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).

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