Cream cheese bagel and a sausage roll

Last night was pretty good. It really is great being in London when no one is around. The streets were empty all night. Catch has the shittiest soundsystem in the world and none of their equipment works but it was fun. I DJed there till 2 AM and then went to the Russian bar on Kingsland Road for some after hours boozing. I saw there was no one on the decks so I asked the owner if I could play. He agreed on the condition that I didn't play any garage, hip-hop, dancehall or funky house. I played "Mr Bean", "Tell Me", some tracks off that JTJ Productions EP and a new El-B song before I got bored and headed to the bagel shop on Brick Lane (the yellow one, not the other one that everyone seems to go to). I was just leaving when a car pulled up on the pavement outside and out jumped Jammer looking more drunk than I was. Watch the video. The bit in the middle where the camera goes crazy is when he fell flat on his back mid apple turnover munch.

Benylin

The great thing about the period just after Christmas is all your Northeners and Midlanders and what have you are all still back home in the hills so you kind of get London to yourself. It's just like being Will Smith in I Am Legend, but totally and completely different.

Annoyingly a lot of people will be back for NYE. This event is somewhere in Hackney. Apparently you need to sign up to a list to get in. Do that here: http://www.troubled-minds.com

"I ain't gonna lie, some have got better / Dizzee got worse but he still got cheddar"

Photo by Alex Sturrock

Top 18 things that I heard in 2007 in no particular order (with selected commentary):

1. Trim - Soulfood Vol. 1
2. Apple - Mr Bean
3. DJ NG - Tell Me
Coming out again on Atlantic Records next year
4. Estelle - American Boy (TS7 Remix)
5. Trim - Soulfood Vol. 2
I think I'm the only person who thought this was better than Vol. 1
6. JTJ Productions - It's You
7. Wiley - Apocalypto
Have you heard Wiley's funky house remix of "Night"?
8. El-B - Shorty (Steppa Mix)
9. Mavado - Gangsta For Life
10. Cheeksta - Baby (TS7 Remix)
11. Martyn - Twenty Four
Who would have thought that in 2007 dubstep could still be subtle? Not a cod-Jamaican vocal in sight, too.
12. Burial - Unite
I don't actually dislike Burial
13. Durrty Goodz - Switching Songs Part 2
14. Dizzee Rascal - Dean
This was a B-side on the "Sirens" CD single. Strangely, it's better than pretty much every other track on the album. It's like one of those dreamy, introspective tracks from Boy in Da Corner. I guess it didn't really fit in with the whole "British hip-hop" theme he was going for with this LP. Shame, really.
15. Wookie - Gallium
16. Joker - Gully Brook Lane
Is this ever actually going to come out on vinyl?
17. Wiley - 16 Bar Rally
18. T2 - Why (Mr Virgo Remix)

Top 2 1Xtra DJs who say "The" before every artist name:

1. The DJ Cameo
2. The DJ Footloose

Top 5 people / things / animals Skepta has been photographed with this year:

1. Some Hasidic Jews


2. A camel


3. Trigga


4. Ian from Black Lips


5. The Israeli flag


Top 2 songs of 2007 about penises:

1. Ce'Cile - Prancehall Dub
2. Riskay - Smell Yo Dick

Top 3 screwfaces of 2007:

1. Jammer


2. Jammer


3. Fuda Guy


Top 3 most overrated grime albums of 2007 (in order of overratedness):

1. Skepta - Greatest Hits
2. Dizzee Rascal - Maths & English
3. Wiley - Playtime Is Over

Top 4 slogan T-shirts of 2007:

1. DJ Scholar - I Got It 4 Cheap!


2. Afrikan Boy - I'm Focused, Don't U Get It?


3. Lee Brasco - You Make Me Sick


4. Jammer - Are You Dumb?

"Receipt in the bag, sir?"

It wouldn't be a Prancehall Christmas without a message from Jammer. Last Xmas eve Jammer was showing off his presents and doing karaoke with his dad. This year my friend Jack was round at Jam's getting a 16 for a Black Lips re-work he's making for his forthcoming mixtape. He managed to get this video before Jammer had to rush off.


Ears in some nylon Adidas dungarees. Photo by James Pearson-Howes

My friend James Pearson-Howes AKA Queenie has just put some old school Jammer / Jahmek Da World pics on his blog. Says Queenie: "Dude, I found some great old pictures of Jammer and his crew back in the day - proper '04 business. Jammer still owes me 200 Ps for that shoot."

14 reasons why the new Burial album isn't as good as everyone says it is

1. I was in a shop on Carnaby Street today and I heard a girl telling her friend that for Christmas she had bought her little brother "a box set of Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps and a copy of the Burial album."

2. Every song sounds the same

3. Keeping your identity secret is gay unless you are me

4. It sounds like Enya doing dubstep

5. The first album was better

6. The best song he's made this year ("Unite") wasn't even on the album

7. The picture on the cover looks like something an autistic 12 year-old UK hip-hop fan from Luton would draw at an after school art class and then plan to print on a T-shirt (but never actually get round to doing it)

8. The drums are too awkward

9. People get really precious when I slag it off

10. No one sent me a free copy

11. One of the tracks is called "In McDonalds", which is actually a good name but considering he calls most songs things like "Archangel" and "Ghost Hardware" makes it look totally out of place and achingly forced: "I make music that reflects true British urban culture".

12. He has repeatedly told people he has no idea how to produce

13. In 20 years, when people look back at dubstep this will be the album that people most remember and will probably be cited as "dubstep's Timeless" or something.

14. Because I fucking said so, OK?

Back to 2000

I was listening to some random pirate station last night and the guy played Wookie's "Gallium" followed by Coki & Benga's "Night" really pitched down and then Apple's "Mr Bean". Pretty great 10 minutes of radio right there. The DJ then ruined it by playing loads of boring male vocal funky house layered with really bad drops and sound effects. I then switched across to Rinse FM and Hatcha was playing "Night" and about 10 minutes later it was on Mary Anne Hobbs's show in a Skream set she was repeating. I've heard that it has been signed to a major and they are getting a vocal - probably by Baby Katie, the girl on NG's "Tell Me". I wonder how the dubstep fans will react to that? Apparently "Gallium" might be coming out on a major too, with a female vocal on top. There's a pretty amazing Badness vocal that I heard today but Scratcha is the only person who has it.

I also heard this great new dancehall rhythm last night. "Planet Rock"-style electro beat with an auto tuned Vybz Kartel vocal. Anyone know the name? I know everyone hates those faster dancehall rhythms like Shooter but I can't get enough of them.



What happened to ghostriding the whip? I guess people's cars all got away on them.

This >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> The new Burial album

"You know you're my lady (lady) / You drive me crazy (crazy)"

Above is a live PA of DJ NG's "Tell Me". Look at all the girls in the video down the front dancing and giving gunfingers while their boyfriends are (presumably) at home desperately searching the internet to find where they can download The Movement's new mixtape for free and threatening to violently assault people on the RWD forum. When grime nights were effectively banned in London, a lot of people turned to funky house clubs to go to and now you've got producers like NG making this pretty dark funky house stuff because of that. I've been pretty addicted to this song for the last month. I didn't really get it at first but then someone randomly played it at the last Dirty Canvas and I couldn't get it out of my head.

I heard that Mighty Crown requested a dub of this for when they played in London earlier this month. I also heard Logan goes driving round Essex listening to this every day (but don't quote me on that).
444553540000"



'Cos I'm pretty generous I'm giving away a very special gift - a black and white print of Kano (previewed above) courtesy of Ben Rayner that you can frame and hang above your bed. It's about 14 inches wide, FYI. To win just email me the name of the guy who produced "Buss It Up". Be quick. I'm sending it out tomorrow evening so you get it before Christmas.

Grime's not dead, it's just resting its eyes

This video falls somewhere between this and this with some definite echoes of this.



This was done at the room right at the top of the Stratford Rex a few weeks back. If you pause it in the right place you might be able to catch the shadow of the end of one of my fingers on the wall to the right of the screen. You might also have seen the side of my head for 1/10th of a second on Channel 4 on Friday night on the Nike Supersonic programme. So famous right now.


Here is my new regular feature where I list events that grime MCs have been booked to play but were too busy to show up.

Last week the MCs who were otherwise engaged when they were supposed to be performing were:

*Trim in Brighton
*Boy Better Know in Bristol

Have you booked a grime MC who hasn't bothered to show up? Let me know below in the comments or email me. The best story wins a plastic clothes hanger with the words: "Grime's not dead, it's just resting its eyes" scrawled across it in Tippex.

Pull my finger

Vice posted an interview with girl rapper Riskay on their blog yesterday. I came across her "Smell Yo Dick" track randomly before I went to NY but forgot to post it up. Possibly the most ridiculous song of the year. Riskay's not actually that bad. She had a good song called "Brand New Money" with DG Yola on the Fear Factor Florida mixtape from earlier this year. Anyway, here is the full interview:

Vice: Why do you think "Smell Yo Dick" has taken off?
Riskay: I think it's because a lot of women have thought about it but they never had the nerve to do it, and now they don't have to be ashamed to try it. A lot of men cheat because they can get away with it, but I feel like if a man knows a woman will go to that extent [dick-smelling], they probably won't cheat. Men have degraded women and acted like we're stupid for so many years, and they come up with songs about cheating, so why can't I just represent women? This is how I feel, this is what I've been through.

How many times have you smelled a dick?
Once, when I was younger. I had a guy that was cheating on me. You know, always coming home about five o'clock in the morning, always trying to make up excuses. He's out with his boys. I'm like, "Hey if you're not cheating, let me smell it."

And he let you?
Yeah. He was confident in himself, as if I'm stupid and I don't know what latex smells like. It smelled like... it had condom smell.

Couldn't you just smell his hands, or his face?
Yeah, you could smell his hands or his face-if you wanna be disgusting. I would prefer to smell his dick than taste some other chick in his mouth.

I think a lot of women would be afraid to just ask outright. Any tips on how to get him to offer up the goods?
If you feel like your man might cuss you out and try to get violent with you if you ask, then act like you're gonna give him some head and just smell it.

What if you smelled a guy's dick and it smelled like saliva? Would that be as bad?
You know, if it smells like stank breath, that's wrong too. A lot of men are like "Oh, she just gave me head," and I'm like "OK, that's cheatin."

What if he thought ahead and took a shower before coming home? You could be fooled.
If he's been out all day, he shouldn't smell like soap. I was talking with a male rapper friend, and he said "What I do is take baby wipes and clean myself before I get home," and then another guy told me he just let his thing out and rolled the windows down in the car so his dick could air out.

I love picturing that. Do you worry that with your song being heard so much, maybe men will wise up and everyone will carry baby wipes or let their dick air out in the car, and then smelling it will be ruined for women everywhere?
When I first did the song, a lot of my man friends were like "You're giving females too much information! You're giving them bad, bad ideas. This is wrong." A lot of men don't like it, probably because they're cheating. They think "Oh my God, this is for real. She done put females up on somethin' and we in trouble now."

---

Download: DVA feat. Badness - Prancehall Dub



Here is the Badness track from my mixtape. I need to get some new beats off DVA like this one I think.

"Who say Dominic, who say Dominic favour Boy George"

My friend Richard showed me this video a few months ago and then I forgot about it until Fader randomly posted it on their blog last week.

The soundsystem is the legendary Kilimanjaro - they had all the big deejays like Ninjaman, Lecturer, Nitty Gritty etc. The white guy is called Dominic. He is some random guy from London who had a huge street track called "Boy George". What's funny is that it's just some dude from Shepherds Bush on stage looking totally lost and out of place with Ninjaman and Lecturer.



I'm DJing in Bristol next Friday. I played there last Saturday too at a night with Quiet Storm. I never knew he was Caspa. Is that widely known? I guess it kind of all makes sense now. I also DJed on Friday at 333 with a guy from Lucky Number records who told me that Skream engineered that Bi-Polar Men remix of Seventeen Evergreen.

---

Download: Statik feat. Slew Dem - Bad Guys



This is Slew Dem's vocal of Statik's reworking of a song from the Bugsy Malone soundtrack.