Ruff Sqwad

spooky girlfriend

Wild Horses
i've only recently started listening to guns n' roses vol.2, and i'm surprised.
i don't really watch channel U, but i'd imagine many of the tracks on there are U-friendly.
Ruff Sqwad to me are another example of the versatility of the grime template, lyrically and musically...at one point there's even a melancholic love song of sorts, it's a sentimentality that i'm not used to in grime though it can be very emotionally resonant.
there's a very good track about materialism and if money can bring the respective MC's happiness.

it all just begs the question why hasn't grime achieved the mainstream success the skill and talent that go into making it deserves? some tracks are positively hip-hop esque, and we all know what mainstream success did to that musical form...most underground stuff is tedious and the mainstream is just a parody of itself - obsessed with celebrity, wealth, power and sex (incidentally a perfect antithesis to this is ODB's first album, when hip-hop was still coming out with fresh talent)...
i don't want grime to become successful and go soft, nobody does, and you almost feel it is in safe hands with likes of Wiley and the original crews; but i'm enjoying the diversity i am discovering. in particular it seems the dubstep DJ (plastician, tubby)/ grime MC combo will never get old!:D
 

don_quixote

Trent End
because gnr2 hasnt been properly released.

i assume it's only that. god knows how well it'd do if it had half the backing any old band gets.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
gnr 2 was alright but they need to put out a sort of best of thing. obv not called 'best of' though cos no one but grime fans know who they are. but something that shows everything theyve done so far would be good. 10-12 killer tracks. i know they can do it. it shd be just all their hardcore fast tunes from back to front and thats it. it would be lethal.
 

hopper

Well-known member
I'm not a massive grime fan personally, but think Guns n roses volume 2 is sick... Some really really good tracks on there but I think it definately wains a lot and there is far too much filler. But in answer to your question about why grime hasn't had mainstream success I could go on for a bit... The majority of grime isn't that catchy which generally is pivotal to mainstream success, there's FAR too much violence for it to be accepted by the media and general public... Kinda puts me off as well. And also grime MCs are very unreliable, often not turning up to bookings which doesn't spread a good word...

That kinda came across anti grime, there are a lot of things going for it... But its just lacking something still I feel to push it to where it could and I feel is needing to go for it to get big. I still see grime as a genre with lots of potential thats still unrealised. But as gumdrops said if Ruff Sqwad put together an album or something of 10-12 killer tracks and got some label support then I'm sure they could somewhere along the way to cracking it.
 

DJL

i'm joking
Then why do you reckon it hasn't broke the mainstream yet?

Hasn't been the right time yet imo. Commercial, broad success can take many years to achieve. Hip Hop and Jungle/DnB are good examples of this. There are a million factors affecting this from the popularity of other genre's to the general mindstate of the record buying public.
 

Logan Sama

BestThereIsAtWhatIDo
The fact that the music industry doesn't invest anything into Urban music sensibly. And it doesn't help that when artists get any sort of status they stop making Grime.
 

spooky girlfriend

Wild Horses
The fact that the music industry doesn't invest anything into Urban music sensibly. And it doesn't help that when artists get any sort of status they stop making Grime.

durty goodz 'licence to skill' addresses this brilliantly. listening to axiom EP for this first time i thought that with major label backing he could shift tonnes...it's not grime that gives way for the sake of a popular audience but the eclectic range of influences i think has something for everyone. though like you say, goodz would get mainstream and we'd have another dizzee on our hands...i shuddered when the southern rappers cut in on 'where's da G's':eek:
 

Woebot

Well-known member
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