Old Dizzy Rascal Tune ID Please

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
Matt, did you see him on that Mistajam session with general levy, jammer, JME, Skepta etc.?

The exuberance, and... I dunno, joy is palpable. Reminder of what a loss he was to the scene.


i think hes still got it, esp when he does sittin here with fekky. not that i even like the song that much, and hes lost his humour hasnt he, but technically he's still great.

jammers face when general levy is on = ha.
 
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droid

Well-known member
I meant that when he shot off into the mainstream it was a big loss for grime. Seems trite to say, but he's perhaps the best ever grime MC - or at least no other scene LP stands up to BIDC. The only time Mercury got it right.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
He's actually a really shitty rapper now.

I've been pondering this but I think you can tell who are just rappers and who were otherwise when they become "CONTINUUM" MCs.

Case in point, found this unfortunately:
Skibadee is one of the worst rappers in the world on rap; jungle fine, but rap he's unbearable. Meanwhile Goodz just LOVES these terrible Ludacris knock-off beats.

So more and more it becomes clear to me that Goodz, Dizzee, Kano, Ghetto, Jammer & Skepta represent a sort of element of people trying to make a rap culture out of the 'nuum because let's be honest, British Hip-Hop is unbearable. Which is why most of their music out now is just rap. Unbelievably rap at that for the first three.
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
perhaps. but when you hear them on a set, they are still 'grime'. and still sound good. jammer is still good on sets. skepta is one of the best to do it. who has been more consistent? ive never really graded them by their recorded material that much, so maybe i am missing something, but even then, thats not me is so good it barely matters all the crappier stuff skepta has made over the years. and there is still something a bit different about most of these guys 'rap' material compared to actual 'rap' artists in london like krepz and konan or giggs or whoever. the whole 'why arent they making grime' argument seems a bit dated to me.

and yeah, dizzee leaving grime was a big loss for the scene. inevitably something happens when someone who everyone else looks up to leaves a scene. a loss for him too, as he wasnt surrounded by that energy/those influences that led to his best music.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
lol, not really no.

Most of the music Dizzee makes is just pop-rap or straight-up rap. Look at the "Couple Of Stacks" track. His flows are just simple double-time or straight-forward rap now. I'm not even touching the world where you think Jammer still screaming out Murkle Man in 2014 makes a set 'good'.

Grime exists in a hyrbid form, and these guys are just making bad rap songs at a certain BPM and showing up to do sets. They're not even trying because they're too isolated and off in their own thing.

I don't care that they decide that they will or won't make grime. However I think it should be noted that they have a differing mentality to a lot of their supposed peers and should be recognized as why these guys were so much different from say your Wileys and D Doubles.
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
sure, dizzee sounds like all he listens to these days is rap. but i would say it was prob always like that, its just that before there was something he could/needed to funnel that into that would make it something different (ie grime). so if theyre isolated, well its not hard to see why in 2014. same goes for kano, doogz, etc. they were all prob into the same stuff back in 2004, its just that theres less need for them to put those influences into something different, so it comes out as straighter rap. you dont seriously think kano or doogz sounded like 'rappers just doing grime' back in 2004 do you? if you cut off all the guys supposedly 'only into hip hop' or 'trying to be rappers' from grime, you wouldnt be left with very many MCs.

if you cant enjoy jammer on a set, even doing ancient bars, well then you dont really like grime, lol.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
sure, dizzee sounds like all he listens to these days is rap. but i would say it was prob always like that, its just that before there was something he could/needed to funnel that into that would make it something different (ie grime). so if theyre isolated, well its not hard to see why in 2014. same goes for kano, doogz, etc. they were all prob into the same stuff back in 2004, its just that theres less need for them to put those influences into something different, so it comes out as straighter rap. you dont seriously think kano or doogz sounded like 'rappers just doing grime' back in 2004 do you? if you cut off all the guys supposedly 'only into hip hop' or 'trying to be rappers' from grime, you wouldnt be left with very many MCs.

if you cant enjoy jammer on a set, even doing ancient bars, well then you dont really like grime, lol.

Not so much Goodz or Dizzee in 02-04, though I'd say the fact that Goodz spent so much time releasing rap songs rather than grime tracks says all that needs to be said about where his loyalties lie.

Kano on the other hand, is a rapper, pure and simple. Same as Black The Ripper or Akala, he saw that grime was a healthier scene and lucky for him, grime adopted him. But almost all of his songs are just rap songs forced upon grime beats. His flows aren't made to compliment or navigate beats, he's constantly colliding all over the place in them. Same with Ghetto, who almost always in early sets manages to derail everything because he's clearly under the impression that Grime is The Cypher and you're supposed to just freestyle wildly and aimlessly and magically that beat is going to sync up to your flow once or twice in a while.

Meanwhile, look at the rest of Nasty Crew; almost NONE OF THEM have that problem with beats that those two had.

I think these MCs were able to function better in grime partially because they were taking cues from the other MCs doing what they did on grime, as a learning process. But since they were taking a rap approach and not a nuum mc approach, they can't maintain that approach to their music once they leave Grime. Instead they regress back to the rap approach where you take priority over the beat.
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
he's constantly colliding all over the place in them.

the thing is, this could apply to plenty of other less rappity rap grime mcs. plenty of times i remember hearing DEE sound more than a bit awkward. there is a diff between the crammed style of ghetto and the more typical 'blurt' style of grime mc-ing, but im not sure either really had the monopoly on perfect grime flowing. it also just seems weird, to want some apparent 'nuum purity' of MC-ing when those same things you dont like, are also what made dizzee, and kano so good. the fact they WERE trying to get qualities from hip hop into grime, even if it wasnt always perfect, is what made their lyrics so memorable.

even if kano ended up sounding like he wanted to be more and more like jay-z, the fact is that he was a big heartless crew fan too, specifically mighty mo, and you can hear that in a lot of his earlier stuff. which hip hop mcs were flowing sleek and smoothly but still menacingly like that? that was a very post-garage style. kanos problem isnt actually that he was always just a hip hop guy, but that being more 'rap' has never really suited him, but that this is what he keeps trying to do. you can hear him straining to dominate the beat hip-hop style on that first album. there is a big diff between someone like akala and kano. youre trying to split these guys into neat little categories so you can decide who is a 'true nuum mc' and who isnt, when its not really the case. you might be right that when using bars written to hip hop beats, they dont work delivered over grime, but ive heard hip hop mcs reciting lyrics over beats that dont really work for those lines too, so im not sure how precise we can really get with this.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
You're confusing my preference of style with my prognosis of why these MCs deteriorated stylistically. I don't dislike these MCs because they're more rap-based than others, though I find it has more of a sell-by date. Nor am I strictly indicating one example of each camp as a perfect example, there's obvious bleed over in both groupings I'm making. But I am indicating a differing approach between the group who created grime as a sort of 'playground' for these various artists to flesh themselves out, and those who utilized grime to enhance their voice, and crediting a lot of that to background, influence and desires.

Certainly it doesn't help that if you put their more hip-hop attempts against modern hip-hop, they'd fail horrifically. But that's due to both my bias of knowing they've made better music before and my own preferences in rap.
 

luka

Well-known member
Fact is kano and ghetto were grime before grime existed because they were in that friendship group. I heard sets of his when he was 14. He didn't make cynical career decisions about it
 

Trillhouse

Well-known member
jammers face.

<blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned data-instgrm-version="4" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:658px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:8px;"> <div style=" background:#F8F8F8; line-height:0; margin-top:40px; padding:50% 0; text-align:center; width:100%;"> <div style=" background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAAGFBMVEUiIiI9PT0eHh4gIB4hIBkcHBwcHBwcHBydr+JQAAAACHRSTlMABA4YHyQsM5jtaMwAAADfSURBVDjL7ZVBEgMhCAQBAf//42xcNbpAqakcM0ftUmFAAIBE81IqBJdS3lS6zs3bIpB9WED3YYXFPmHRfT8sgyrCP1x8uEUxLMzNWElFOYCV6mHWWwMzdPEKHlhLw7NWJqkHc4uIZphavDzA2JPzUDsBZziNae2S6owH8xPmX8G7zzgKEOPUoYHvGz1TBCxMkd3kwNVbU0gKHkx+iZILf77IofhrY1nYFnB/lQPb79drWOyJVa/DAvg9B/rLB4cC+Nqgdz/TvBbBnr6GBReqn/nRmDgaQEej7WhonozjF+Y2I/fZou/qAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); display:block; height:44px; margin:0 auto -44px; position:relative; top:-22px; width:44px;"></div></div> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_top">@russellhoward you funny cunt lol yes I am the happiest man in the world coz of all the good things that are happening for grime right now 🔥🔥🔥</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A video posted by Jahmek Power (@jammerbbk) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2014-11-07T13:11:50+00:00">Nov 11, 2014 at 5:11am PST</time></p></div></blockquote><script async defer src="//platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js"></script>
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Fact is kano and ghetto were grime before grime existed because they were in that friendship group. I heard sets of his when he was 14. He didn't make cynical career decisions about it

I'm not saying it's cynical per se. I'm just saying it was a healthier happier scene and it was a better and more attractive way for an MC to find themself.

You listen to old mix cds where grime and UK rap sit next to each other and how anyone in the world could conclude "Yo, I'd rather listen to hip-hop than grime" when there's so much energy and sense of reward there would be beyond me. It's not even something you have to be conscious of.

I am suggesting a different mentality approach became prevalent in the... group, culture, genre? w/e. And it was those guys who made it attractive for people, but their radical approaches compared to others amongst their peer group have pluses and minuses, and I attribute a lot of that to their relationship to rap which isn't too outlandish.

That said, I don't think they function as well at rap. Listen to the new Skepta single over the fake Ice-T production from the ASAP camp. His flow is so ungainly on rap, and his bars are awful compared to his youth in grime. So I don't see why they have this compulsion to 'return' to rap after recognizing they could go beyond that.
 

Immryr

Well-known member
His flows aren't made to compliment or navigate beats, he's constantly colliding all over the place in them. Same with Ghetto, who almost always in early sets manages to derail everything because he's clearly under the impression that Grime is The Cypher and you're supposed to just freestyle wildly and aimlessly and magically that beat is going to sync up to your flow once or twice in a while.


yeah they're having a real hard time with the beats here. :rolleyes:
 
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