Not sure about Dizzee Rascal ...

Buzz = People (critics, internet posters, folks in the street) who are very excited about it and feel the need to tell you about it, no?

Also,

splices the best of Timbaland, Missy, Eminem and Tricky, with a slight hint of the Streets in its cheapness

sounds like a damn fine endorsement if ever I heard one...

Who are other auteurs of this sound I am ignorant of because all I know is this and The Streets (sorry)?

re: Chris O'Connor's comments - did you read what you typed? You make Dizzee sound pretty great (which he is) he may not be the most vital artist ever, but I never heard anyone claim that anyways.

wrong, wrong, correct!

go and look at that grime in 2004 thread.

here's some other people i that scene

wiley
jammer
lewi white
terrah danja
davinche
danny weed
target
rapid
slicks
wizzbit
geeneus
biggaman
skepta
knightzoftheroundtable
NASTY crew
NAA
double o squad
ruff squad
total package
roll deep
mucky wolfpack
meridian crew
south's most wanted
specail delivery
east connection
riko dan
gods gift
d.e.e.
tu tuff crew
more fire crew
boundary crew
slaughter kids
social circles
essentials
esko/slew dem thugs
diamond clik
duurty doogz and crazy titch
strider

Although Gail did tell me that when she went to do the session with the Heartless Crew they were "lovely, well-behaved young lads - they couldn't believe that I'd been playing trombone for longer than they'd been alive!"

i have read enough to deem this kind of argument absolutely null and void and work out that i agree with luka almost entirely. he's not saying no one can comment - just that some people know more than others and that involving yourself with a culture mean that you're more likely to be right about the music that comes from it. and yes there are right and wrong ways to examine/criticise music. bottom line, for me: the views expressed above make your critical view of this music worthless.

2/5 in Hip Hop Connection. They also called him something like "Marketing victim of the year".

no, but i'd have a lot more time for their work and a lot more faith in it if they did. it's common sense, really.

x-post: but its a message board dave.

no, but i'd have a lot more time for their work and a lot more faith in it if they did. it's common sense, really.

Whose picking up the bill for these anthropological beanfeasts?

This guy is NOT the great last hope.

and the way that dizzee has been written up in a lot of places as coming out of nowhere, when in fact there is an existing scene (which i guess will be a lot clearer to people in general once the wiley album comes out).

btw - tom's points on time/distance v interesting

also re. "don't try it" - care to explain what you mean by that? Because it sounds like a threat; to which I reply: you will seriously regret it if you "try" anything with me, old chap.

Got it?

Tom OTM, as long as you don't pretend to have more (or less) knowledge of the relevant culture than you do I don't see that it's an issue either way; in-depth knowledge of cultural context can be fascinating but it's hardly a pre-requisite for good writing per se. Probably more important is deciding which type of writing is necessary for the publication it'll go in.

oh now that's a tough one. i guess i do like the idea of a very broad kind of folk music and see grime, dancehall, hip-hop and plenty other stuff sitting in this category comfortably - art documenting people's lives. however, i don' think it's that simple at all. you can have both! that's what crossover hits are all about... folk not the best word to use, thinking of it, particularly when talking about pop music as folk-pop makes me think of stuff like fiddler's dram etc which is not good as i am at a low ebb already!

This has been well refuted already, but I'd like to add that, oddly enough, it seems fans who promote this outlook never complain that those who *agree* with their opinion don't know enough about the subculture to offer an assessment that matters.

We are´'t all music journalists here, posting stuff hee is not 'our work', for some of us its just chatting down the pub as it were, so surely its not right to discuss people's comments as though they were writing for a living? I'm not saying that i or anyone else should be totally absolved of all responsibility for our comments or opinions, just that to take everything that anyone says on an internet message board, as something that should be subject to intense analysis of whether they have done research/interviews/thought long and hard about it to back up something they mention, whether its something offhand or something more thought out. The reason that ILX is good is because it is a mixture of throwaway gags and long crafted arguments, which sort of battle against each other.

Basically, to criticise a post on journalistic terms seems to miss the point a bit. That should be reserved for well, journalism (which may or may not include blogging, depending on your point of view). So if Phoebe Dinsmore gets the 'offending post' published in the paper, or on their website, then fair enough, the lack of knowledge/research/understanding is to some a degree a fault. But for a message on ILM.......

Folk music crit - treats music as authentic expression of a culture, worth taken for granted, less criticism more reportage, where there is criticism it's essentially technical, understanding of culture essential for understanding of music, designed to communicate to audience wishing to learn.

Pop music crit - selfish ears, entirely consumer/listener-centric, criticism based around pleasure/interest/whim/emotional response with authorial intention unneccessary, designed to communicate to audience of assumed equals.

that's right isn't it carlin? let's get it all out in the open.

as far as don't try it goes, you know what i meant, i meant don't try and make me look bad cos that'll never work, you're not good enough, but if you feel you want to fight me i don't really care mate, except i'm 24 and worked for about 5 years as a builders labourer and youre about 50 and work in information technology and have proabbaly never had a scuffle in your life. my address is 66 romford road stratford
my phone number is
07984657390

if you want to be macho,

to which I reply: you will seriously regret it if you "try" anything with me, old chap.

then go on be macho.
otherrwise let's just go back to ignoring/hating each other.

I probably wouldnt talk in faux-mathematical equations though

obviously you weren't including this one!

social context is always parochialism of a sort, i think it really comes down to if you are interested. there is nothing wrong with popping your dizzee cd or lord of the dekcs comp inbetween your bowie and wutang cds or whatever, and leaving it at that. i think it depends how your interest manifests itself.

Recently i've rediscoverd Django Reinhardt, i dug out the couple of best ofs i have of his. And really, i don't need to know any more than that, but now, second time around, i'm finding myself more interested in where he came from, who were his contemporaries, what kind of venues did he play, how was he received by the public? even though it is all incredibly distanced from me. In a more recent vein i was watching a documentary from 94 again with interviews with randall, brockie and paul ibiza etc and the ragga twins cropped up explaining about belgian techno in the london scene circa (i guess) 90/91, and there was a pause after they said about it being played and then they said "it was...good" but he didnt sound effusive, he didnt sound like he meant it, but obviously he had meant it at one point, just not in 94, and it made me think, what were randall and jack frost and kenny ken playing in 1990? how did it feed in from there? how do you get from 1990 to hardcore? the fascination with belgium in 91 seems impossible in 94 (even with occasional mentasms still happening even then)

and its then that parochialism kind of comes in handy

In the UK, yes...

Tom's folk/pop division is my favorite thing in this thread, unsurprisingly. Might it be accurate to say that one starts as a pop criticizer with a new music but becomes a folk criticizer if one investigates further and learns more about the music et al? And if not, then how does one potentially avoid that?

Course, there's a lot to be said about that culture, too -- look at a band like Chevelle. Really interesting stuff.

and its then that parochialism kind of comes in handy

That kind of thing to me is setting the bar pretty low for "social context." That's just basic musical background. For example, every US review of Dizzee Rascal I've read, whether it's in a national newspaper by a critic who's presumably barely heard any grime, or an alt-weekly by someone who's posting in the ILM grime threads all the time, has given that basic level of background in their review. Some have obviously done it better than others, but everybody's done it.

So if that's what proponents of 'social context' want, I don't think there's a problem.

To me, a much better example of really good 'social context' writing is Lester Bangs' Jamaica piece in that recent collection. Part of the reason it's great is because he makes it clear he's an outsider from the beginning, and he makes that an essential part of his insights, which are pretty damn prescient. Plus he gives you some great reportage of moments that achieve larger, metaphorical significance as part of the swirl of ideas in the piece. That to me is a great example of someone doing 'social context' and maintaining critical distance at the same time.

The kind of parochialism I'm talking about is when people start getting territorial about their social context, thinking they own it.

here's brand new day.

perhaps, but, as basic as that might be, i still dont know what randall was playing in 1990, and even if i did, i think i'd need to see the setlists each week, or be told what was blowing up each week, to see the gradual shifts through time

as for dizzee/grime, i think the point isnt how much context a big piece gives dizzee, but where someone can tell me what the last, i dont know, terror danjah single was like. what tunes were played out last week. that kind of thing. things that happen inbetween album releases

i guess im kind of sensitive to this because i think that both hardcore and jungles best releases, that were hugely popular at raves and on radio, never really got covered in the press (even in the dance press!). i think someone on the ground, even if just to say, hey theres a great new 12 on symphony sounds, would have been good, that kind of perspective is always welcome

At the moment, unless you ARE either right inside the scene or hooked up to Soulseek or whatever, which is to say most of grime's potential audience, Dizzee is pretty much a lone voice (dunno if More Fire Crew count). I'd be interested to see what the Wiley and Shistie albums do to contextualise Dizzee as part of a scene in the eyes of the mainstream media. But then again obviously I'm looking at it like Tom from more of a pop perspective than a folk perspective, if we're to use that terminology.

it's "surrounding counties", which kinda fucks that theory...

i think what's really interesting is the (and i'm willing to concede that this is my misconception based on not being able to receive all the pirates in south london) post-dizzee notion that pirates in london play grime 24/7, that they're all hell bent on supporting this sound, when mostly they play old-skool, 4/4, r&b and bashment and only really deja vu and raw mission play substantial amount of grime (and deja itself is mainly about bashment on the rare days east co don't have a set). rinse has slimzee and plasticman and some others which bridge the dubstep/grime divide, and sometimes they have a couple of roll deep, but mostly they're now about dubstep in the evenings and old-skool during the day.

p2p is probably to blame. usually is.

interesting also to think about grime going overground. only dizzee, wiley and doogz are signed, aren't they? and the first mainstream wiley single, the "igloo" vocal, isn't really going to set charts or minds alight in the same way "i luv u" did.

I also can't see how p2p is having an adverse effect on grime, but I haven't read this whole thread yet, so maybe I'll find that magic answer.

Another social context question - do you really need to know that much about the music or the scene itself in order to relate to it? Surely everyone who's spent any amount of time in inner London can recognise where the music's coming from (assuming they aren't permanently walking round with their head in the sand)? I mean, I did most of my growing up in Catford, Peckham and New Cross and I know exactly where the few MCs I've heard are coming from despite it nevertheless being a completely different world to my middle-class self.

x-post: yeah, theoretically doogz or d double shouldn't be "speaking" to me anymore than ying yang or jay-z. it's still a wholly different world than where i live every day.

(x-post)I even notice the ex-@d@ml stomping ground of Watford come up during a couple of live sessions!

completely OTM

eskimo dance happened quite a few times at area, on the high street. maybe it started there. It is well weird though. I cant imagine many people in watford streaming to eskidance. The only record shop ive found there, d'vinyl/freedom (mmmmm good name) just seems to have some old copies of ´ho' lying aound when i go there. that hasnt been for a while.

i think they had it thee because it was far enough out of town for thee to be less trouble, or maybe the owners of aea didnt know anything about it o something. it is well stupid that i never wen though, as i could have driven thee in 15 minutes. it was always on a tuesday, which is a lame night to have it on.

the best thing on this thead was old fart calling it 'grim'. thats a wicked name!

I still love it that Watford has grime cred.

But then isn't Sidewinder in Milton Keynes?

It's basically the new 70s Belgian pop.

theres some pirates in luton, these kids i worked with from luton told me about the scene there. it is pretty nascent though. like i said, theres some pirate activity in herts, vybe fm 99.5, that you can get in watford (it peters out just before you get to my town tho). i think thats about it for beds bucks n herts. bedford it is.