favourite wiley non-sequiturs

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
you know Wiley, I'm the young lion/you won't see me in a suit with a bow tie on

I eat kids like Daniel LaRusso, crane kick/and everywhere I go I see them try and do the same kick/and the crane kick ain't even my main kick

so speak if you got a problem with me or/forever hold your peace and go drink tea or/I'll piss on your family tree

I'm Mr. Cowrie's son, I do grime
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
this one is bewildering, for multiple reasons (like, is a 70s U.S. cop show really that famous to Wiley's audience? I dunno). anyway:

don't get happy cos you get a few pairs of free shoes/I'm famous like Hill Street Blues
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
both of these make me laugh, especially the KY/TENN one:

I'm bigger than your wifey's breast/so familiar with your wifey's breast

from back in the day like, when Kentucky was called like Kentucky/and Tennessee was Tennessee, like it weren't even KFC yet
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
also can we formally acknowledge that Wiley is the all-time champion of dedicating songs to various female family members. mother, sisters, daughter, nan, all get separate tunes. and all of the them are good tunes even. and obv "when you hear the name grime nan I am the meaning" is one of the best lines ever. also:

But I’m forgetting my mum/she don’t want to hear this talk from her son/compare my heart to her heart she’s got the coldest one/that’s why I’ll always be a colder son
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
and these family ones aren't sequiturs of course but whatever. I find Daddy's Little Girl to be really touching in a weird way despite not having any daughters of my own. also this line is too good:

the 1st beat she makes will be Snow Man Remix, she can make beats like me/and when I play Stormy Weather she gets mad, puts on a screwface like me

that whole verse is ace actually
 
I was listening to Tunnel Vision last week and thought I might revive this thread, looks like you beat me to it. I like this track the did which eccentrically includes an interview with (judging by their voice) either Scratchy DVA or Little Dee. Though perhaps he loses points by reneging on his "I'm UK, never hear me rapping on a song" promise.


I’m 27 I’ll just draw your Auntie Susan.
We’re at the brewery Brick Lane they call it Truman.
You might see me with the daughter of Chrissie Noolan (?)
We aint been speaking but I know that’s cool, and

She knows I’m not a silly boy, she watched me school em
Making money drop from the trees like it’s fallen, I’m balling.

Got it locked tight like your girl’s wooden flooring
 
That 18th anniversary series of Rinse FM interviews should have ditched Ms Dynamite (who had a tenuous connection with the station at best) and instead just got Wiley drunk and let the camera roll until they ran out of film.

Years ago someone on Dissensus wanted to know the meaning behind the 'Ive been a boss since Coventry Cross' lyric. Looking at a map of Bow- it might feature Coventry Cross on it. It's not a street. Presumably it's an estate, perhaps a very old one, which might mean he's been a boss for a very long time. Or maybe something happened there in Wiley's lifetime and it's become a part of local history. Fuck knows. Anyone care to show me the peach block that he & geeneus talk about.
 
That seems like the one, cheers.

It is impossible to look through this thread and make any sense of what Wiley has become. He was the biggest character in the whole history of British dance music history, had one of the biggest roles in fostering a new genre, did more (with the rest of the grime mic men) for UK MCing in five years than what Skibbadee, Shabba and the Rodney P hip hop lot achieved in double the time, a legendary producer and he did his bit for the pirates.

His songs now are sweeping that all under the carpet.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I dunno, to me Wiley generated so much good will from 2000-08 (Nicole's Groove through the end of Tunnel Vision) that even if he makes shitty pop records - it would be nice if they were better pop records (Ed fucking Sheeran? ugh), but hey - from now until the end of time it can't be overcome. I can't think of any producer besides RZA who can match his output, even w/lower quality control post-2005. and RZA, or Ye or Dre or whoever, was never half the MC he was, never simultaneous the best producer and at least in the argument for best MC (Goodz is the most lyrical, Dizzee made the best album, Trim prob has the best style, but for my $ Wiley at his best was the best). it's like RZA/GZA, or Ye/Jay, or Dre/Cube, rolled into one megalithic, unstoppable force. while trying to sort out my top 50 00s nuum list I spent the last couple weeks going through his whole back catalog again (I ain't listened a lot of it in yrs + yrs) and it's totally plausible, if you include PAUG and Roll Deep and stuff produced for other people, to construct a top 50 of just Wiley (well and Dizzee). that is crazy. I mean you can't say that for that the 90s. not for Goldie, or Remarc, or 4 Hero, or Grant Nelson, or whoever. for all they did not one owned that entire period like Wiley. I dunno. I'm probably not the best judge since I feel about Wiley's prime the way some people do about the Beatles, or MBV, but it's kind of unimaginable. so if he wants to chase the $ + celebrity (real celebrity, not king of grime celebrity), ok. plus, I find it amusing that like always he was on the cutting edge, even when it came to selling out
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
like man himself said (from the end of One Line Flow when the beat cuts out and he goes acapella):

I'm the lord of the mic lord of the beats lord of the stage and lord of the flies, Lee/Wiley
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
tbh the gay slurs in war dubs (+ which I mean, like anytime that happens in rap or grime, it is what it is) bug me way more than the selling out. not least cos they're so unnecessary.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
any link for this set?

not a set (tho I'm sure he used that bar in sets too), it's from New Era, at 0:47. could be mishearing, like always, but don't think so.

that's one of the one's that's like, so odd - or I mean I know it fits the rhyme scheme but highlanders are Scottish and Kildare is in Ireland. and Kildare is like, such a random place to pick. but who knows.
 
Sorry guys, no emerald isle references in the Kildare Lyric.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Kil...=BCepDciHSD4FfEEcypWPMw&cbp=12,355.37,,1,1.95

It pops up in the When Im Ere video and I think Target or someone else in Roll Deep/ PAUG lived there.

And Padraig you have a good point about no musician is capable of being prolific and consistently great. There are no sacred cows when even the best producers have released lacklustre twelves. I find with dance music the concept of having 'favourite producers' a largely false one for this same reason. You could recommend a newcomer someone like Mala as one of the top Dubstep producers to look out for but if all they end up hearing of him is some of his boring recent tunes then there'll be a bit of head scratching going on- what's all the fuss about. Wiley and Todd Edwards (both of whom has a career that has gone or is currently going through a fallow period) are some of the few names that I could put down as being my favourite producers, but I think Wiley has an unfair advantage in that it's hard to separate the productions from his general character and the fact that he's potentially the best MC ever- it means he gets collective bonus points which few other musicians in dance music qualify for. My problem with Wiley is that he's been pissing these points away for quite a while now. There are maybe 50 million people in the world who have heard his music, only 1% of which are aware of how great & canonical his underground stuff was. I find that very, very sad. Armand Van Helden's Bonkers, with it's monotone MCing, was a complete waste of Dizzee's talents. But somehow the collaboration makes for a good pop tune that you can't help but feel fairly satisfied with Dizzee's efforts. I've yet to hear a Wiley pop tune that pulls this off though maybe I'm not looking hard enough- at least part of the problem is that when he does pop he is devoid of his old humour. I wonder if he realises this himself, and I'm surprised his record label(s) don't try to bring this out of him.
 
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True, but I'd be surprised if his label hadn't listened to his back catalogue before giving him X amount of pounds as an advance for an album. Having done this research, anyone who isn't a complete idiot would've realised that humour is one of Wiley's strong points. It's hardly incompatible with commercialism so it's something I'd expect the labels to want. It's something he should be wanting.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
There are maybe 50 million people in the world who have heard his music, only 1% of which are aware of how great & canonical his underground stuff was. I find that very, very sad

yunno not living in the UK a lot of its mainstream pop culture passes me by so I haven't been inundated with the flood of post-grime pop like most people here and I never thought of it like that. isn't that the great tragedy of grime? that it never broke thru on its own terms, or at least something close? it does make me sad tho, and on a deeper level than it prob should given all the truly sad things in the world, that grime will never have a Chronic/Illmatic type conquering moment. that something of such inventiveness and talent and richness was reduced to making up stupid dances and duets with Kate Nash (or whoever) to make a living. and that's for the guys who were lucky/good enough to made it! and because Wiley embodies grime to such an extent - "I am the meaning" - he embodies that bitter pill in some larger, totemic capacity, beyond just himself. I mean, I dunno but it seems like.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
another thing I was thinking looking through the thread was how many of these are not only not non-sequiturs but that their seeming oddness masks their brilliance in some ways, his ridiculous capacity to make points in inventive, multi-layered ways that would never occur to you (Trim is the co-champion of this). like the "Wenger like Arsene" bit, here it is in more context:

and I’m a craftsman straight to the studio/master my craft I’m Wenger like Arsene/MCs try a flying headbutt, watch me/I will fly past them, lyrically outlast them

or one I posted, at greater length:

meet at the airport, both in Black Line tracksuits and you might see us in Zion/you know Wiley I’m the young lion/you won’t see me in a suit with a bow tie on/there’s no suit I would even try on

I guess any MC you could extract absurdist bits here and there but Wiley is particularly susceptible I think
 
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