xtra urban

[Benny Bunter]

Just listened to godfather part 3 and quite enjoyed it and will probably listen maybe 1 more time and never again, just like the last 3 or 4 wiley albums. When he does grime its never more than nostalgia now

 

[slackk]

.

 

[luka]

yeah its a global sound. whats new(ish) is that black British people get to make it and be pop stars in their own right. get played on daytime radio. all that stuff. there's more infrastructure there for turning talent into packaged commodities.

 

[version]

 

[entertainment]

It's just pop. What is the issue here?

That it's being sold as something more by journalists who get to use the word 'diaspora'?

 

[luka]

no. i dont think thats it.

 

[luka]

youre not being asked to take a stand for or against. thats inane. im just waying this has become part of the machinery. part of how music comes into being in the uk. why the product sounds the way it does. why we have this rather than some other thing.

 

[luka]

a uk with this platform an this star making machinery operates differently and gives rise to a different product to a uk without it., before so solid, before dizzie and kano, before all those artists who came up through that alternative infrastructure and proved to the industry that they could be profitable and sell to a nationwide audience.

 

[luka]

there's a whole host of factors at play. of course its reductive to say xtra. i really just wanted to point a finger at a piece of reality and go, look, thats relatively recent. that didnt happen in the 90s. whats going on there.

 

[luka]

so yeah it is just pop but its pop made by people who not so long ago were not allowed to make pop. and its pop which sounds very different and draws from a different set of influences than pop of the past. so all these things are interesting in their own right. i dont like this music. i dont really like pop as a rule cos im not a 12 year old. but its not a thread about hating it really.

 

[craner]

Why don't you like it? Because it is not made for you?

 

[luka]

ive never been one to demand that music be 'made for me'.

 

[luka]

one of the things i like about music is that i can listen to things which are explicitly not made for me. i dont like it cos it feels disgusting against my skin. it feels like a car saleman trying to put the moves on me.

 

[luka]

it smells like cheap aftershave. its for the common folk. its for the mass. im the elite. i dont eat at the communal tables.

 

[craner]

ive never been one to demand that music be 'made for me'.

Sorry, I didn't mean "for you" but, you know, people of our age.

 

[craner]

one of the things i like about music is that i can listen to things which are explicitly not made for me. i dont like it cos it feels disgusting against my skin. it feels like a car saleman trying to put the moves on me.

But, hang on, you love R Kelly!

 

[craner]

Is it because R Kelly reminds you of expensive aftershave? Is that the difference?

 

[Corpsey]

Ahh I thought I'd never heard wstrn but this song must have been huge cos I HAVE heard it


Sounds american, doesn't it. Like Chris Brown.


This one's fucking great, though. Only got 8 million views, perhaps cos it sounds more British?

 

[luka]

i cant explain my instinctive reactions to things. i dont like it. its gross. it disgusts me. it reminds me of the latin american pop videos my barber plays in his shop all day. clean people with razored facial hair and cheap aftershave. im an elitist. i dont want that factory product. i dont want the turkey twizzler.

 

[Corpsey]

I think like most music genres this one produces the odd classic and a lot of homogenised forgettable fluff. I was really excited about the UK drill/afrobeat fusion stuff and it has produced a lot of great songs but also it became very homogenised fast. Everyone using the same chords, etc.