Jammer on Britishness

I feel this was almost custom made for here.

Jammer meets the singer from Bloc Party

If you can think of a good caption or pun for this picture you win a night out raving to funky house at Purple E3 with Styleslut.

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.

"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."

Dirty Mumdance

Durrty Goodz is playing in Brighton this Friday. I was thinking of going down and spending all night following him around asking him for another rundown about what prison life was like but I'm not so sure he'd be up for it.

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Download: Jammer - Toxic Freestyle



Here's Jammer's "Toxic" freestyle that was on my mixtape. I've been getting a lot of requests to put it up so here it is.

Stratford Rex: The dick inspector

I didn't get any pictures or videos from the Mavado show last night. Pretty annoying. The whole thing was filmed anyway so maybe I'll get the DVD. When I got to The Rex around 10, the police had already shut off two lanes of traffic outside the club and lined up at least eight police cars and vans along the road. They also had police dogs and guys with M16s. Pretty insane for an event where there wasn't a hint of trouble all night. Total over reaction in my opinion. On the way in they were taking no chances: I got the metal detector and full search and then I was ordered to go and see a woman in the corner. I had no idea what was going on so I walked up and stood next her and without saying a word she put her hand between my legs and cupped my piece before nodding to the other bouncers that I was allowed in. I think that was her job all night: dick inspector. She checks to see if you're packing a big enough piece and if not she sends you out to be gunned down by the police. There were no shootings last night, thankfully.

Inside I saw Chipmunk, Badness and Logan Sama in a full suit with a red tie and overcoat. I told him he needed to wear a white suit next time to fit in. He didn't seem so keen. I saw some pretty amazing fashion in there. There was a guy who looked like a fat Benga who had Air Force Ones covered in gold sequins and he was the most under dressed person there. He performed later on but I had no idea who he was. He did some bars over "Baddis Ting" rhythm and got a pretty massive reaction. Mad Cobra didn't show but there were lots of random Channel U types performing a song each for a half an hour segment. There was even one girl with some cheerleader-esque dancers performing with her. She wasn't so good.

I won't bother to say too much about Mavado. Some people who like dancehall genuinely don't seem to like him. For me, his album is the best album of the year in any genre. No question. He performed most of the songs off Gangster For Life with a full band. The crowd knew every word. I wasn't standing in the best spot but I enjoyed it. It was nice to see a crowd of 1,000 people all having fun at a night they've paid 40 quid for. I don't get that all the time at nights I go to where people have paid a fiver.



It seems like I am the last person in the world to know that Jammer has an album deal with Big Dada. Why did no one tell me? I'm upset. It's like people didn't want me to know or something. That's not nice. Anyway, I think he'll do well. Jammer's obviously not the best MC in the world but he can make good songs and he's funny and has a bit of charisma. It was a big fuck up that "Murkle Man" never got a proper release. It had a great video already made and could have been as big as "Pow".

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After A Breath of Fresh Ears and Lend Me Your Ears I've come up with an idea for the name of Ears' next project: Play It By Ears. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. "Play it by Ears." Get it? It's like "Play it by ear", but slightly different. Play It By Ears.

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Saw a rather interesting article in The Voice called, "Is rap turning our girls into ho's?" There are some pretty choice quotes in there. It's an excrutiating read so if you can't be bothered to go through the whole thing, I think the gist of it is that hip-hop videos are making black girls become promiscuous and do drugs and the main consumers of hip-hop are "young, affluent, white men" so that is who we should blame.

"knologable and loyall"

Here's a Diplo interview where he talks about and shows footage of his recent project with Switch in Jamaica working with artists like Elephant Man, Turbulence, Tanya Stephens etc. I'm pretty excited about hearing all this stuff.



This summer, an Italian photographer called Joao Paulo Ribeiro approached me because he was coming to London and wanted to photograph some MCs from the grime scene. I gave him all my contacts and then he disappeared and I didn't hear back from him until today when he sent me a load of pics he'd taken. I've uploaded the best ones to my Flickr.

Anger Is a Gift

I've finally finished my mixtape. It is available to download here and the best tracks can be previewed on the MySpace page. You may have thought it was lost in history never to be heard (like Sharky Major's mixtape that was supposed to come out 3 years ago) but here it is. Most of the tracks on here are specials, dubs or exclusives. One or two were given to me as exclusives but ended up being released before I finished this because it's taken me so long to do. The others are just favourites that I always play when I DJ out. Here is the tracklist:

01. Intro
02. Virgo feat. B-Live & Flirta D - The Clack Riddim (Prancehall Special)
03. Tempa T - Tempz
04. Terror Danjah - Zumpti Huntah
05. Jammer - Toxic Freestyle
06. Yung Joc - Do Ya Bad
07. Brains - Plastic (Instrumental)
08. Scratchy, Skepta & Breeze - Vice Freestyle
09. Jitset feat. Jammer - Mary Jane Remix
10. Brains feat. Slinga, 2-Pac & Biggie - Thug Love
11. Matt Shadetek - Bump Bump
12. Lewi White feat. Busy Signal & Mavado - Vice Freestyle
13. Brains - Neva Eva
14. Big Kuntry feat. Yung Joc & T.I. - Yeah (Remix)
15. Mavado - Wah Dem A Do (Dexplicit Remix)
16. Rossi B & Luca feat. Scorcher - Not No Talker
17. Tinchy Stryder feat. Fuda Guy - Sick Ina Head
18. Matt Shadetek feat. Skepta - Reign
19. Jammer feat. Delishus - Vice Freestyle
20. DVA feat. Badness - Prancehall Dub
21. Ruff Sqwad - Untitled
22. Jammer feat. Ce'Cile - Prancehall Dub
23. Syer B - Badboy (Prancehall Special)
24. Slix - Down and Out
25. Statik feat. Faction G - Lily Allen Remix
26. Ce'Cile - Tell Me What You Love (Cheerful Riddim)
27. Ears feat. Flamin - Fergalicious Freestyle
28. Brains feat. Knuckles - Damn (Remix)
29. Riko - Prancehall Dub
30. Statik feat. Tempa T, Kraze & Esco - Bad Guys
31. Statik feat. Cham - Prancehall Story
32. Outro
BONUS TRACK:
Fish Go Deep - The Cure & The Cause (Jitset's 'The Chop & The Screw' Remix)

Some notes:
For track 5, I asked Jammer to do a vocal of "Toxic" after I heard him freestyle over it the night David Banner played at The Old Blue Last. For track number 10 my friend Jamie-James (who helped loads with this) had the idea of doing a track using the most famous deceased grime MC, Slinga from YGC, plus the two most famous deceased hip-hop MCs. He got some Slinga a cappellas off Jammer and then gave them to my friend Brains to build a track around the vocals. For track number 12 I got one of my favourite grime beats ever and gave it to VBS when they were going to Jamaica to film a documentary and asked them to get some dancehall MCs to vocal it. Mavado and Busy Signal both obliged and then when they got back, Jammer blended the two together to make one song. They followed Mavado around for a week to convince him to do it and then they had to sit around for seven hours on the day waiting for him to finally record the vocals. Having heard a different version of track 31 that Logan played on Kiss last year, Fuda Guy called up asking could he be on the mixtape. I went to meet him at some random train station in east London late one night to pick up a CD of tracks from him, only to discover when I got home that he'd just given me some really old track featuring him and Stryder that was released ages ago. He later emailed me track 17, which was an exclusive at the time, but I think it was released recently. Track 19 is another dancehall dub that VBS got for me in Jamaica, this time over a Jammer beat. Track 20 is the track I first heard Badness on. Faction G hooked it up for me some time last year and I've been a big fan of Badness ever since. Track 26 is by Ce'Cile and is all about my "big stick". This was another one from the VBS documentary in Jamaica and you can watch the making of the song here. The beat is an old Jammer classic.

There is a bit of a Bugsy Malone theme on this mixtape. Track 24 uses a sample from the "Down & Out" song off the Bugsy Malone soundtrack. After giving Slix the idea and sending him the song, he got Scholar (I never knew he produced either) to make a track for him to vocal. I really wanted to get Ears on the mixtape because he sounds good on pretty much any beat but wanted him to vocal something non-grime because I thought it would be more interesting, so went for "Fergalicious" because it's probably one of the most ridiculous songs ever. Riko made me two specials in return for DJing at his birthday bash last year. One made it on (track 29), the other was hip-hop tempo but I will use it for something one day.

Over a year ago, we held a studio session till three in the morning at Jamie-James's house with Statik, Esco, Tempa T and Kraze. Wiley was supposed to come down too, and kept calling Esco, but in the end he kept to tradition and didn't bother to show up. The sample in track 30 is another one from the Bugsy Malone soundtrack, as you probably already know if you've seen the film. I was going to get Tempa T to do a vocal of that "So You Want To Be A Boxer" song (because he boxes) but it never happened for some reason. The Cham freestyle (track 31) was one of the first songs I got for the mixtape. Statik went to Cham's hotel while he was over in the UK last year and got him to record a special for me over the "Boy" beat. Statik then licenced the beat to the Babyshambles' album or something, so he re-did the vocals over a new beat (which I think I prefer anyway). I can't be bothered to go through all the drops but I managed to get some from people like David Banner, Juvenile and 5th Ward Weebie. I was promised loads more but just didn't have the time to chase them all. The New Orleans drops were hooked up with contacts I got while I was over there last year. Finally, the bonus track is a chopped and screwed version of a funky house song that I got my friend Jitset to do.

Special thanks goes to: Jamie-James, Alex Sturrock, Daniel 7 Year Glitch, Ben, Statik, Brains, Jammer, Faction G, Jack Adams, God, Jesus, Mary, St Joseph, my gran, my two cats and Robert Mugabe.

(If the download link at the top doesn't work, click here to download the mixtape directly.)