determinedly dont show much of the crowd), im listening to the danny weed remix of jermaine dupri and wondering a) is this an official thing? or just a remix they cooked up? b) what with the twista/low deep tune, whats happening? is grime slowly moving in to US hiphop circles? how are these associations coming about? are they that tight?
you can listen to the jermaine dupri mix here on the aftershock pirate sessions show


it's something the "tastemakers" are aware of... i.e. dizzee going to the urban music conference in the bahamas and meeting Lil' Jon, etc... i think he's met Bun B. from UGK, too... i know Wiley's met Dame Dash... i think ever since that Jay Z/Punjabi MC track (jay heard the original in a club in, switzerland, i think...), the big name US guys have had their ears open... basically these guys (jay z, lil jon, timbaland, neptunes, etc) are jetsetters and keep their ears open... remember 10 years ago, southern rap was just a regional thing, when Jay Z got on the remix of "ha" by Juvenile, that legitimatized it to a lot of people (new yorkers and assorted media snobs)...

grime in it's pure form (i.e "eskimo" "pied piper" ) is just TOO WEIRD for US ears... but, for example, if that Pitbull remix of "Pow" got pressed on wax and released in the US, that could have been a huge hit (i think...)

in general, Jammer and Terrah Danger's stuff sounds closest to US tastes to me, as their stuff sounds NOT THAT DIFFERENT from Three 6 Mafia or other southern hip hop...

it's tough tho, b/c all of that stuff that breaks thru (dancehall, reggaeton, crunk) has a build in core audience, however small, in the US that supports in until it breaks thru. there is NO audience for grime here...

i think it will take someone like Jay Z or 50 doing a verse on a grime track or having a grime producer do a remix for him to break grime in the US... and it def. COULD happen...
 

petergunn

plywood violin
would this be a bad time to say i don't really like Lady Sovereign??? too commercial for me... if Kano is Biggie (i.e. Pop AND Street), to me she's Nelly (Pop masquerading as Street...). i'm sure she's a dope person, but musically, to me she's not grime (and the phoney patois gets the gas face...)


(alot of this argument has nothing inherently to do with her, more to do with the amount of arguments i've had with hipster A&R types who have told me she's "way better than Dizzee", which to me is insane...)

just the same, i'd be way more exited if Jay Z was supporting Lethal B, Kano, or Tinchy...
 

stelfox

Beast of Burden
petergunn said:
it's something the "tastemakers" are aware of... i.e. dizzee going to the urban music conference in the bahamas and meeting Lil' Jon, etc... i think he's met Bun B. from UGK, too... i know Wiley's met Dame Dash... i think ever since that Jay Z/Punjabi MC track (jay heard the original in a club in, switzerland, i think...), the big name US guys have had their ears open... basically these guys (jay z, lil jon, timbaland, neptunes, etc) are jetsetters and keep their ears open... remember 10 years ago, southern rap was just a regional thing, when Jay Z got on the remix of "ha" by Juvenile, that legitimatized it to a lot of people (new yorkers and assorted media snobs)...

bun b and dizzee actually recorded together. the track hasn't seen the light of day yet, but it did happen. he's also done some stuff with grit boys, on the same trip i believe.
 

shudder

Well-known member
re: SOV

meh... even if lady sovereign's not really "grime," the track with the neptunes and missy with SOV could be pretty fun.
 

head

removin the cobwebs
with the comment of pure grime bein too weird for the states, that's true i think. but some of the albums i've been listenin to recently, roll deep, kano, raw t, those sounds seem to have moved more towards us hip hop than earlier grime stuff from a couple years back.

bein a jungle head, i watched 2-step with a raised eye, havin fun with it but not seein it last. so it's morphed slowly into grime, ok. but where's grime headin? are the recent albums i mentioned, are those sounds changing to gain a wider audience? can it not support itself without moving towards a bigger genre?

i'm still tryin to figure out how exactly to see grime; i love the stuff(and was hyped when roll deep showed up unannounced this past saturday here in ny) but where is it going, how is it changing?
 
qwerty south said:
i think lethal b touting for an adidas shoe deal in the 'no' video was a new low for 'urban' music.

i know the producer of that vid - adidas give you free clothes if your going somewhere...

anyway wasn't this inevitable....I think ppl actually thought 'pure' garage/grime LP's were gonna be flying out the gates after Raskit (actually I thought that too lol) but when things head down a lyric lead path of course more US influence is gonna be had...

BUT

if you actually wanna talk about the adoption of a US CONCIOUSNESS then we can get deep....

do you?
 

robin

Well-known member
i don't really see how "pure grime" is any weirder than,say,the whisper song,drop it like its hot,or various timbaland,lil jon,etc, productions
they all sound pretty weird to me,but great nonetheless
 

Jesse D Serrins

Well-known member
nor how you can make sweeping comparisons between US taste and British taste... there are a lot of people in this here country, into a lot of different things. If somebody sells a million records, it's a lot, sure, but a super-small percentage of the total population.
 

petergunn

plywood violin
robin said:
i don't really see how "pure grime" is any weirder than,say,the whisper song,drop it like its hot,or various timbaland,lil jon,etc, productions
they all sound pretty weird to me,but great nonetheless


you can't make that comparison b/c unlike grime, genres like crunk, chopped n screwed, ghettotech, reggaeton all have hardcore local followers in the USA... i.e. Lil Jon would never have sold millions of records in 2004, if he hadn't had a hardcore following in the ATL area from the mid 90's onwards...

whether or not mainstream hip hop stations played "Gasolina", you knew 50,000 latin reggaeton fans would have bought it anyway... grime has built itself up in england the same way, but it can't break america thru that route (unless of all East London decides to pack up and move to America tomorrow...)

and, yes, i think something like "ice rink" is WAYYYYYYYYYY weirder than any of the tunes you mentioned... all of those songs may have some of the minimalism of grime, but they have a fairly normal rhythm...
 

juliand

Well-known member
It would seem to me that mixes like these aren't signs of anything much--especially if they're not getting radio play in USA. I wonder if it might not be Dupri aiming to specialize for the UK market rather than Roll Deep making inroads to the US.
 
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