Dan Hancox had an interview with Burial in the Guardian on Friday. Here is an interesting quote:
"What I want is that feeling when you're in the rain, or a storm. It's a shiver at the edge of your mind, an atmosphere of hearing a sad, distant sound, but it seems closer - like it's just for you. Like hearing rain or a whale-song, a cry in the dark, the far cry."
That last sentence reminds me of my review of his last album in Vice:
"Can everyone stop saying that this is "a grower"!? This is the most uneventful, over-hyped piece of shit we've heard all year. If you're after an album that sounds like the mating calls between a group of libido-less whales, then run and smash open your little sister's piggy bank. It's boring, gawky 2-step with some token reggae samples and some crackles."
I don't know why I gave it such a harsh review. I guess I hate hype. It wasn't that bad, but definitely not as good as everyone was saying. Anyway, can you see how I made the whale connection? It's like man can see into da future, ya get me? Man's brain is just different like dat. Only (slightly) joking. Anyway, I don't see why I needed to point that out. I am quite looking forward to hearing the new album I think. Here is a recent song from Burial that I've been liking for the last few months:
Burial - Unite
If most of his new album sounds like this it should be pretty increible. It reminds me of Groove Chronicles.
Matt Mason's book, The Pirate's Dilemma, arrived in the post today. I haven't started reading it yet. Maybe tomorrow on the way to work. It says I'm not allowed to quote anything yet because it's not the approved version but I don't think anyone will mind me mentioning the quote he uses on the blank page before the contents page that people often write something on:
You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge. -DR DRE, 1988
That has to be the best quote used on the blank page before the contents page that people often write on, ever.
Don't Panic has put up an article where one of their journalists took Skepta on a date to the ballet. The best part for me is this:
“Where is your carnation?” I challenge.
“Oh shit yeah, I was told to bring one of those but I wasn’t sure what they were."
It's worth a read but it certainly pales in comparison and significance to my dates with Shystie (at The Natural History Museum), Mizz Beats (at The Ritz) and Judy from "Pow" (at London Zoo).
I can't find a picture to go with the text, so here is a random video. The stuff below is ex-RWD editor Matt Mason's liner notes he wrote for my mixtape about a year and a half ago when grime wasn't really going anywhere fast. I don't know why it's taken so long for me to put it up. I'm not even sure how it relates to my mixtape. But here it is:
Hey, Grime, can I see you in my office for a minute?
Thanks. Close the door, have a seat.
Want a coffee?
Sure?
Ok, well, I'll get right to the point. Um... we've been getting a lot of complaints recently about you, and... there is no nice way to ask you this.
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?
I've just been told some fucking blogger named Prancehall is making a grime mixtape with VICE magazine. Bloggers? We did not hire you to hang out with bloggers. That's dubstep's job. When I left London you were right on track to become the greatest scene of all time in the making - "the bastard sons of Blair's Britian" transmitting your anger live from every council estate rooftop. Fast-forward two years and you're just a bunch of twelve year old pussies screaming about shanking each other and how much money you've got on MySpace? Seriously, where did it all go wrong?
I guess I should have known you couldn't handle the pressure. The same thing happened to the last guy I hired - UK Garage. He was great to begin with, always smartly dressed in that Moschino suit he wore with lips and peace signs all over it, all the girls in the office liked him, but then the job got to him. I gave him too much money, which of course led to him doing way too much coke and he started bringing me shit like Shanks & Bigfoot, so I had to fire him. Same thing with the guy before - Jungle. He lost his focus and disappeared up his own ass. Then there was that Hardcore dude in the white gloves, he was a weird little guy, but you? I thought you were different? Now I gotta fire you too?
Hey, stop crying. Listen, in the beginning you brought in some good guys. Boy In Da Corner is a classic. You know I love that Jammer guy, Wiley is great too and we can't forget about Lethal B and D-Double - he was different, but what's with all this other half-assed shit? Maybe you were doomed the moment the broadsheets started masturbating over Dizzee or when major labels started signing people like Plan B. I didn't say anything at the time, I should have, but I thought you had the situation under control. I'm sorry.
Listen Grime, what I'm trying to say is it seems to me that you've reached a fork in the road. All this "I've got bare cash and gash" shit isn't fooling anyone. We don't need lessons about how to make money from a spotty cunt on Channel U in a Nike tracksuit with Ribena stains down the front. If any of you actually give a shit about making some dough, forget it, just go home. The top boys in grime don't even make 20k a year - and if they did they'd have bought a blazer and fucked off to the funky house scene ages ago. It's just not going to happen. Everyone in England is bored shitless of you. In the US you'll never even be as big as Lady Sov's chest. Put the mic down, draw for the plunger and become a plumber. Fuck it, plumbers make good money. Pretty soon you'll be living in Essex driving a turquoise Z4 you bought on credit, and trust me you'll be a lot happier.
But if there is a slim chance you are not the waste-man I think you are, and I only say this because there are still grime artists out there I'm excited about, (young MCs like Scorcher, Ears and Faction G, classic producers like Statik and Jammer), if you do actually want to be heard, start by being honest with yourself and speaking to people in this country about something real. Stop pissing about with guns and knives and make some decent music. I'm not going to have you up in this office again. Anger is a gift my little friend, but it's also a curse. If you don't start using it wisely, you're done.
This is your final warning Grime. So, fix up, look sharp and try reading a fucking book. Now get out of my sight.
MATT MASON
CEO of UK URBAN MUSIC LTD (currently in liquidation)
I don't know if I mentioned, but there were quite a few tracks that didn't make it on to the mixtape. I got a US girl rapper called Nina B to do me a freestyle over "Gangsters". It was good but the vocals on the intro were way too low and it pissed me off. Bruza did me a freestyle about football but that was terrible. Here are the two best outtakes.
Trim - Vice Freestyle
When my friend Jamie was out in Sudan he got a lot of good local music and there was this one amazing song that we got my friend Brains to sample and make into a track for my mixtape. I then got Trim to vocal it but he liked it so much he wanted it for his mixtape so it went on Soulfood Vol. 2. I remember when I first got this, I must've listened to it a hundred times in two days. So many classic lines.
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Cassie - Me & U (Brains remix feat. Scorcher)
This Cassie song was too old by the time the mixtape was ready but it's a good one. The audio for the Cassie voicemail bit in the middle comes from a phone interview I did with her.
Bizzle is on the cover of the NME this week / last week / whatever. I'm not saying a thing, but Gabrielle wears an eye patch for a reason, you know. I'm calling it Bizzlegate. It's like Fiascogate but without the Penfold glasses, bed wetting and snorting when laughing. You have to give credit to whoever does Lethal's press, though. They are doing an amazing job.
Dirty Canvas on Friday was pretty amazing. Best night of the year maybe. It was so good I won't mention the fact that I had to DJ for like three hours at the start, then wait around till three in the morning because Coki didn't show for his set only for him to show up 10 mins before the end and get paid before me and more than me (for not even playing). I don't know what time I got home in the end but it was bright outside. Maybe I should start making slowed down clownstep (plus the odd good tune here and there).
Here's the Dizzee and Sugarhill Gang video at last. Notice how he seems in a bit of a daze at the start, probably counting all the money in his head that he's no doubt getting for this show and thinking about how he'll spend it. Then he checks back on himself and realises people are watching so he does a few finger points. Big.
And as a bonus, here's a video of Dizzee at some Nike event pulling up in a Lambo and then sprinting (all the way to the bank, presumably).
Skepta, JME and Frisco were on Westwood's new 1Xtra show on Sunday. This first beat (JME - "Mario Flag") is amazing.
Here's part two.
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Dizzee played at some Sony party last night with The Sugarhill Gang. They performed together I think. I didn't feel like going, but my friend Ben Rayner did and got some footage that I will post tomorrow so no one has to miss out.
I interviewed Durrty Goodz for the new issue of Vice. I almost didn't want it to run. It was such a hassle to get hold of him, he wouldn't answer most of the questions, his manager rang me to say I'd asked the wrong questions, then emailed to ask to see if he could see the interview before it went to print. Then, to top it all off Goodz was too busy to have his picture taken so I had to spend days running round trying to get an unpublished one. Eventually I got the one above, but I had to deal with the photographer calling to ask if he would actually get paid for the picture or if I was just lying. He also called our photo editor to interrogate him because I guess he didn't believe I was telling the truth. Weird. Anyway, here's the unedited interview:
Prancehall: Have you spoken to Titch recently? Durrty Goodz: Yeah, I speak to him all the time. He phones me. He's alright, he's just holding his head down.
Has he made an appeal? I'm not even too sure – I haven't really spoke to him deep like that. When we speak we're just talking normal.
How did you feel when you found out you were a suspect in the case? You know, I can't even remember. All I know is I felt terrible, just like anyone would. It's a bit too much for me to even think back because my head was probably just spinning but my head's straight right now.
What was prison like? Prison is just like prison. I suppose it's the same as anywhere, but I dunno. It's just prison innit, it's just jail innit. You just wanna get out because it's not a place built for human beings. And that's that. Music don't live there, music's out here. Yeah, that's why I'm here. What would you eat for breakfast? You don't get breakfast and those things. They don't do that. You have to survive for yourself, innit. I don't even take food from them. I wouldn't even eat, I'd just eat my own stuff. I'd just do my own thing. I don't think they even give people food. They call it food but I don't think it's food. What did you think about when you were sat in your cell? All sorts of thoughts go through your head because that's the reality of the case, but most of the time I was probably just thinking about my family.
Were you ever scared? It depends because when you know you've done nothing wrong then sometimes you've got nothing to be scared about. At the same time, you know that the system's wonky so you always have like a couple of scary thoughts in the back of your mind.
What was the prison itself like? They're all gritty. All prisons are filthy. Like I said, it's no place for a human being.
Was there one definitive moment that made you think you really didn't want to be there? Yeah, there was loads of stuff but you can just look at a prison screw – just look at his face – and you wouldn't be next to that kind of face. Not when you're known for, like, having pretty ladies and that. I saw so much violence in there that I can't even say right now. I see a lot of stuff, I see a lot of stuff. It will probably be all revealed one day. Panorama will probably go in there and tell you what's happening. I don't think people understand. That place is so deep - you could just see the food and get upset and know that you're not meant to be there. It's not food, it's just garbage. Everything's just garbage. It's not the standard of living of where you come from. You're gonna be upset every second you're there.
What did you do all day? There's nothing to do, just read, innit. Just the same old shit every day. There's nothing to do, ever.
Were there jobs you could do? Probably, but I don't speak to no one so no one's not going to offer me nothing that I don't really need.
How did you feel when the verdict was read out? They just said I could go and I went downstairs. Then, the others had to stay there. They just told me to go so I went.
What was going through your mind? Did you think about Titch? Yeah I saw them when they came back downstairs. I was upset for them.
Did they seem upset? Yeah, anyone would be upset. It's natural feelings.
I've written something on bassline house for the Guardian music blog. Read it here.
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New Vicecolumn is up. Two of the songs we mention in the chart at the end can be listened to below.
Tampa Tony feat. T-Pain - Ride Out
I've been a closet T-Pain fan for a while now but I found out a litte while back that it's okay to like him. He hasn't pissed on any underage girls and he doesn't sing "Konnnnnvict Muuuuuuzik" in every song, so he gets the thumbs up from me. He also ghost writes for most of the rappers worth bothering about from below the Mason-Dixie line: Lil' Boosie, Webbie, Lil Jon, DG Yola, Lil' Wayne, B.O.B, Trick Daddy.
Seventeen Evergreen - Ensoniq (Bi-Polar Men refix)
A music PR girl I know sent this song to me ages ago insisiting I'd like it, but I never bothered to listen. She's really nice, but I had to endure so much tedious chit chat and fake enthusiasm from PRs calling me up every day when I worked full time in an office that I could never bring myself to trust what any of them thought. Then, recently, I heard Skream and Sinden playing this song that I really liked with a name I half recognised and it turned out to be the one my friend had sent me, thus proving music PRs can be worthwhile (if they are your friends and know what kind of music you are into).
Last Friday I DJed at a night at Cargo with Ruff Sqwad. I was going to write some stuff about it but this girl I know called Emma said she would do me a little write-up that I could steal. She seemed pretty into what Ruff Sqwad were wearing so she said she'd talk about that. Emma works for the fashion designer Katherine Hamnett, who is kind of responsible for everyone and their dog now wearing those large block letter slogan tees. Here is what she had to say with a few changes and some notes from me in red:
Rapid is really a Yacht Rock guy and only a few steps away from joining Duran Duran on Simon Le Bon's boat. Slix dresses like he kind of is, but his shoes look like an indie boy (?). Fuda Guy... cap is a little bit 8-Ball Lucky Strike with the embroidered dice, but I guess he is big on the stitches with the hat like that, the embroidered Pink Panther on the knee and the ICE-B embroidery on the pocket.
Fuda Guy in the ICE-B jeans
I'm really not into these jeans and even less into his pants. They look really cheap and nasty and in fact, the entire outfit could have been bought at Camden market. At the next Ruff Sqwad gig I have half a mind to present Fuda Guy with a selection of new undies. I am opposed to so much hanging out, for real. Imagine if he does a sloppy fart or something! Fuda Guy could be painted with the Ginuwine brush, for example. Versace undies would be great. I am thinking that maybe Vilebrequin in the Moorea traditional boxer short cut would be great if Fuda Guy really wanted to go round with his bum out. Vilebrequin also do incredible cotton boxers embroidered with strawberries or bees [if a girlfriend buys you these, she is a keeper.] About 2000 times better than Polo. Finally another option could be from Clone Zone on Old Compton Street. I know it is a gayer shop and the pants are for gays but the brand is called XTG - almost like XTC - YGM??!!
Here is Scholar (I had to cut what she said after this in case someone didn't read the intro and got the wrong idea). He wears the coolest sunglasses and he has a beautiful smile (remember people, this is not written by me). A big smile fixes everything (this is true). But sadly he is wearing one of those rotton T-shirts. I don't think much of all the slogan tees rolling around the East End these days. These ones in particular are pretty painful because I am almost certain that they aren't made from organic cotton. Conventional cotton - like the cotton used in these bulk tees that printers supply you cost them 70p each - represents 10 per cent of world agriculture (I thought agriculture was farms, innit) and uses 25 per cent of the world's pesticides. 20,000 people die every year from accidental pesticide poisoning in conventional cotton agriculture. I can also be pretty sure that the inks on those garments are not water based inks and probably contain PVC. (Prancehall.com does not necessarily support the views raised in this paragraph)
Now Scholar is hiding in shame cause his T-shirt is so wrong and Fuda Guy is suffering from all the chemicals and pesticide residue in his T-shirt (haha).
Here is Slix up close. The Wikipedia Handerchief Guide says that a black bandana means the wearer is into heavy S&M pain and wants to whip others (if worn on left); wants to be whipped (if worn on right). Ah so Slix, what you into?!!
And forget about Claire's Accessories, this is Slix's Accessories.
Rapid really wipes the floor with the rest of Ruff Sqwad in the fashion stakes - smart, clean, sexual. Look at Slix's little fat face here - he looks like one of the Fat Boys! (This view is not supported by Prancehall.com)
YACHT ROCK!! WOO HOO!! (We put those boat shoes in the tidbits section in the new Vice Student Guide - he must have got the idea there, innit). So beautiful. Personally I would get the Sperry Top Sider from Zappos OR the Rockport Bridgesport for guys and Sebago Docksides for women.
What is in the bag though? From the bump in the side it could contain a tampon, lip gloss or a battery. Cardinal (Cardinal = Emma's friend) suggested it looks like a bag for a travel hair dryer. Nicely unwashed denim vibes. Totally Hard Yakka early 90s vibe. Though of course, all that Hard Yakka stuff that came out over here and got worn by Oasis was all fake. Hard Yakka is made for jackroos (iz dat like a kangaroo called Jack?) in the Australian Outback. Where it is fucking hot. A sheepskin (baa) lined denim jacket just did not exist. Until workwear was cool over here and everything got faked up.
My joint Vice music column that I wrote literally two months ago is online now. Read it to find out about stuff that happened literally two months ago. Logan Sama loves it he told me. He fucking loves it. He is in love with it. He wants to marry it and have its babies. Anyway, the new one came out last week and I will upload it when I get to a scanner.
Here is Double S on Westwood last week. I really love this Maniac beat.
Have you seen this? Wow. It just seems so desperate and lazy. They couldn't even be bothered to cut to a helicopter when there's the chopper sound in the middle. I guess they all need some cash. The Rakes' last album basically sold no copies so they've had to resort to this and Bizzle will work with anyone in a pair of skinny jeans. Also, Lethal's got sunglasses on again. I'm telling you, the fucker's gone blind. Send me a recent picture of him without shades and I will send you a Ribena in the post.
Me and Easychord wrote about this song in our column in the new issue of Vice while talking about pills being really popular in a lot of hip-hop coming from below the Mason-Dixie line. It's by KP and it's called "Bean Pop". When this comes on, all the girls in the club to do a little move where they mime throwing a pill in their mouth. Nice.
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OMFG!!! My little 12-year-old next door neighbour is playing "Heartbroken" really, really loudly. Fuck. She blatantly heard me playing that shit and copied me. I swear, if it doesn't go top 10, I'm going to, erm, do nothing but it probably will do well in the charts I think.
My friend James bought me a copy of a new reggae / grime /dubstep magazine called Woofah a few weeks back. I didn't get round to reading it till last night because I had to read the new issue of The Source and the dog ate my homework, etc. It's a good one though. They somehow forgot to ask me to be involved (which is totally fine) but there's a Simon Hampson article in there which can only be a great thing. There's also a pretty interesting grime fiction piece. It just so happens I've started on a dubstep fiction piece. I'm writing it from the perspective of a 40-year-old farmer living in a village in Cornwall. Here is an excerpt:
As I cross a cattle grid into a foot and mouth exclusion zone, Benga's warm bass tones rattle my chest, and I think of Jah. I pass a working sheep dip. A sheep is flung into the bath of raw effluent and chemicals just as the beat drops, and Crazy D whispers "diggy diggy get on down" hoarsely. Like a horse, in fact.
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Jo Whiley played "Heartbroken" by T2 this morning (not that I was listening or anything). It's going top 10 - I can smell it.
There's a review of my mixtape in the new RWD, and no, your eyes aren't deceiving you, they gave my mixtape 3/5. Yep, 3/5. I mean, WTF? I've got Jammer MCing over Britney Spears, Busy Signal and Mavado murdering a Lewi White tune, Slew Dem going over a song from the Bugsy Malone soundtrack and Ce'Cile rapping about my stick, and all they can think to mention is the intro? Also, what do they mean "the odd exclusive"? It's about 80 per cent exclusive, never-to-be-released stuff. I would have been insulted if it was only given 5/5. It's at least a 6 or 7 out of 5. If they want to know how to do reviews, why don't I do a review of the latest issue of their magazine?
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Let's start on the letters page. I don't mean to be harsh, but this is embarrassing. No one bothered to write in this month, so they had to print some uninteresting staff emails and random spam? Imagine how that looks when an advertiser picks up the magazine. You're sending out a message that none of your readers give you any feedback, i.e. no one cares about what you write. A very, very weird thing to do. You could have at least faked some letters to save some face. Oh, and re: the Kano letter above - Kano was supposed to do the Peaches Geldof interview thing, but he wasn't up for it so they got Ghetto instead. It's a bit like when Popworld wanted to interview Kano in a canoe and he said no, which was funny, but I'm not sure the world needed to know about this.
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This is usually one of my favourite pages. Every month DJ Semtex posts some pictures of himself standing in the exact same pose next to famous people, talks about playing at different places around the world, and, without fail, mentions something about DJing for Dizzee Rascal ("we played five songs and the crowd thought that four of them was a lot and for the other one the speaker must have been broken, innit"). With this page, you know what you're getting every month, so it's hard to be moved by it, but one thing in particular really disturbed me. It was this sentence: "I linked with Dave Grohl from Nirvana / Foo Fighters. He is [one] of the hottest drummers in the game." It's not just the obvious fact that Dave Grohl is a fucking maggot sent to earth to be worshipped by the Jo Whileys of this world, it's the ridiculous way Semtex says it. Why is there a need for the hip-hop speak in every sentence? It reads like a parody of what someone thinks a hip-hop DJ would say. Get me? Brapple!
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The single worst thing about this issue was the amount of soft porn that has suddenly appeared. Why do all the female house DJs either have their tits out or are sucking on their finger? Are they trying to corner the lads mag market? If so, they are too late for that - no one buys lads mags anymore. On average, there must be tits on every three or four pages, which makes for pretty uncomfortable reading on a packed tube.
That's all I have time for right now. I won't bother to give a score I don't think. If anyone thinks I'm wrong, post me a comment and tell me why. Maybe it was a bit harsh, but... 3/5? You know... I'm not saying, I'm just saying.
