hmmmmmm, tim, personally i don't feel this at all - all perspectives are valid, otherwise i wouldn't be able to write about houston rap (my next big paying job) or ragga or anything i happen to like. the only thing that will distance critics not directly involved in the scene (i include myself in this absolutely and i'm only just up the road from most of the action) is understanding what the hell the mcs are on about. like ragga, grime is so localized and self-referential that sometimes you can't help but miss out on some of the meanings. this wasn't applicable to 2step because it was pretty universal - the beats were the real stars, the vocals predominantly inconsequential but for adding melody. in other words, like techno or house music it didn't explicitly *say* much at all. grime does and every time bruza or riko spits a line, it reminds you/me/whoever how far away from the centre we are.
Theorization of the grime " discourse "
- Thread starter Kaiser
- Start date
Tim F said:
yeah -- liking the 2-step sound was not deemed trend-spotting
and djs seemed to lead the way in playing 2-step -- i.e., i heard and danced to 2-step before reading about 2-step -- and in my experience 2-step was played mainly by house djs, not by djs specializing in 2-step as such
everyone in my (terribly white, catholic) high school knew about (the pop offshoots of, if you insist) two step garage: the pop kids liked it, the rock kids didn't - whereas when the dizzee record was out in my (less horrible) sixth form, it was like a decoder ring sort of thing with a half dozen people i knew
pop-garage felt unavoidable in a way that pop-grime definitely doesn't - over at the stylus singles jukebox tom ewing makes a good point, actually: (re: 'remember me') "There must be a massive disconnect for many ordinary punters between grime's ever-growing reputation as the most exciting sound in Britain and its in-store reality as an endless source of clumsy comedy records."
pop-garage felt unavoidable in a way that pop-grime definitely doesn't - over at the stylus singles jukebox tom ewing makes a good point, actually: (re: 'remember me') "There must be a massive disconnect for many ordinary punters between grime's ever-growing reputation as the most exciting sound in Britain and its in-store reality as an endless source of clumsy comedy records."
stelfox said:
this divide is the appeal to me. i love decoding another line, another lyric, another embedded message. the divide also provides part of the excitement - part of why so many "dance music" DJs are so unappealing as entertainers is they could be your boss or work in your local chip shop. MCs living another life is intriguing.
The interesting thing about the 2-Step comparison is that for me it was kind of similar... I read alot about UKG in various media outlets (mainly The Face originally).
In NZ (Wellington at least) there was only a small handful of us listening to 2-step. There was certainly no scene or anything similar. And it seemed like a 'London ting', something that, to me at least, involved certain cultural trappings that were completely irrelevent to middle class white kid life in inner-'city' Wellington. This is emphasised even more with grime, as so much of 2-step was about dancing and having fun, where as grime seems a little darker in it's social outlook. That's a huge part of its appeal, but its also completely irrelevant to my life (lucky for me I guess...)
In NZ (Wellington at least) there was only a small handful of us listening to 2-step. There was certainly no scene or anything similar. And it seemed like a 'London ting', something that, to me at least, involved certain cultural trappings that were completely irrelevent to middle class white kid life in inner-'city' Wellington. This is emphasised even more with grime, as so much of 2-step was about dancing and having fun, where as grime seems a little darker in it's social outlook. That's a huge part of its appeal, but its also completely irrelevant to my life (lucky for me I guess...)
Noah Baby Food
Well-known member
It's a funny old thing. Think Logan's comment is really on the money, I must say. On the one hand, RWD forums are all "WHO WD WIN OUT OF A CLASH BTWN TRIM AND GHETTO? TRIM IS BIGGLE" etc, and on the other, the blogsphere sometimes gets a little pretensious doesn't it? It's all good I suppose, people are really interested in grime for different reasons, but there's a real tendency to pick everything apart, too much in my view. at least this scene is getting documented for posterity.
speaking as a UK mo'fucker, I think the interest in grime, and what it's "about" for different people, speaks volumes about class in Britain today. It's a complicated point and I don't wanna be flippant...but talking about this music seems to lead to a lot of assumptions. I do think some of the interest is kinda like class tourism - "it's so exciting, these people talking about a life I will never understand". And the assumption seems to be - go on Dissensus, wax lyrical about grime and it's reference points etc = you are middle class, you have a media job, you are not/have not been "on road". like these producers and MCs are brave soldiers, out there living the tough life, documenting it for our benefit. and maybe people get pissed off when they feel that artists aren't being "brave" enough, wanting to make some coin - see reaction to Roll Deep's album, maybe?
personally speaking, i'm "educated" and all that shit, got a good degree eventually, know who Sun Ra and Guy DeBord are etc...but i've also sold drugs, been unemployed, robbed for a living, lived in really shit places, had family do jail, seen gun shit, blah blah blah...and i'm still broke. not saying "wow look at me, aren't I tough?"...suppose I'm saying, people get very frothy over grime coz it's so "street", but when talking about it sometimes come across a little strange and a bit patronising perhaps. some of the writing I've seen on the "blogsphere" does strike me as guilty intellectuals fantasising about tough black men. please, don't cuss me out here, like i say not trying to be flippant, just can't help thinking this more and more.
this also leads to all this "authenticity" crack. am I allowed to MC, for example? you see what I mean? and is Riko "allowed" to write a blog?
these points require further discussion and I don't wanna get sacked, so will leave it there for now.
speaking as a UK mo'fucker, I think the interest in grime, and what it's "about" for different people, speaks volumes about class in Britain today. It's a complicated point and I don't wanna be flippant...but talking about this music seems to lead to a lot of assumptions. I do think some of the interest is kinda like class tourism - "it's so exciting, these people talking about a life I will never understand". And the assumption seems to be - go on Dissensus, wax lyrical about grime and it's reference points etc = you are middle class, you have a media job, you are not/have not been "on road". like these producers and MCs are brave soldiers, out there living the tough life, documenting it for our benefit. and maybe people get pissed off when they feel that artists aren't being "brave" enough, wanting to make some coin - see reaction to Roll Deep's album, maybe?
personally speaking, i'm "educated" and all that shit, got a good degree eventually, know who Sun Ra and Guy DeBord are etc...but i've also sold drugs, been unemployed, robbed for a living, lived in really shit places, had family do jail, seen gun shit, blah blah blah...and i'm still broke. not saying "wow look at me, aren't I tough?"...suppose I'm saying, people get very frothy over grime coz it's so "street", but when talking about it sometimes come across a little strange and a bit patronising perhaps. some of the writing I've seen on the "blogsphere" does strike me as guilty intellectuals fantasising about tough black men. please, don't cuss me out here, like i say not trying to be flippant, just can't help thinking this more and more.
this also leads to all this "authenticity" crack. am I allowed to MC, for example? you see what I mean? and is Riko "allowed" to write a blog?
these points require further discussion and I don't wanna get sacked, so will leave it there for now.
I've got to be honest and say that I think that a lot of this 'discourse' stuff is the purest horseshit. I think one of the real problems with a lot of music journalism (not all, of course) is that a lot of the time it isn't even about *music* but about the hand-wringing leftist middle-class guilt of the writer. I don't think that there's anything wrong with being white and/or middle-class (that being exactly what I am) I just don't want to read about how bad you feel about your background. I want to read about the music, what it sounds like, that kind of stuff, and not how you can link Bruza's oeuvre to whatever nonsense Slavoj Zizek is writing about at the moment.
Blackdown said:
couldn't agree more. my point was that cues for those feelings of "not being part of it", even when to a small degree you are (listening to pirates, going to raves, buying mixes etc) are intrinsic within grime. nothing about 2step ever really reinforced this idea and certainly never threatened to crack your skull - it was pretty welcoming and exuberant. i don't think this discourse has been created by critics or people taking a perspective of cultural observation, it's created by and within grime itself.
People worry too much about what other people think of them.
Grime is exciting for me for the following points: 1. As a result of software studios producers are making music who would normally not of. 2. The internet has breached an availabilty barrier in the last few years and this is the first new musical/youth movement to embrace it and be influenced by a massively bigger pool of ideas and opinions as a result.
The kids who are coming up to clubbing age in school at the moment will hopefully tip the scales making this something really big in the next few years.
Grime is exciting for me for the following points: 1. As a result of software studios producers are making music who would normally not of. 2. The internet has breached an availabilty barrier in the last few years and this is the first new musical/youth movement to embrace it and be influenced by a massively bigger pool of ideas and opinions as a result.
The kids who are coming up to clubbing age in school at the moment will hopefully tip the scales making this something really big in the next few years.
Most of the dj's in the states who played 2-step were focusing solely on UKG. You assume too much. Granted alot of them were coming from jungle backgrounds but most of our nights were devoted solely to it.
Thats your case then. Don't assume it applies to everyone else.
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Melchior said:
There's other factors you're not taking into account though. The "rave scene" in the US has been on the decline for years, government locks down just about anything and everything they can these days, record shops are closing left and right, and US distribution for UK music took a nosedive a long time ago. The natural alternative is for people to turn towards the net. Think about the number of users on the net today in comparison to the time when Dn'B was taking hold in the states. Its easier for people to distribute their music, get their stuff heard, and network. That doesn't necessarily make it irrelevant and has helped alot of us in the states quite a bit. Maybe the people who are searching this stuff our on the net are tired of being spoonfed bullshit from moonshine and astralwerks. Alot of us spend $ and a sufficient amount of time and frustration trying to bring this stuff over to the states b/c we're sick of listening to the same shit all the time. Remember we're only talking what? 2 or 3 yrs. since this music started forming? As I recall Dn'B's crossover into the states wasn't immediate either.
I heard my first jungle via MTV: first M-beat 'Incredible' etc (hated it), then Goldie 'Inner City Life' (loved it)Melchior said:
Plus I read about it in music magazines. I bought some cd's and some was played on a late night radio show. Then they started to play it in a local club sometimes, and at a music festival I saw the first big names (Aphrodite c.s.).
I heard about grime through Simon's online writings and started downloading mp3s. I found it very exciting to already know this genre in such an early phase, and be informed about its evolution in realtime almost. Thanks Blissblogga!Melchior said:
originaldrum
from start till done
funny thing is i got into blogs through grime (before we could all semi agree to call it that)!
i still remember sending "encouraging" emails to some (people here on this board even!) because i thought they would give up because no one was reading (oops)
i still remember sending "encouraging" emails to some (people here on this board even!) because i thought they would give up because no one was reading (oops)
originaldrum
from start till done
Kaiser said:
sounds a bit rich for me
jesus, ladies, calm down. the fact is that if you're talking about 2step/grime-as-scene in the US, it's pretty pointless anyway. the real evolution and birth of the scene happened in london, then the music was adopted by djs - from whatever field d&b, house etc - elsewhere after the fact. the US didn't have a 2step scene worth talking about much, really, because it was all secondary action.
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Keith P said:
i don't know that this is quite accurate. while most of the people who are interested enough to go online posting on uptown/ukgww/etc would call themselves "you-kay garidge djs," in its heyday in nyc (the place in this country where it gained the biggest foothold) uk garage was largely folded into mixed r'n'b/hip-hop/etc party music sets and, really, the only strictly-2step parties there were the Dinesh/Goldspot/Wikkid! affairs, which were infrequent. almost everywhere i'd go to dj back then i'd meet people who were predominantly house djs but had a thing for mj cole/grant nelson/nice'n'ripe. the ex-junglist UKG soljas were definitely a strong online contingent, but i don't think that really reflects what you'd see in the clubs.
but stelfox is right; the US has had little to nothing to do with the genre's development no matter who played it or what else they played, and it's a vanishingly small number of DJs anyway.
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