other_life

bioconfused

This hit me the first time I heard it and it's still all time to me. I love this one. And I love the volatile beanpole physicality of that other one that's not Russ. Let's call him samurai jack who cares what his name is

what tune was this again?
like do i have everything relevant posted in this thread already in this playlist? tell me what's missing!
i know i did lots of Ta and not any contribution but dissensus has 100% been my education on this end of things, contemporary UK music, the mutation from Hardcore to Road continua. it's completely alien to my midwestern-bay area milieu. no analog there, uk specific.
this thread feels unfinished bc tops 40 tracks have been posted in here and not all of them fit w the Playlist/Concept but felt more like asides? is barty gonna do a 100 or leave it here?
 

other_life

bioconfused
a lot of the 'road rap' stuff (as opposed to 'uk drill' in what i've put in this playlist is very much dipset, and more generally the shit i was trying to valorise in the 'audible seams' thread -
2000's bombast, flirting with dramatic metal guitar, 'fascist' 'march' orchestral stabs and drum hits.
it was so bizarre trying to get into fisher's old writing how much his circle was unnerved by that production trend as it happened, the military imagery in 2k's rap.
because in retrospect i absolutely see it as playful, even subverting the continued self-seriousness of democratic-republican-miltary political religion/political ritual. dipset is the united nations. and uk rap coming into its own in the early 2010's seems to be very influenced by all that.
 

other_life

bioconfused
dean blunt has been playing with all that 2000's Futurist-Military Rap in a retrospective/future-past way since hype williams, also. his morphing from Art Person to Roadman was mentioned.
my interest in this uk contemporary stuff, probably in the wheelhouse(s) of dissensus more generally, comes from diving deep into his stuff in 2016, where it had just been background, another contender/voice in the first half of the 2010's, personally.
i mean it's right there in the name, yeah?
i was listening to live in rome 2011 for the first time in a long minute last night, and it ends with a loop of the 'JUST BLAZE!' producer tag.
and there's machine gun fire paired with birdsong in this one formless section between proper 'songs'.
this was the artillery, the arsenal of hype williams live show. it really took the lady out of it for that loop to be really loud and stark at the end, though. considering how much downright pretty synth work there was in the overall set.
 

other_life

bioconfused
was the move into the smoothed edges, long-attack piano murk, sinuous basslines of drill a conscious pivot away from the HEATMAKERS/JUST BLAZE! legacy on the part of a younger micro-generation? is this what we get from this thread?
 

treelethargy

many doors yes?
dean blunt has been playing with all that 2000's Futurist-Military Rap in a retrospective/future-past way since hype williams, also. his morphing from Art Person to Roadman was mentioned.
my interest in this uk contemporary stuff, probably in the wheelhouse(s) of dissensus more generally, comes from diving deep into his stuff in 2016, where it had just been background, another contender/voice in the first half of the 2010's, personally.
i mean it's right there in the name, yeah?
i was listening to live in rome 2011 for the first time in a long minute last night, and it ends with a loop of the 'JUST BLAZE!' producer tag.
and there's machine gun fire paired with birdsong in this one formless section between proper 'songs'.
this was the artillery, the arsenal of hype williams live show. it really took the lady out of it for that loop to be really loud and stark at the end, though. considering how much downright pretty synth work there was in the overall set.

live in rome 2011 was a cornerstone for all this, imo. to what degree, i can't exactly say... but this is the best analysis of dean i've seen in a while
 

other_life

bioconfused
live in rome is the hype williams collective's best kept secret, second best kept secret being 'junt/deez ruins u see...'.
"Bawlin" is something that could not be made an excerpt for their untitled Weed Leaf lp. it has to be smack dab in the middle of a tape no one really even considers (at least not out loud?) when trying to talk about Dean. it's a 15/20 minute zone on the rhythmic language of the then nascent cloudy/smoothed/somber trap thing, departing 'audible seams' for the seductive hallway of the frictionless future. flick of the wrist, swish... bawlin.
 

other_life

bioconfused
the side of 2k's rap that deserves to be disavowed/buried, the plodding Supersaw 'club' type tracks. juelz santana's 'what the games been missing' has a fair bit of stuff like this, but he gets away w it bc of the singles on there/juelz santana is charming. but like, david banner. felli fel's 'buck in here'. midtempo trance-rap shlock. dime a dozen.
literally, one of the bars is "slim shady, like marshall". like 4 years behind (or just in time for what was actually going on 2009-2010?)
 

daddek

Well-known member
a lot of the 'road rap' stuff (as opposed to 'uk drill' in what i've put in this playlist is very much dipset, and more generally the shit i was trying to valorise in the 'audible seams' thread -
2000's bombast, flirting with dramatic metal guitar, 'fascist' 'march' orchestral stabs and drum hits.
it was so bizarre trying to get into fisher's old writing how much his circle was unnerved by that production trend as it happened, the military imagery in 2k's rap.
because in retrospect i absolutely see it as playful, even subverting the continued self-seriousness of democratic-republican-miltary political religion/political ritual. dipset is the united nations. and uk rap coming into its own in the early 2010's seems to be very influenced by all that.

ts always looked to me like Dipset were the most shaping input for uk 2k road rap. The double time hats, triplets drums, explosions as drum patterns, pounding cymbals. Also delivery, that 07/08 blade brown, youngsta crystal meth, slow and flippant rap style, that seemed so shaped by Camron. dipset were huge in uk and london in mid 00s when this stuff first started forming. perhaps it was when uk rap started loooking to dipset instead of g unit that it could produce soemthing that felt legit, that it could look in the mirror and make sense of itself. it had that rhymthic tensity that london music needs. But still not enough. like once drill came along it stopped seeking any further guidance or inputs
 

luka

Well-known member
Dipset are interesting. Because their music is so cheap and tacky sounding and cam'ron's lyrics are such inspired gibberish they were adopted fairly early on by the Internet. Like Paul Wall and others they were reduced to memes (and enthusiastically participated in the process) One of those furry mascot figures to be patronised and laughed at ("no they're great, honestly")

Their videos were on channel u a lot and you can hear their influence in grime as well as road rap. Worth noting that the stuff on this list appears many, many years after Dipset's heyday.

There was a famous autistic blogger called Robin Carmody who wrote thousands and thousands of words about what he saw as the fascist turn in rap music, exemplified by dipset.

Other people thought the south played a big part in the militarisation of the music because the region had such high rates of enlistment. And remember this sound overlaps with war on terror period. Iraq, Afghanistan.
 
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luka

Well-known member
So whether you see that bombast, belligerence and masculine rigidity as a reflection of amplification of participation in the febrile starship troopers atmosphere of post 9/11 America screaming eagles or if you see it as a carnivalesque rendering fairground mirror distorting detourning of the same is probably just a question of personal disposition and the same dichotomy will always emerge when interpreting mainstream rap music.

Are migos capitalist nihilist chemical coshed vapid consumer hymns glossy extended advertisements or are they blasting through the stargate?
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Hopefully Not to get into yet another migos discussion, but I have wondered if dissensus would be receptive to them had they been underground. It’s the fact theyre popular, go in james cirden, etc. Which is the issue rather than something sonic.
 

luka

Well-known member
Hopefully Not to get into yet another migos discussion, but I have wondered if dissensus would be receptive to them had they been underground. It’s the fact theyre popular, go in james cirden, etc. Which is the issue rather than something sonic.

This doesn't work because finding the avant garde in the mainstream has been the move since timbaland in '99.
 

luka

Well-known member
Obviously there is a sense in which the mainstream is oppressive simply because it is the mainstream irrespective of its formal qualities. Oppressive because force fed to us because inescapable.

Which might be part of why Carol and Other life can embrace 00s rap while being horrified by its present incarnation
 
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