bouncement

UK rappers in creating "new" too-much-spice-in-the-pot omni-genre to suit their wack-ass flows non-shocker!!

(actually, just kidding. it's good to see UK hiphop recognizing that it's not necessarily suited to the premiership.

"But is it still hiphop?")

i speak of the "extra yard" compilation. as i mentioned on the nu-garridge thread; necessary selfassertion (if not defection obv) of dubstep, or attenuant cop-out from losing dancefloor battle for supremacy? other thoughts: pros/cons of artificially birthing a scene (and subsequent quality effex; taking under wing is excusing or nurturing?) part of me sees this as necessary but especially NATURAL coalition and certainly a breath of air for between the cracks uk hiphop, (albeit exclusively london/maybe birmingham centric). other part sees an awkward ICA/hyperdub/faux-kodwo eshun half-baked "manifesto" that's only gonna appeal to anal black atlantic futurist mermen rather than dancefloor hools.

i'll let ezra pound decide if it's hiphop or not

ps i love eshun but i won't make a career off him *cough cough steve goodman cough*

YEAH! YEAH! you GO and post to threads with "nickalicious" on them

hey Bob I thought you said like last week you'd given up on UK hip hop?

Bouncement's been talked about around the UK hip-hop ballpark for a few months now... it does seem to be an artificially created scene, some sort of desire to seperate UK hip-hop from UK garage (qf Oxide and Neutrino appearing on the cover of HHC, the continuing "are the Streets rap" debate). The confusing thing about this is that nobody's done more to unite rap and garage in the UK than Fallacy and Fusion, and yet they're seen as some sort of scene leaders in bouncement.

Of course, both the media and the majority of British rap fans are going to flock behind the genre that best describes Roots Manuva, he's the most marketable figure UK rap has and its only real chance of getting anywhere as near as much coverage as NAM, let alone garage (hard black guys going on about Moet) or garage (skinny white guys going on about, like, issues).

Other things to remember is that UK rap isn't London/Brum-centric really (Wolverhampton's really where all the attention is at the moment), and does the Premiership really play rap music? I thought all highlights packages were to "Little By Little"? If there's some Phi Life Cypher on it I may pay it more attention now.

Hey Dom aside from the Wolftown / Vicious Circle lot, who else shd I look out for from Wolverhampton (most fashionable of all the worldwide Hamptons)?

it's hardly a concrete musical style: surely it's highlighting the similarities betwixt various scenes and trying to blur the lines a little rather than demarcate any uk hiphop purity... perhaps celebrating the uk's "purity of mutation"

(sorry, i meant bouncement as london/brum centric)

i've still given up on uk hiphop! but as in english ppl do US style type: so no endless cheap taskforce 12"s, no skinnyman, no mark b and blade, no lame-ass aspects, no pallid braintax. no more representing for the sake of it! (i thought def tex were good tho. and i like kyza)

yes to fallacy + fusion, new flesh, manuva, juice aleem, invisible spies bunch etc etc

(but then i'm one of these guys that thinks anticon is ultra hiphop)

Bob, what I like about some of the acts you obv. don't like is that they don't sound even vaguely us-style to me. I don't think Braintax make records which sound like they could be made anywhere but the UK. (Then again he sounds anything but pallid to me so I guess that makes a difference)

Think 'endless' is a bit of a harsh thing to say about Taskforce: how many 12"s does it take to qualify as 'endless' (let's ignore promos & white labels): 2? 3? Or do you mean they're long? Again, the best of their stuff sounds fantastic to me (I tend to agree the "Life Without Instructions" 12 was a bit below-par but then so do Taskforce AFAIK).

Cor but that Def Tex LP was mediocre at best, and they are surely at least as 'US-style' as (say) Jehst or the YNR lot? I guess it mostly boils down to like / don't like, which of course is right & proper & how it should be.

I think Skitz is completely crucial to the UK thing, including 'bouncement' and I can't wait to hear what he does next.

btw I agree with you about the purity thing and it's the mash up element, especially wrt reggae influences (something UShip hop has oftne been bad at, honourable exceptions aside) which got me interested in UKHH in the first place. The rhetoric may be of purity but the practice doesn't sound that way to me.

agreed on skitz! (altho the newer stuff really isn't as thrilling as when fingerprints of the gods + where my mind is at first dropped.. and twilight of the gods EW EW!!) i'll also concede on most of my wild generalisations, i mean yeah the def tex is an abberation but i just thought they had a little something extra, esp production-wise. but yeah not really special at all, true say. endless taskforce, i dunno it feels like there's always some new dribble out by them and it all sounds the same to me mostly so i guess it could be an endless sound too!

the us-style thing is more a beats thing, at least from an ambition point of view, y'know, sample chop chop zzz. braintax and aspects sound totally british to me too but it's the kind of british that i wanna drown in its own pea soup.

i might add that in the eyes of "the youth" it's all garage and US hiphop and uk hiphop as it is (esp concerning taskforce) is like def jux

I loved that reggae 7" Skitz put out under an assumed name a few months ago, and I think the stuff on Titan has been really solid (agreed "TOTG" left a good deal to be deisred. I'm not an expert on Def Jux and that lot but what I've heard of their stuff just doesn't get me. Seems to be a lot about technique, which has never been my thing (I'm probably being unfair).

I've always liked some records which sound cheap, btw (I've always liked some which sound expensive too, but 'cheap' isn't necessarily an insult for me).

I've a feeling the next Taskforce EP on Lowlife is going to be fantastic.

Haha and as for 'the youth', what have they ever known about popular music?

Sheesh, guys. Who gives a fuck what it's called - Extra Yard is fuckin' incredible!

i picked out def jux as a kind of slavish underground devotion/idolisation thing

haha i'm leaving the youth issue right there. softly ticking

I think that beats-wise UK hip hop is firing, but we have to put up with MCs like Braintax (complaints equal intelligence?), Blade (good when we needed a Brit-PE but now?) and Aspects.

It's unbelievably frustrating to have beats as mutant and unstoppable as Part 2's on that New Flesh elpee to be dribbled over by his mates.

'Course there's still nuff MCs doing it, Lewis Parker, Supa T, Rodney P, Jhest (the man).

Ain't heard that Big Dada comp, but the Fallacy & Fusion sound is definitely a good thing, it just seems the ultimate UK urban sound (until the next one comes along). Was it the garridge thread that said the next step in UK dance will stem from garridge, well if you allow hiphop into the test tube you get this.

Does anyone think this could be the start of something new or just the next hip-house?

"Battling me, that'd be an embarrassing mistake
Like promoters who don't get the H in the right place"

oops - sorry Jesht

I don't know what the fuck bouncement is, I just want to hear that Majesticons release. Anyone know who's involved in that besides Mike Ladd?

big dada is just the best label ever

(well hmm, moving shadow too)

nebbesh man, you just said wot i did a million posts ago! as for Part 2's mates: you got a point there but at the risk of looking very silly perhaps bouncement callls more for embellishing the beat a la dancehall than for lyrical depth hmm?

oh fuck it jess was right. *sob*

Big Dada has not one great MC, pretty indicting for a hip hop label.

and sorry, but the great days of Moving Shadow have been over for so long, and their desperate re-releasing of their back catalogue even denies us our (deserved) misty-eyed nostalgia. when did MS last release a good record?

I suppose you mean it in the same way you would Motown, yeah?

„Extra yard’ then – at first I like the record a lot but now, after 2 weeks I get bored. For the whole weekend i was listening to ‘Girls Dem Sugar’ again and again (now, my life needs colours more than ever) and in comparison "extra yard’ sounds so bleak. It is still not a bad collection, but it would be much easier to take the whole ‘bouncement movement” seriously if there was one track at least half as good as Beenie Man’s or „Boo’ or „Neighbourhood”.
Surely, Part 2 is talented producer and the only one trying to break this, just created (?),codes, but the whole formula is too narrow for me - little variety, no clear signals for the future evolutio- as for the "new hype" thing "extra yard" sounds monotonous and tired. And the production is so lo-fi - few tricks: short accords, nervous breaks, bass jumping nervously between two tones – even Darquan sounds more fluid. Epileptic breaks, no pop tunes, stop and go patterns are ok when the tracks are faster but here...
whith rhythmicall patterns are reduced, when eth gets slower (too slow), when kbds sounds similar in most of the tracks ( I dream of the Neptunes’s kbds here – that’s why ‘Hot In Herrre’ is so sticky... not only that but...) you can demand surprises from the MCs at least but the best here is ...Wildflower. Manuva also ok. – i don’t like his flow, but his voice at least sound charismatic, and he's got enough ideas to take you somewhere. The rest don’t even try to play wih the track – just looking for some space to fit in, but after 20 seconds you know how it is gonna sound like for the next 4 minutes: no suspence, no building up, no performance, no drama, no fun – the track can go on and the you don’t even realize when it’s over.. And i hate this sing-along „hip hop Hooray” chants.
Just realised I exaggarate a bit - there are some nice concepts here
(in Manuva’s tracks - strings in „Born Again’, some electro – basses – in ‘Witness’, carnival horns in „Bashment Boogie”, also some micro-breaks in part 2’s ‘Life Without You’ – proably the best track here or, pulsating ‘wah wah rythm’ in Ty’s ‘Shake it up’ – sygnifically repeated in „Lie Low’ and Niceness's track, ) but I still suspect the whole „movement’ rhetoric may be like striking own goal - good marketing for sure, but empty gesture in fact. There's no genre defining qualities here. UK hip hop should mutate slowly - no need to be rushed that way.
so far:
the best Big Dada LP; TTC "Ceci N'est Pas Un Disque"
The best UK „proper’ hip hop album (stiil not sure if should count Tricky and The Streets, as discussed on different thread) – Brotherhood’s ‘Elementalz’

At any rate the influence of 2-step on this stuff is tremendously overrated in the service of cross-appeal and appealling to people (like me) who are interested in hybrids - there's nothing on here which is remotely advanced from the stuff on the most recent Roots Manuva and New Flesh albums, though that doesn't stop it from yielding an enjoyable first listen. It's all very well for Big Dada to talk about Fallacy & Fusion, but if they're not even going to include anything of theirs or something similar then their breathless hype is a bit disingenuous.