WOEBOT

Why the hell are all we bloggers engaging so fruitfully with ourselves and not the outside world? Why didn't Simon, Tim, Luka, Jess or I manage to get a similar article published? See Matt, told you, we NEED our own mag, y'know it's true!

But DJ Caspar ---- gordon bennett Maff---- I'm speechless, +*>/{+++**** ---- all I can say is, you don't watch enough MTV --- it being on EVERY TWO SECONDS would put you off, I'm sure......

that sticker put me off n. flesh too...despite liking their stuff on extra yard and wanting to look further

even worse was that dick from jurasSic 5 (worst group evah?) on the roots manuva lp. what was he thinkin/

Brit rap really needs to come via JA to avoid the US anxiety of influence thing --- London Posse rapping in that cockney patois mix, y'know....

some of the stuff on music of life was ok - hardnoise and early hijack, demon boyz early blade and some gunshot. really heavy alot of the instrumentals used to get spun on 45 at raves i recall. it went a bit wrong when hijack released the horns of jerico on ice-t's rhyme syndicate label and it was a pile of shit.
even stuff like silvah bullet had a kinda street tough hip house flava - all those guys went on to be involved in hardcore, jungle and garage in some ways, ie congo natty, pied piper, demon boys and sons of noise so maybe that raw speedy furious vibe skipped a generation - listening to something like that track "tool too small" by lady fury it sounds like an update of that sound undeniably - rather than any relation to roots manuva or whatever.

i do my best. when i get a chance i trawl the stores. but it's rare and insufficient. so i resort to downloading. not as a primary source, but as a fallback position. i've got the cash, i just don't have the source. so what's a boy to do, matt? you more than anyone make me crave this sort of shit i'm NEVER going to find on vinyl and yet you of all people decry my p2p habit. doesn't add up...

DJ Caspar rules the kids' disco! REVERSE!!! Maybe Mark watches TOO MUCH MTV :-)

to dubversion
i dont know what youre on about! look, you can get all those garage tunes here http://www.independance-records.co.uk/ug.htm (whats more you can listen to them there too!

to Mark K
rapping via JA. Quite correkt innit.

to Marcus
yeah (you seen that UK Bounce history?) but it was when they moved into ardkore that all the pieces fell into place. fallacy is like that, he's practically a garage mc.

again to marcus
yeah i dont like that "tool too small", and i didnt like "merk dem" either. annoying cos i crave a really good female mc (stush, ms dynamite).

and lady fury is the real mckoy, unlike mc shystie who is C.R.A.P. d double is on her latest 12" and he's way down in the mix sounding well lost. that dude need to hook up with some production talent and sharpish, i emailed jammer the other day (i did!) and asked him what he was up to....no reply as yet!!!!

anyone heard soverign's stuff?

really? - i love it -really ballsy stuff - with a really tough delivery
not merk dem though really

lady sovereign has a track out soon on ross allens casual label with medasyn soon i think.

Good piece. However, I think you've got your argument a bit turned around. The reason why I often refer to Grime as Rap is because it is a genuine UK version of rap. By which I mean (1) it's located far more meaningfully within the hip-hop current -- as opposed to the rave current of which it is really the last, final evolution. (2) it's not ersatz. It is indigenous. It is a UK (London?) t'ing. In fact I would bve surprised if the Americans were able to do grime properly.

In other words, I think that Grime has only a tangential relationship with that shadow-like phenomenon called "UK hip hop". But I think it has a significant relationship with "Hip hop" and "Rap" -- it is different but it is a mature off-spring of it.

BTW -- Jurassic 5, whom the wife introduced me to, are fantastic. They piss over 99% of hiphop out there. Calling them the worst group ever is self-hating hipster gobshite of the lowest form.

>I think that Grime has only a tangential relationship with that shadow-like phenomenon called "UK hip hop"

Well Mr Snotty that's exactly what we're addressing here, the fact that the most substantial article that has come into being in the mainstream press gracefully matches the two phenomenon and the artists interviewed dont volunteer much (or arent allowed to volunteer much) to dispell this.

For example J2K:

""...I don't know anyone from the UK Hip Hop scene," he mentions a few MCs he rates including Roots Manuva."

Oh and Jurassic 5 are nonces. Rubbish innit! I let you off with The Beastie Boys Meme, but not this, oh no, not this...

the guy that wrote that page did suggest a separate page for grime though didn't he .
and anyway at least the effort is being made to acknowledge the existence of the music rather than covering it up with giant grainy posters of the white stripes sitting backstage or whatever

ho ho! you'll be happy (?) to know that a few months back i wrote a wee baby "garage rap [cough wheeze] primer" for a magazine i write for that's distributed free to mom'n'pop record shoppes around the country. now the plebes in places as far flung as wilkes-barre, pa, west virginia, and colorado will know the difference between ukg/8-bar/grime. (and not be able to buy/hear any of it.)

I'll second the shouts for Gunshot/ Blade/ Demon Boyz/ Hardnoise, but Bionic from London Posse was the don....

Mr Snotty?! I'm bigging you up! So we agree that grime is in the same nexus as hip hop but not *UK* hip hop.

You don't like Juraissic 5... I'm shocked. I presume they have the same relationship with hipster hiphop buyers as, say, Underworld or maybe Hardfloor have with hipster dance music buyers. (You're going to say "Oakenfold" now, aren't you?) Well, I don't understand it. We dance around to J5 all the time. Magnificent music, dunno what the problem is at all... a critique might make an intersting post -- "hip hop you're allowed to like, and hip hop you're not -- a hipster's eye view". I'm serious...

jurassic five are shit. the pharcyde did a old skool parody on their first album. it was quite funny then. j5 based a career around that one track. the joke's worn thin.

to Marcus
Look, I'm not slagging off John's piece. Like I said I thought it was solid. A few gripes, thats all. I went out and bought the mag (pious as ever) read it and came back with a few comments. The Brit-Rap thing, thats the kind of thing that ill-informed articles that leech off a piece like John did will AMPLIFY (cos its such an easy angle)

to Paul
...bigging me up! What, a sudden about face ;-) I know you have this thing that Dance music is dead and that Grime is Rap Paul. I like the theory, it s just that I'd rather see Garridge as a whole new thing really. Even if we're making deep structural comparisons like you is. I've got a problem with it if it means the mainstream just thinks of Grime as Brit-Rap. Better, in my opinion, that they think of it as a mutant strain of Jungle.

yeah i know your're not dissing it matt
jess - there are scenes of people that listen to rinse and delight etc on the web i gather from a bit of surfing i did - baltimore(where they've got their own weird old school house/ghetto bas hybrid), texas - even a garridge night in texas - a guy got in touch the other day talking about it .
There's even a pretty strange jungle scene in the US and Toronto with people cutting pretty straight up jungle tracks - bit faster but sticking to the vibe.

Hmmm, my critiques sometimes get misinterpreted as rebukes. As Sartre said to Foucault. Sorry brov.

"I've got a problem with it if it means the mainstream just thinks of Grime as Brit-Rap"

I understand your point. But bear in mind that the mainstream -- lets not muddy the waters here by trying too hard to define "mainstream" in this context -- almost by definition don't understand Brit Rap. They've probably never heard of Brit-rap artists. But they might think, this is a bit like hiphop, but it's British. Well, London anyway.

The idea of Grime being a whole new thing is an interesting one to debate and act upon. On the one hand, I espouse the conventional view of Grime being the end-point of the hardcore continuum (yaaaaawwwwn I know). On the other hand, maybe it is the start of a new phase -- part of the return to / evolution of dance music as black music. In the early 8Ts I went to jazz funk nights in Essex in order to dance; there's a sense of grime being rave's reconnection point to that current, that style of dance music. Post-E, close affinity to r&b and hiphop, all that stuff, as rehearsed since Twice as Nice.

On another tip, I don't think the purity of Grime's inheritance can be protected if the mass market gets hold of it. That could be a good thing in terms of messing with Grime's gene / meme pool and making it produce interesting hybrids.

Oh, and dance music isn't dead -- never has been, never will be -- it's the "Corporate Dance Music Industry" which is dying. Sadly the underground industry networks are dying too. I'll leave my defence of J5 to another time -- happy playing the records for the moment!

There's a pleasing symmetry about positioning Grime as a mutant strain of jungle, since jungle was kicked off by hip hop enthusiasts wanting to use breakbeats at ravE-tempo. Grime has superficial similarities to UK hip-hop, but the routes to their current destinations, their genealogies, are totally different. Even at their current zero-degree level, E and rave are present in Grime in a way that they never will be in UK hip hop. The becoming-catatonia of Grime's skunkanoia as the intensive zero from which rave's hyper-rush is differentiated. UK hip hop's drug continuum goes from skunk-zombiedom through weed to amped-up amphetamine (check the crazed speed of Gunshot/ Hardnoise et al back in the day).

too many copycats on Kold Sweat killed that gunshot/hardnoise thing...

Hijack.. Rhyme Syndicate were the wrong crew to hook up with...Donald D had one of his sneakers ripped off by some kids at the edge of stage here (alongside ICE T at aa PE's support) and refused to go on until they returned it. The big sook just about cried.

and I'd rather be a hipster (ha!) than be force fed psyllium husks

to mark k
nice words mate.

the current wave of uk hiphop (roots manuva down) has precious little to do with that Gunshot era as I see it; though that pre-SUAD thing may have something to do with Grime. still id prefer to see Grime as a new thing.

Pre-suad is something I am increasingly interested in - the whole Jah Tubbys and Unity Sound crew with Peter Bouncer et al. Iirc Roots Manuva kicked off a mix selection on Radio 1 with an old Y&D cut by Crucial Robbie, so I guess he is at aware of the ancestry?

Gunshot were wicked - "Mind of a Razor" was a choon. Not when they redid it with Napalm Death or whoever tho. It was weird that the UK hardcore punk scene embraced when many of the hip hops fans didn't.

Nothing is new.

i was just going to point out that the grime contingent know and love the mixtape. thats why the shops are full of mixtapes, lotd is basically a mixtape, haven't heard box bloody fresh yet but i assume it's in the same vein, target put his mixtape out and doogz had the fast and the furious or whatever. you could talk intelligently about the conomics of it. mixtapes where you get lots of songs and burn it on cd versus hugely expensive 12 inches. obvious innt. i hear kids on the bus talking about kayslay the dramaking all the time plus if you listen to some pirates during the day they've just got a new york mixtape on a loop before the djs get in.

Hardfloor are persona non grata with dance hipsters? I really had no idea...

But really, J5 are criminally bad. You don't need to be hip to see that.

being in australia, which is a wasteland for good music (and if you don't like uk hip hop, you should hear some of the aussie shit), it's nice to see intelligent people talking about good music like grime/garage(garidge, i like it!) and not talkign through their asses.

So, whose gonna hooks me up with the mixtapes?

after defending last months mention of wiley they've fucked it up by writing about garage and getting just the basics wrong - calling it down low and saying wileys new one is called "what's it called and saying just weird things liek 70 percent of young people in London listen to garage even though it has virtually no commercial appeal - then going on about beefs which they got straight out of deuce last issue by the looks of things ... hmm

being in australia, which is a wasteland for good music

well, we're rocking and rolling in Melbourne, Nick! where are you?