Road Rap

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CrowleyHead

Well-known member
The gentrification argument constantly feels reductive to me and tries to contextualize the genre based on Bigger Issues. Like yes, obviously gentrification is causing a great factor in the financial constraints and the eradication of communities and those are real problems for a lot of these kids, but it ignores the fact that the violence is a statement of intent against other communities and people in the community. The fact is there's a real sense of identity here beyond the violent content (as opposed to violent realities) and these guys are trying very hard to express that in ways that are clever. I don't want to start getting into "Oh it's all LYRICAL battles! :D" idealism b/c its a reality as well but a lot of this is like... decade old grudges between neighborhoods and things like that. Gentrification was happening then too, but I feel in a certain respect it kind of forces the audience who hasn't been there until fairly recently into some sort of role?

Also maybe its a little early to get meta about a genre that until fairly recently was marginalized and kept at a distance from real heavy media engagement. Grime got canonized fairly swiftly in comparison to Road Rap, which has existed for maybe a decade now and is still kind of limited to "... Well there was Giggs... Now you got a whole bunch of young kids with radio hits."

I mean ffs I saw a magazine recently list all the J Hus, Mostack, Kojo Funds tunes as 'biggest grime hits of the year'. That just proves that magazine is stupid but it speaks to a bigger issue of how flimsy the genre is regarded on the merits of its musical history, and maybe it's still a little too unsteady to use it as a jump off point for Social Commentary.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Any idea why all these crews are called things like 67, 410, 150, etc.?

I guess this is the key paragraph:

'Like grime music was for young East Londoners living amongst the high-rise estates of Newham, Hackney and Tower Hamlets during the early- to mid-2000s, when these boroughs were undergoing their own early stages of sweeping regenerative change – think Stratford Olympic Park and Canary Wharf – drill music might be understood as South London’s own musical reaction to unchecked social inequality. It is not a coincidence that the genre has colonised London’s musical subterranea during the exact same time period, birthed upon the same precise geographical spaces – Brixton, Walworth, Peckham – in which the most aggressive form of gentrification has taken place.'

But was grime a reaction to gentrification/inequality? And is road rap/drill a reaction to those things?

I guess you could say they are in part a result of inequality, or poverty - but then inequality and poverty both existed in these areas before grime and road rap, right?
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
This kind of breakneck gentrification hadn't really got underway in the early '00s. It was beginning in Hackney for sure but there was zero grime in Hackney.

Canary Wharf wasn't gentrification per se because those were office blocks not residences. It's nice his youth work volunteering gives him material to give a leg up to his freelance career but that thesis doesn't hold water imo
 
C

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
His stuff with making the grime artists meet with and endorse Corbyn was a bit heavy-handed and embarrassing for me, and I generally sway that way politically. But whatever, might as well use AJ Tracey's 5 minutes of buzz for something more dignified than selling Reeboks?

Anyway, Corpse, it's all local area stuff. Signs and signifiyers.
 
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trilliam

Well-known member
Read them when they dropped, wasn't impressed.

Writer's on some next shit tbh, over emphasising certain things. I attribute that 67 buzzfeed piece directly to the drill articles.
 
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trilliam

Well-known member
I'm gonna break down this music from a "critical perspective" while showing off all seven slang words for knife I learnt from being a youth worker.
 
G

glasshand

dj panic attack
CrowleyHead said:
The gentrification argument constantly feels reductive to me and tries to contextualize the genre based on Bigger Issues. Like yes, obviously gentrification is causing a great factor in the financial constraints and the eradication of communities and those are real problems for a lot of these kids, but it ignores the fact that the violence is a statement of intent against other communities and people in the community. The fact is there's a real sense of identity here beyond the violent content (as opposed to violent realities) and these guys are trying very hard to express that in ways that are clever.
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yeh i hear that

as corpsey was getting at, to say definitively that any of these musics are a reaction to gentrification, implying some kinda causal link, is clearly ridiculous and that paragraph mentioning canary wharf and all that really highlights how shit that approach can be

essentially it's a writer forcing their own political values on to a type of music that (at best) they enjoy and (at worst) they just feel they got some insider knowledge of, because they and maybe their audience can only attach significance to it by associating it with an overtly political meaning

nice his youth work volunteering gives him material to give a leg up to his freelance career
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showing off all seven slang words for knife I learnt from being a youth worker
Click to expand...

admittedly when i read the fact article a few months back i had in mind someone who was actually from London or even one of these areas. "youth worker" made me think maybe of a more '00s youth worker - someone local just supervising and teaching DJing or something - fuck knows what it's actually like now. the second article, with the "workshops" and toff-pals in a nice pad in kennington maybe gave the game away.

still, i said these were 'good' because my threshold for a good bit of music writing these days is low as fuck - for ppl to include some interesting stuff and just not get too many things drastically wrong. i loved the comments from carns hill.
 
T

trilliam

Well-known member
glasshand said:
still, i said these were 'good' because my threshold for a good bit of music writing these days is low as fuck - for ppl to include some interesting stuff and just not get too many things drastically wrong. i loved the comments from carns hill.
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hear this still

found it hilarious that he kept referring to carns as "hill" rather than "carns hill", it's like calling the game "the game" repeatedly
 
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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Fun fact, this was filmed in a block of flats down the bottom of wickham road. It's a couple of minutes walk away from number 44, which is where kate bush wrote wuthering heights.

 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Found this on Spotify last night. Knew it would be old. It's 2 years old. :crylarf:



67 (Liquez, Dimzy, SJ, ASAP & LD) - Skeng Man (Prod. by Jahka)

Still, some ppl must be as clueless as me.
 
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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
A rather handsome, well endowed young man has made a playlist of some his favourites from this year:

/watch?v=xPF3YdUEbKo&index=1&list=PLUauGzUG35p5JUAoYQmDch-blNAfuyigu
 
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