Dizzy Rascal: what drugs are you guys on?

Also, is it an age thing?

SSean, you are part of the reason I started this thread. You sounded very impressed by Dizzy Rascal, to the point where you called him "Relevatory."

To me, I have seen enough electronic music styles come and go over the last eight years to take everything with a grain of salt. What I am hearing is wack laptop synthesis with so-so song writing and mc's who cannot flow. It does not sound zesty or fucked up, it just sounds like a sterile laptop production with some dude from down the street laying down a weak rap over the top.

It sounds like the idea was sent over there, and then it mutated into something that removed everything that was good about it. Muscular beats and grooves matched with the best production possible.

I guess another connection I see is the inherent disposability of post-Timbaland R&B. The difference is that US R&B is throw away only because whatever is going to come out next season is going to be better than this season whereas UKGG strikes me as being disposable because there was nothing there in the first place other than the hype and social circumstance. It is like the Skiffle of the 00's.

those are familiar words

Honestly, I really don't think this applies in this situation. I think perhaps it might be identification with Black American music and the vibe that goes along with it.

also,do you like the wu tang?

I love the Wu! Last month I listened to the first Wu album every night before bed for three weeks straight. It was very similar to the obsessive need I had to hear the third Velvet Underground album awhile back. I love the gritty sp-1200 sound he had on that record.

In what sense can "I Luv U" be considered weak?

The only word that really comes to mind is "muscular". It is not in the performance per se; it is in the vibe that comes off of the performance. My reasoning is sub-verbal if that makes any sense. It just does not have any gut to it, no body. It doesn't hit, it just sounds a bit emaciated.

oh so it's like parallel evolution with the aye-aye and that one other monkey from South America right they sound similar because they serve similar purposes but not because one is related to the other?

if you qualified that statement a little more it would make sense.

Sounds like yr just too jaded to appreciate how daned good this is... we probably won't persuade you either.

UKG is born from a difficult and complicated british dance music legacy that didn't take its cue from us rap or rnb whatsoever.

this is almost completely wrong... i can see what you're getting at but hiphop was vital to hardcore/jungle/UKG (where'd those breakbeats come from, where'd that scratching come from, where'd those sampled RAPS come from???!!!)... it's not the whole influence behind this strain of urban music (reference how pivotal Jamaican version/soundsystem culture is to all the above), but it is still HUGELY important... w/out hiphop these genres would probably never exist/have existed

i think it calls for a certain level of affinity w/ the snare and groove minutiae that jungle pioneered and ukg popularized. Dizzee et al's flows seem totally informed by this; there's an angularity to them that might come across as 'poor flow' when it's just different. even the friskiest American hip-hop and r&b falls back on thumping downward snares whereas "I Luv U", for all its pounding gabber blasts, has this vaguely upward sensibility in those superhigh snares (due to their sparseness maybe ... they come off more articulate/expressive and less utilitarian than many of their American counterparts). i bet it's the contrast between the two that makes the song; it's treacherous.

anyway, "Fix Up Look Sharp" is probably the only exception on the album; the remainder's move into glitchtastic sounds seems a natural extension of the sort of rhythmic fine-tuning charateristic of hardcore-derived music. American black music may inform it in part, but the latter certainly doesn't need to live up to the former.

truth, beauty, etc.

Gerald Simpson was in a hip-hop crew before he started making acid house with the first incarnation of 808 State.

ages since they still think all british people wear bowler hats and live in london

That said, I think the original "I Luv U" is more, um, *impressive*, whether you like it or hate it, compared to the Sharkey mix (which is great too but I suspect only works if you've heard the original).

I vaguely sympathise - I'm quite happy with the current temperament of garage MCs and don't think that that's what needs changing ("advancing"/"expanding") at the moment (if anything does). I prefer my MCs combining murderous menace and off-beat humour.

oh, and mike taylor and millar in cloth-eared technoid shocker.

a.) the music moves -- I don't know what the average bpm is on a Roll Deep track, but it's faaaast. I read an interview with him where he was talking about going to 130 or 140. I like fast. I don't know if fast="guts" or "body," and I guess you could argue that you sacrifice bump for blur, but it's a nice break from the typical American hip-hop grind.

b.) at the same time, the vocal component -- the "rapping" -- makes the garage stuff accessible and palatable to my hip-hop-conditioned ears in a way that it wouldn't be otherwise. The non-vocal mixes of some of those tracks don't interest me nearly as much -- I still get bored by the bleep-bleep-boom stuff if it doesn't have a frontman (this makes it kind of the opposite of Def Jux-type stuff, which often sounds as good or better with the vocals removed).

c. and most crucially, Dizzee's got great presence -- even on those full crew tracks where there are 7 or 8 MCs (and pretty good ones, too), everything just lights up when he comes on. He's funny and forceful and sounds like he knows a lot more than he's letting on. I can't boil it down to anything as simple as "flow," but he's got a new voice, something that feels immediate and urgent and like it might tell you something you don't know. Not in the words so much (although those are just fine) but in the way it's all done. I mean, I hear that and think, "Damn, he's doing all that with the same language I use every day."

ha ha no I'm not!

I wonder if he'd be so massive in the blogasphere if he didn't carry around so much critical history? There's just tttooo much to talk about!

Anyone for some Black Atlanticism, post-rave mutations or neo-punk affinities?

The only great music is something you can talk about - something with a hook. A record that cites history, philosophy or musical tradition, & Dizzee does all that.

This is web time. The Dizzee backlash is already here, and the album doesn't come out for a month.

This is a very boring thing to say--maybe I'm jaded!--but it's just, like, a good album that can't possibly live up to all the hyperbole that's being heaped upon it.

But y'know, what do you expect? The Brits finally get a half-decent rapper, they're bound to think he's Tupac and RZA rolled into one... ;o)

Even the worst of Trifian bounce is better than the DR album.

Dizzy will never break in the US because the only people who like him here are desperate anglophile music critics. The guy on the street with a 400$ a week mentality is going to see this stuff for the weak take on American music that it is. It won’t sell because it is not as good as what is already on the radio (and with the current dreadful state of commercial R&B that is far from a compliment).

It will never break out of blog space. The Streets could not do it, and DR definitely will not be able to either.

As for Dizzee, the music is way more challenging. I would think the sounds are just too ugly for American radio. However, I was clearly wrong about the Streets, so who knows.

Not really hearing this "sub-par commercial R&B" thing you're banging on about. It sounds nothing like R&B.

dizzee's flow on track 10 completely slays anything i've heard in american hip-hop this year...he's at least on par with luda (who is currently the greatest mc working)

as for the streets...yeah, i didnt know leno blogged

The Streets might have had a bit of mtv2 exposure, and people might have gotten a bit of novelty buzz from a white guys rapping with an English accent, but it is just novelty buzz. That "funny streets band" indeed, how many Streets singles hit Clear Channel play lists? How many of their videos hit TRL/MTV1 rotation? For all intents and purposes, the streets are in the same category as Lou Bega and Lucas of "Lucas With The Lid Off" fame. It was a one-off novelty track.

It might have worked if America had not produced Eminem three years earlier. Skinner and Dizzy might be good for English rappers, but don’t tell me that they could have touched Em. As over exposed as 50 cent is, his singles are still going to mop the floor with dizzee when he hits the shelves.

Bottom line: high school dropouts, line cooks, and car mechanics are not going to be bumping this shit. People with college educations who used to be really really into Yo La Tengo are going to buy this record.

I don't know what's more initially bemusing -- the fact that people are still surprised that violently differing opinions can be had on something (of course, I should talk) or that so much of the criticism seems to be that of other people's critical takes or methods of expression. Mike slams 'blog space' in general, Simon Reynolds is to my mind less criticizing Schematic et al than implicitly trashing the point of view that holds them to be 'the way forward,' apparently. And yet I'm sure SR would agree that some people do just go ahead and enjoy Schematic et al for what they produce rather than for some theoretical cop and Mike for all his annoyance notes that the album will appeal to somebody, just not necessarily him.

Which I suppose is a hallmark of all immediate and right-there criticism as something emerges, but I dunno. Doesn't it feel like a bit of a go-round? Sure I may be the ninja of the obvious in noting that but still.

I have been called much worse than a fool, so I am not going to sweat it too much. Slamming a consensus critical darling on ilm is a lot like poking a bee hive with a stick, you really do not have a right to cry if somebody says something not nice back to you.

I might be a fool, but when this albums drops he will not break the top 40 in the US, and he will not break 125k units in the US either. At best, Dizzee will be a blip on the radar and then soon forgotten. This is all I have to say, and I wont bring him up again.

If my prediction on the American reaction to this album is wrong I will post an apology thread on ilm and if Aaron wants, I will buy him dinner in Ann Arbor.

Mike you know I love you but doubting Dizzee's ability to sell in the US while at the same time holding US urban is k-laymer does not a meaningful argument make. If the people who buy US urban are all idiots (nb: I obv don't think this) then why would anyone care what they think of Dizzee?

Also, it's important not to gloss over the fact that, comparative to the rest of UK hip hop, Dizzee's garage-rap take is a decisive shift away from aping US idioms. This is part of the problem with Reynolds using references like Tupac and RZA - in attempt to mount the "equal but different" argument he encourages readers to make the same mistake that most people did w/ The Streets - eg. trying to judge it on US rap terms. This is as skewed as trying to judge jungle on detroit techno's terms - it goes out of its way to ignore the fact different styles have different values. Of course, US genre purists always do that when the UK or Europe does stuff with something they feel they own.

How could/should American consumers approach garage-rap? Surely a point of comparison is in order.

How will Dizzee ever be successful in the US along the terms you are suggesting - most rap-fans over there have absolutely no conception of the post-rave or hardcore specific aesthetics (ie, gabba-blasts/rave-stabs, icey synths and so on) - probably will not even pick up on the 'decisive shift' represented in his style.

It's gonna be read against the local product, that's inevitable.
How it'll hold up, only time can tell...

there's rave stabs and icy synths in US hip-hop so i think people can deal with cold/harsh tracks. i think the real question is whether the new rhythms are 'populist enough' (not sure how else to put that - like how Timbaland's completely accessible even though he's doing some mad shit) to click immediately with American listeners, or if they'll just seem more or less incomprehensible.

Or, for that matter, the UK?

that track "Fix Up Look Sharp" sounds like Mark Stewart & the Mafia !

oh for fucks sake...

he's EIGHTEEN, which means he grew up during the height of american (and therefore the world) hip-hop's return to the drum machine, the cellphone ringtone melody, and cheap banger production

and "fix up look sharp" sounds like the 800 other tracks that have sampled "the big beat"!!

Yeah, the REAL MUSIC FAN, you computer-owning pseudo-people!

the "growing up listening to american hip-hop" thing also works for his contemporaries in 8-bar/nu-garage, since if 2-step was uk kids getting to grips with current american r&b then 8-bar is almost certainly uk kids getting to grips with the (then current) american hip-hop of the ruff ryders/swizz/luda variety

Yes, old-school hip-hop via Swizz Beats, that's what I meant ;)

don't get me wrong, i like - maybe even love - this album...but making it my #1 for the year would be a cheat 4real

in attempt to mount the "equal but different" argument he encourages readers to make the same mistake that most people did w/ The Streets - eg. trying to judge it on US rap terms.

the American audience has never much related to or understood British MCing (whether good or crap)

You know, I have to disagree with this line of thought... it's kind of like saying "British basketball comes from a different tradition to American basketball, it doesn't matter if a UK basketball player can make it in the US." It strikes me as preemptively defensive, a way to beg off from even getting in the game... The differences between garage rap, or whatever you want to call it, and hip-hop are far far lesser than the similarities. If Dizzee (or any other British MC) is really so good, he should be able to be judged against the best MCs in the world (and just maybe, you know, that means the best MCs in the US). And if they can't stack up, if they can't get noticed, that ain't necessarily the US audience's fault. (Two alternate possibilities to the handy old "the US is isolationist" standby: a) they're not trying b) they're not good enough). I mean really, is there a UK MC whom the US has criminally overlooked in the past? Is there a UK MC who's even made it big in England chart-wise, for that matter?

The sports analogy doesn't hold for me Ben cos the way in which British and American people move isn't fundamentally different, whereas the way British and American people speak (and flow) is (or is a lot more so at least).

This whole thing is immensely frustrating for me because a) before I started listening to UK hip-hop or garage rap I thought of it in exactly the same way as you - ie. directly comparable and b) the frustrating part is I can't express why it isn't. All I know is that as a listener I approach homegrown and US hip-hop in a very different way and judge them by different criteria, though I'm annoyed with myself that I can't work out - to my own satisfaction -what those criteria exactly are. I don't expect anyone else to share them, and I'm not saying Americans *should* approach British MCs by anything other than their own standards, either. I'm just agreeing with Jess' point - why is how well a debut British album performs in the American market become the defining test of its quality?

The Beatles' hagiographical industry to thread.

I don't think I ever suggested my criteria were formal rather than personal, either.

I mentioned formal criteria because I think, if we're arguing over whether it's justifiable to compare music from two different countries, they're more important than content.

I think it's true for any genre that's really really similar to another genre that originated somewhere else! I don't think anyone has any trouble comparing British and American rock acts. I don't have any trouble comparing British and Jamaican reggae.

So Solid and all their offshoots (Oxide & Neutrino, Asher D, Lisa Maffia)?

Actually, isn't it far more interesting to see how UK & US acts compete on a more "level playing field", ie other countries? Because for all the UK inferiority complexes I regularly sense on ILM, UK acts actually do quite well outside of their home market. Craig David, Lisa Maffia, Mis-Teeq, Oxide & Neutrino, More Fire Crew and the Sugababes are certainly able to get airplay and hold their own against R Kelly, Eminem, Beyonce and Jay-Z in mainland Europe's "urban" markets.

Now your argument - it seems to me - is that the second type is less successful on an artistic level for not making that crossover. I think there's a bit of merit in that, actually, especially in cases like Britpop where the leading acts did usually try quite hard to "break America" and fell on their faces. But on the other hand I think that strong local success is success in its own right and doesn't require validation through global success.

My hunch is that garage rap is the second type of music, something destined for local strength and small-scale global appreciation by a tiny minority. Maybe admitting that is defensive or defeatist, but I don't believe saying "so what?" to US reaction implies a resentment of its audience - more a level of realism.

(Siegbran's post spokes the wheel of that argument, oh well.)

* - not neccesarily measured by sales

Yeah James but in the same interviews and lyrics he's also pushing a message of "Unless you're from EXACTLY WHERE I'M FROM you're not going to get me" - so which to believe?

But (again), no, I am not saying that Dizzee is a failure if he doesn't sell in America (or England for that matter). I'm not saying sales are the sole quality to measure "success" by. I'm just saying that the size of the audience matters (maybe a little more if all sorts of grandiose claims are being made ;o). And they matter a little more in the country that invented what you do and has the biggest audience for it. If Dizzee gets loads of critical acclaim, moves no units, becomes a cult artist destined to be referenced by music heads for years to come, that's one kind of success. If he gets loads of critical acclaim, blows up, moves lots of units, becomes known in the US, shows up on the next Jay-Z album, that's a bigger success. This is pop music! The idea is for lots of people to hear it!

I'm not implying that (although Mundian To Bach Ke got big through Germany, for instance), but as the US market is virtually impenetrable for non-US artists in ANY genre, it is an interesting testcase for "what would happen if [insert UK act] had the same major label promotion as the US artists have?".

I do think it's tougher for international acts to break through in the US these days... the US does embrace the world, but it likes to do so from within its own borders :) But "impenetrable" is overstating it.

Correct me if I'm wrong someone, but I was always led to believe that this was often due to 'hyping' the charts by buying up copies of your own single in the first week.

In any case, that (b) point makes me think people are using Sean Paul to seriously overestimate the success of foreign stuff in U.S. markets. For one thing, it's not like Jamaican music and culture is bewilderingly foreign to Americans -- maybe reductively stereotyped, to the point where the "real thing" would be baffling to most people, but not horribly foreign. And it's also worth noting that Jamaican-styled hits in the U.S. tend to do better when they play into those preconceptions: Americans are comfortable with Jamaican-lineage artists as lovable party stars and weed-smoking funnymen -- "hahaha they talk weird, it sounds really cool," straight back to when MTV would run a bouncing-ball translation at the bottom of the "Informer" video -- which is something Sean Paul breaks out of a little but not entirely. (Shaking that thing is pretty universal; how far would he have broken over with some kind of "Kingston State of Mind" single?)

I mention this because apart from rock and electronic projects, I'm not sure Americans really have a preferred mental slot for U.K. acts, especially black ones -- the prevailing U.S. stereotype of Brits is pretty much of the whitest people in the world, so there's a little bit of cognitive dissonance involved. This works for the Streets as quirky-novelty; it can only work for Dizzee in terms of surprise at how he busts it open. And in hip-hop, where image and character are pretty essential, this is a big impediment to Dizzee, however good, breaking in the U.S. If he were good at anti-personal party tracks and comedy, maybe; outsiders are allowed to toss those in. But for him to get mass credit here will require people to look past those (great, but) not exactly slick-and-bumping beats and actually care about this character that probably won't match well with any existing "type" in their heads.

And more importantly, the music doesn't match American things, I don't think, which is why it seems like there's some problems going on with differentiating this new garage stuff is from hip-hop. The average pop listener hearing this stuff would probably think of it as hip-hop, sure -- but the whole point is that it would sound to them like weird hip-hop, off hip-hop, hip-hop where something is different and strange. In Dizzee's case, especially given that the beats aren't all ingratiating, that'll make plenty of people decide it's weird in a bad-and-wrong kind of way. But it's not like people won't notice something's going on, any more than they missed it with something as mostly-normal as the Fugees.

And they rely on their best, most persuasive music critics to hype up their latest thing. But really the most talented people in London are the music writers. *Ducks*

U.S. rap and r 'n' b is utterly dire right now. Like, what is so great about glossy? Glossy is kitsch. Why be influenced by it?

re Sean Paul - aren't there generally one or two hitmaking Jamaican artists making it big in the States every few years? Shaggy and Beenie Man a couple years ago; Shabba a few years before that.

and no, they were respectable, but not top 10 material.

push things forward peaked around #30 if I remember correctly.

Ok, I'll shut up for real now. I promise!

Besides the MASSIVE gulf of difference historically/culturally between the two - the whole 'British Invasion' vibe was a calculated marketing strategy, no record company is invest that much in 'Boy in Da Corner'.

Beatles were also pure pop, in the sense that the main fans were teenage girls - again, not a sure point of comparison with garage-rap.

I'm not saying that teenage girls don't buy hip-hop - but Beatlemania was the Girl Power of the 60s - in some ways, the equivalent of thousands showing up on TRL to vote through the Backstreet Boys to the number one. Is this really worth debating??

It's just not much like Dizzee at all.

Has anyone heard those radio-rips of Dizzee rapping up next to Ashanti? Maybe he should do some 'Roll Deep Crew'/'Murder Inc.' crossovers, R&B/Hip-Hop/Garage-Rap hybrids with Bobby Brown and Ja Rule - How much would that suck?

Obv. Ja Rule is not exclusively shit - I'm just mouthing off. But still, Dizzee is probably going to be the one suffering from any such cameo appearances - what about the whole 'London thing' ethos, I think he's on his own trip and that's the appeal. He should stay that way. At least for a while.

aren't we forgetting something?: the NU-METAL AUDIENCE!! They're already accustomed to a noisy emo 'retarded' bastardisation of hiphop, with 'issues', that you can mosh to.
In the unlikely event that I Luv U or another UKG banger is a bit hit in the US, maybe it will be because it ROCKS!

...
OK maybe that's just silly, but I think Reynolds' grunge idea makes way more sense in this way than it does with DR as the Cobain "voice of a generation".

"You know, I have to disagree with this line of thought... it's kind of like saying "British basketball comes from a different tradition to American basketball, it doesn't matter if a UK basketball player can make it in the US."

I think the whole "will Dizzee shift units?" is not-so-interesting though. I was talking about whether it's right to approach Dizzee using the question "how does he compare to US hip hop?" as yr primary critical angle - this is what a lot of US critics did for The Streets, and while it didn't stop them from liking it (after all, a lot of these critics *hate* US hip hop), it did stop them from saying (or thinking?) much of interest beyond some obvious universal truths. Placing Dizzee within a US hip hop context is one useful critical approach, but it shouldn't be the only or even primary critical approach, any more than Nas's "Flyest Angel" should be judged by strict reference to Indian music.

I agree. For what it's worth I wasn't really trying to be quite so narrow about it (I was using far more vague terms like "impact.")

What concerns me about the way "Boy In Da Corner" might be received is that it might encourage critics to bestow too much respectability (and thus responsibility) on the scene as being a source of artistic insight. I cringe as much as anyone at the crappy MCs who finish three out of four lines with the same half-sentence because they haven't figured out how to rhyme yet, but at the same time I love the hastily thought-up put-downs and repeated catch-phrases - the sense that the MCs are caught between their old role as mere groove-accompaniment and their new role as the focus.

OTM Tim, I've been thinking about this a lot lately... more later I'm at work now!

The song then goes on to tell the story of the typical 'Jezebel' and repeats the fact that he is not attracted to this girl. 'I really hope your not a grim,I really hope your not a jezzy, jezzy'
i personally think it makes girls aware, and able to see this story and where certain things can lead you in life.
the song ends on a thought provoking note:
'Aged 16
She was never full grown
She was in a family
Now she's got one of her own
Two kids
Even worse
Two little girls
Two more of her
Thats two jezebel's
Two fatherless kids
One single mum
No longer young
But the boys still come
Yo, wishin' she could take it back to the old school
And make better choice's
Oh what a fool
But all by her side
But she wonder man
Only if she was six years younger
Damn'
To really appreciate the album i really think you must listen and analyse the lyrics.
Another track- Sittin here
This track talks about the way in which life has change and generations have changed- for the worse. The social classes, the way different sexes treat eachother, robberies and violence.
Dizzie Rascal says 'Cos it was only yesterday
We were standing thoroughly on our feet
It was only yesterday
Girls were innocent, they kept us calm
It was only yesterday
There was less bobbies on the beat
Now I’m sittin’ here
Thinkin’ Whaa gwaan'
wha gwan means 'Whats going on' by the way. So he is actually looking and thinking 'whats happening?'
'I’ve seen a lot of bullshit, I wonder what’s next
I’m vex at humanity
Vex at the earth'
You know what vexed means, right? He is highlighting that it is not just the young generation but its the world as a whole. War and religous disrtuction. 'Police don’t give me no peace
It’s the same old story
Friends slowly driftin’ from the endz
It’s the same old story
Sussed, there’s nobody I can trust'
Friends are drifting, friends are becomming untrustworthy and police try and get you for anything they can. in other songs he highlights how police waste thir time and don't understand - they dn't understand the younger generation and what it is like.

i hope i have made some interst into a few of his lyrics, i could well carry on typing forever but i won't, i think if you check out the lyrics now- i hope you may make more sense of them? Well if you do please email me and let me know hat you think of it now. I think it is an amazing album by 'Dizzie Rascal' he is really bringing the truth home. Please let me n=know. Thanks.
jenny

What drugs was I on in 2003 and where can I get some more?

Haha

took almost 10 years, but i can recognize this now for the crap it is

the thread title? Yes.

Dizzee is for all time

Prefer Mike's records to Dizzee's tho

no

Really enjoying LLLL, total earworm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtOJfipHcdo

wow the beginning of this thread is nuts

another ilxor who found fame and fortune and left us behind

Good track!

are we to presume that was... mike "beard guy" taylor?

Also yes, yikes to the beginning of this thread.

https://www.discogs.com/artist/1474638-Disco-Nihilist