Does anyone find it veeeeery odd it's taken the english so long to catch on to hiphop?

does not compute. whats the bit about racial integration got to do with anything?
also uk hiphop was certainly continuing when trip hop was about.

What club do you mean?

this thread is delusional, England picked up on Public Enemy waaaay before the U.S. did

No. Their first 12-inch, with "Timebomb" on the B-side, was huge on NY radio shows like Mr. Magic and Red Alert. The UK certainly kept the faith after the US bailed, but NY loved them instantly and intensely.

Coldcut are the English Double Dee and Steinski.

Mantronik was born in Jamaica, raised in Canada and US.

Now if you'll excuse me:

There have been mixes and dance tracks
Put together in the past
But none can outrun or equal
The power of MEGABLAST

DYNOMIIIITE

(Also yay for Meat Beat Manifesto's "Cutman".)

Thanks for the correction. Where the hell did get the idea he was English? (URB?)(all the British voices on his album?)

Good to see you're still here, David. From which era does that record come?

I understand that it's pretty much impossible to hear anything like this in the US, your whole culture smacks of your country's isolationism, but the way you all seem to assume that we've only just got our heads round a chap having a good old chinwag on a microphone astounds me, the UK ain't one big rural ghetto y'know.

We busted out to LL and Run DMC at yoof clubs too. We also sometimes step out of our britches and brogues into something more comfortable.

1983

Not from '83 but I think by '85-86 there must have been quite a lot of it. This page is quite interesting.

uk hip hop as of now
fallacy (blackmarket boy)
lewis parker
rodney p (london posse)
low life records
phi life cypher
black twang
aspects

the uk urban scene is more a mix of hip hop, rnb, dub, ragga, jungle and uk garage. a lot of the music tends to mix these elements, although the artist associated with the tage uk-hiphop tend to stick to hip hop's roots but recently there have been moves to take things forward, hopefully ukhh will start to have more tunes before it can go beyond the small scene that its had since the early 90's.

bobo, d'you know the boys at ukhh.com?

does anyone find it veeeeery odd it's taken the english so long to catch on to hiphop? (giving betty boo no credit, mike skinner some credit, dizzee rascal alot of credit)

-- James Blount (littlejohnnyjewe...), April 24th, 2003 7:51 PM. (later)
oh, and forgetting triphop somehow

-- James Blount (littlejohnnyjewe...), April 24th, 2003 7:52 PM. (later)

not really, they're english

-- jess (dubplatestyl...), April 24th, 2003 7:53 PM. (later)

Among their countless numbers:

Slick Rick
Roots Manuva
U-God
Big Daddy Kane
Taleb Kwali
Blackitude
Black Grape
Will Smith
Young MC
Kid (but not Play)
Sean "Puffy" Combs
Panjabi MC
Paul McCartney
Serge Gainsbourg

Plus, what would make UK hip hop great, historic, pivotal? What do you want it to speak about?

Zing!

Until the last 3 or 4 years, most UK hip-hop seemed like lame imitations of American hip-hop, the exception being the dancehall-inflected stuff like Asher D & Daddy Freddy, some of the Cookie Crew stuff, etc, some of which was killing. (This applies to hip-hop around the world, not just UK.) When the UK started forgetting the US and foregrounding local flavor, the music improved immesaurably: Roots, Skinner, gutter garage folks, much of the Big Dada roster, etc. (And there's the parallel development of 2-step, which counts and doesn't, depending on where we put the goalposts.) Right now? The UK hip-hop scene, w or w/o garage, is generally more fun and exciting than the US granola & Primo-rips or wildstyle-hyper-complex-scribble-scrabble indie hop.

And I think Derek B was just bad luck--there was probably a killing British MC who just didn't get signed and gave up.

Must return to lame cricket reverie, to be followed by incredibly weak tube ode.

From your comments, I guess the American means of information about British Steelo has upped in the last 3 or 4 years, prob'ly due to the interweb craze, but also due to the fact that the British press has only picked up on it in that same time (I imagine this then filters across the Atlantic).

The Roots Manuva/Bashment/Gutter thing is just the latest in a London yardcore continuum that's been runnin' since '91. Anyone remember 'Glimmety Glammety'? Dances used to brock out when that tune came on, and still do.

You're probably OTM about dissemination. Simon (Reynolds) has helped me with tips since 1995/6, and I was pretty in touch when I was travelling more to the UK between 86 and 91, but there is a big gap in knowledge there that could easily be distribution's fault. US dance shops emphasized acid jazz, and then electronica, starting in early 90s. And there was certainly very little radio to expose UK stuff. Time for a well-curated comp. I certainly found out a shitload form the Honest Jon's dancehall comp, which is so good.

This is totally wrong uk garage is part of hip hip, not exclusive from it... the hardcore/jungle/garage line is all part of the hip hop family tree and there is/was a huge amount of crossover/crossfertilisation going on. i know some folks believe that todd edwards is the most important inspiration for ukg and he is massively influential, let me take nothing away from the fella, but timbaland/jerkins/briggs are equally important...

Shut Up & Dance (who hooked up with Peter Bouncer) has the sonix but the rhymin' is tuba odes ad infinitum (altho' that doesn't stop the Sugarhill raving i s'pose).

How many rap/hip-hop albums have hit number one on the UK charts? Two???

actually, someone who's posted on this board a few times in the past advised me once that john lennon invented hip hop.

don't ask me for proof/examples though, i'm not familiar with his solo work.

so basically, while brits (more often black britons) have actually been imitating hip-hop for probably 20 years (there have even been NoI-type Brit rappers, remember Black Radical Mk II?), they haven't gotten a lot of respect for it, partly because the imitations haven't been so great, partly because America isn't particularly interested in hearing an imitation, partly because black Britain just doesn't have the same kind of cohesion/history/profile that black America does...

and instead most of the interesting things that Britain has done with hip-hop have involved coming at it from a sideways angle, taking its premisses and transforming them in some way, or fusing them with other musics (house x hip-hop=jungle), or just calling it something else (trip-hop)...

Is it any fuckin wonder it didn't catch on? Those records that were massive crossover smashes in the US were massive here too, but it was the rich context that we missed out on.

Even by '95 you had to go to specialist stores to buy Nas albums ferchrissakes...

I think it took the Wu and Busta Rhymes to break the UK market - one for the serious critical props and the other for a modern reinterpretation for the dancefloor.

In order for it to happen, I think British hip-hop needs to get commercially big *in Britain* before any of the record companies would dare give it the marketing push it would need in the US.

If that did happen I think now's a good time - there aren't any big British acts in the US to kill the novelty factor, plus mainstream hip-hop feels a bit less territorial than it used to.

Also are you concentrating too much on looking for a British MC to make the impact, rather than the influence of Brits on the music?

If you want to move the goalposts again James, I'd say the answer is the UK will never produce an MC who will "present a challenge" to US rap. This doesn't bear much relevance to the question of whether there are any worthwhile UK MCs tho.

" We're not going to be all mothafucka this and mothafucka that, we're not american, we'd probably just call someone a cunt"

Johnny Atcha Hoodz underground

See James, on the one hand you're asking for a Brit-hopper to come along and do for hip-hop what the Beatles did for rock, i.e. change the paradigm, on the other hand you're laying down these immutable laws about what hip-hop is, i.e. blocking paradigm change. You can't have it both ways.

(It seems to me hip-hop is less all-about-the-MC now than at any time *since* '84, i.e. if a Brit is going to come along and shake things up it'd be by being the new Pharrell, not the new Jay-Z)

UK hip hop's strength over the past few years is precisely that it has stopped seeing its own success or failure only on US terms. The Lost Souls (say) are completely irrelevant to the US (they go on about fat blokes in the pub and being addicted to Stella, and their flow is all about the nuances of the English accent) and to judge them as a success or failure according to whether US audiences take to them would be mental. The existence of Pitman is proof of UKHH's increasing self-reliance.

(BTW I have a record from about 1981 by Barnsley Bill (I think it was connected to the Specials in some way...? It's on Mother In Law records) which involves the titular Bill rapping in a broad South Yorkshire accent, which Pitman always reminded me of. Certainly it's a novelty record - so are Pitman's singles - and it doesn't address itself to the UK hip hop scene but that would have been asking a bit much in 1981. Pitman's better.)

Up-to-the minute, record-orientated UKHH news, gossip, advice and mail order from http://www.suspect-packages.com by the way.

the other guy in LP - bionic was on tricky's album with muggs and grease. he was brilliant actually.

streetsounds package tour packing out wembley arena

even the bloody nme named Yo! Bum Rush album of the year in 87

n Im not even from there