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No guarantees on timescales/completion but i think trying to drag this stuff out of the back of my head will be a good challenge. Some biography, probably

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100 / 99





Everything is easy to talk about in retrospect but not always easy to decipher in the moment. The 07-09 period in London seems really vivid to me; lots of activity in the raves with funky starting to kick off, the end of smoking in the clubs, so a real sea change in atmosphere and stepping away from the stoned dubstep monotony- though i do still miss FWD at PP, this all said.
I moved into Lewisham in 2008, not even Peckham, where it was really going on, but i was hearing rap all the time; after Ard Bodied came out (late 2007?), but it was gathering pace. Loads of the music lads i knew hated all this, why are they on yank beats, still holding out for grime or wanting to pretend rapping on dubstep was the future. Dubstep was already becoming something else then, anyway, ket taking over from skunk with the ban, midrange creeping, that caspa fabric live about to fuck everything up.

Anyway - SN1 were the top dogs and Dubz was from Cream Cartel i think? So him, youngsta, page etc. Very nihilistic music at times, lots of minor chords, bit of a mobb deep vibe. Overcast winter music. Track 9/Talking The Hardest was the big one from the Ard Bodied tape, really; the energy of that tune propelled everything forward and pushed Giggs into a different echelon
But if you listen to all the tunes around it that was more of an anomaly; there was a lot of tension in the air, Peckham lads running mental, two hundred lads trying to fuck up carnival, making lots of money but violent, dark shit. The sound was quite reflective of it i think, all the best tapes were caught up in the nihilism. Pain is the essence etc
Soldier Riddim a big tune for all those lads, lots of different versions but as soon as it peaked and Giggs got signed, everyone started to get nicked and peckham rap fell apart really. There are loads of good tunes and albums from the road rap era but i think it probably peaked at Ard Bodied, looking back.

Edit- Tiny Grem is the other lad on Soldier Riddim
 
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98

Waifer- Grime / Warning






Cheating already here but combining two as loads of Waifer tunes are basically the same- amsfeedbacklead & orkestra hit from the triton, gunshots as drums, all that.
Loads of bait tunes in grime, everyone can bang on about pulse x or eskimo or igloo etc, but the slew dem era stands up so well i think. Hate to buy into all the grease ideal and act like the stereotypical white gun fetishist interloper but much like the rap post above, i think you can look at this point in the sound as a natural culmination of things, can you really beat the gunshots and sub combination
Think there are probably D Double tunes that will turn up again- i am giving this very little sequential thought- but definitely one of his best recorded tunes
G-Man always seemed criminally underrated to me, but probably because he was more of a calm sterile menace as opposed to the e.g. Screaming for a rewind style. Too chilled out for that but what a flow.

I met him and Chronik some years back at a just jam thing, they were a lot more normal and relaxed than you'd expect. Really strong skunk tho

Esco goes without saying- fucking tragedy really. I had a couple of sets with him on that were just fucking incredible; that last Nasty set on Deja from 04. Virtuoso radio MC

That'll do for now
 
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I think i have opened a door now actually so lets go again. I think there are a couple of people on here who know my history, or maybe just Luke, but my dad was a half-arsed DJ when i was a kid, lots of mixtapes for the car and tunes in the house but not much else. A job, a house, all that. Hobbyist instead of professional influence is probably better for childhood influence as you tend to absorb the big tunes, maybe if its a constant it just becomes a vibe
Anyway I grew up with electronic music in the house, lots of the popular end of 80s house and lots of 80s boogie and funk etc
Lets go for a couple of those. I love the Sha-Lor tune as it's got lots of minors in it, that underlying darkness that's at the heart of all good 80s house tunes, but the vocal is enough to anchor women to the floor too. Feminine pressure is important really, as much as i love the gunman London 00s more than anything else
Then going back a bit further, the best Whitney tune I think, and I have managed to inherit the US 12" of this, find it sits really well with all the Sha-Lor style sound that comes later, but also is great to mix into the NY house sound as well. Very versatile for 1985
Apt 3A is a perfect house tune to me, really, would probably be far higher if I actually thought about all this, but its a great transition from Thinking About You

In fact, I've probably given away one of my favourite blends there. Goodnight
 
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94 / Wiley- Doorway (& introspection sketches)



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Weird one, Wiley. Feel like you have to include him somewhere if you have the right affection for London music or grime or pirate radio etc but I don't think many of his tunes are actually any good these days, quite hard to return to them as they represent more of a time or a place than it being a classic tune or whatever. Some really good white labels but the epitome of a grime radio MC, really. Not sure if that's a controversial idea or not, but there are only about a dozen full tunes i can return to.
There is definitely one in my top 20 but we can come to that later.

Really its more about the concept of Wiley, or the vibe/ambience of his presence. Particularly in a chaotic/bipolar/manic mood , the provocative radiance. Sometimes he's aware of this, sometimes not. Look at Treddin On Thin Ice and 2nd Phaze through the lens of his known problems these days and they're albums about manic depression really.
All that is really interesting to me, though, and even with all the meltdowns and self-sabotage, still one of the best. But he was just better when it was 11pm and he'd turned up on Rinse in the middle of a mad one
Anyway Doorway is probably the best of that period for me.

Put the other ones in as an asterisk because no-one ever talks about Romal Roll but its the best tune about Roman Rd and its only a minute and a half. Oxford St probably the best formed version of these from later years and probably his last really good tune, i think. Frozen is in there because it sounds to me like a missing Mega Mos Wanted/Mr Mageeka tune? They should have finished that. I love "In The Market" too but its only a 16-bar. Think that could have made a lot of money at one point.
 
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Beast of Burden
wild greens said:
97 / 96 / 95






I think i have opened a door now actually so lets go again. I think there are a couple of people on here who know my history, or maybe just Luke, but my dad was a half-arsed DJ when i was a kid, lots of mixtapes for the car and tunes in the house but not much else. A job, a house, all that. Hobbyist instead of professional influence is probably better for childhood influence as you tend to absorb the big tunes, maybe if its a constant it just becomes a vibe
Anyway I grew up with electronic music in the house, lots of the popular end of 80s house and lots of 80s boogie and funk etc
Lets go for a couple of those. I love the Sha-Lor tune as it's got lots of minors in it, that underlying darkness that's at the heart of all good 80s house tunes, but the vocal is enough to anchor women to the floor too. Feminine pressure is important really, as much as i love the gunman London 00s more than anything else
Then going back a bit further, the best Whitney tune I think, and I have managed to inherit the US 12" of this, find it sits really well with all the Sha-Lor style sound that comes later, but also is great to mix into the NY house sound as well. Very versatile for 1985
Apt 3A is a perfect house tune to me, really, would probably be far higher if I actually thought about all this, but its a great transition from Thinking About You

In fact, I've probably given away one of my favourite blends there. Goodnight
Click to expand...


That Whitney is one of her Kashif productions. It could easily sit on one of his own albums.
 
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Will add another hungover grime elegy to the mix now as i have been up since half six with cartoons on the telly (young Mr Greens is into Scooby Doo at the moment for some reason).

Dizzee and Wiley obviously both intertwined but all Dizzee's real formative stuff drifts away on youtube, as if he appeared with BIDC magically and the time he spent with Nasty Crew/Mak10 is lost. Maybe i am wrong but think its easier to dismiss Dizzee because of all the terrible shit that he made afterwards
Both of these are after he sort of gets poached by Roll Deep/Wiley ofc, but before the narrative really starts with him. Take Time the same sort of mental health awareness track as the Wiley post above, listening again now.
Skunk and sudden street infamy really gave these lads a beating eh
 
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92



Too much wistful dark sky London thinking in a row can get you down and grime was a great upbeat radio thing as well so lets lash this one in here, one of my favourite underrated whites. Good example of the grime/funky lineage as well; Zander Hardy later turning up as part of the Deep Teknologi axis etc. Attack the big one for me

Going out now
 
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91 / 90





These two 12s are too intertwined from the same era for me, its really hard to differentiate; so i will cheat again and make one post.

It is probably late 2008 here- the same time as the Giggs tunes from first post, probably, maybe a bit later- I was living in South but working all over London, no car then, some jobs on the books, some cash in hand. Scraping by at some points. But towards the end of the year i had started to do better and I'd always head over to Soho on a Friday to try and buy some vinyl if there was anything good about.
This is the brief period where Uptown had moved into Lexington St couple of doors down from the John Snow and they were doing good business for a while selling Funky 12s, plus loads of these bootleg 4-trackers full of the American tunes funky djs were playing. Blackmarket had a few good ones too, but their big exclusives were all CDs if i remember right, and i was skint then so the idea of buying CDJs was never going to happen. They had loads of good in stores that summer, though, so you could buy a couple of beers and have a little headnod in the street outside- i saw loads of good DJs there.
When i got hold of the Buss It white i was fucking made up, tbh; it had been all over the raves that summer- always remember it as being a big Supa D tune- and even though it had been rinsed by all the proper DJs at that point it didnt really matter. I do miss that feeling of finally getting hold of a tune that DJs had broke before you, wishing things would release. No doubt it still happens but i am older now and care a lot less.
Anyway we were going the raves a lot that year, and funky had completely taken over by late 08, grime had been long dead anyway, dubstep was going ket as I said and i was bored of that, those raves only made sense massively stoned to me. But funky was great, had to dress smart, uptempo friendly vibes, bit of salsa hip dancing.
After a while of going Uptown on a Friday or Saturday tho, i got really lucky and managed to get the Seasons/Funk Flex test press from Uptown one Friday. Seems weird now but Funky Flex was the bigger tune of the two at the time, Mak10 & Marcus played it a lot on Deja, i couldn't believe my luck tbh. Remember being round our flat one night before going out- must have been the weekend i bought it- and one of my ex's mates fellas offering me £50 for the TP as he played at some bar in Forest Hill i think (it was shit) and wanted the dub. It mustn't have leaked at the time, or whatever. Anyway i should have took it as it came out properly a couple of weeks later and sold so many fucking copies
Seasons we all know about no point in going into how big a tune that ended up being, especially after Night Slugs got hold of it and managed to re-release
That 07-09 run before uk bass gentrified it all was so good. And i was late to it myself tbh

Edit- worth noting the same grime to funky pathway on Buss It, Bossman and Davinche from Essentials making a top 5 funky tune (for me), and obviously going onto Something In The Air, that massive Teedra Moses remix etc..
 
william_kent

william_kent

Well-known member
that "hypnotic" tune is something else, thanks @wild greens for bringing it to my attention, and thanks
@Corpsey for willing this thread into existence

edit: although maybe i should curse you all out now I've checked discogs,,
 
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Beast of Burden
If this carries on at this level for 100 tunes it will be one of our great monuments.

I was on the far periphery of this stuff but it’s even giving me vivid sensual flashbacks. I didn’t really like grime, but I did live on Roman Road between 2003-5.
 
william_kent

william_kent

Well-known member
wild greens said:
I have the mp3 if you want it
Click to expand...


at this moment I'd grab it

I almost shelled out fifty quid for a copy before I had a word with myself - I'm supposed to be on a budget this month

but that tune is everything I wanted "funky' to be, it fits my "aesthetic" to a tee
 
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