November 26, 2004

• So Solid ain't grimey. They garage, hardcore two-step shit. Wiley's grimey. Dizzee's grimey. All of Roll Deep and Lethal B and More Fire Crew, and Slaughter Mob and Plasticman on Rephlex. Grimey. Shout out to me Hackney Crew! Clapton got money! Bow got money! Bethnal Green got money! /white indie boy not fooling anyone
• flashboy: watchu talkin' baht nah blood? the plastic man an' s-mobb be dubstep, bwoy. get dem paypa on rephlex as dem grimey man but dem a bloodclaat dubstep vibe nah. /also not fooling anyone Yes, agreed though, So Solid are more garage than grime, but it's harder to see the difference these days (except for those bloody horrible 4x4 remixes. yeesh)
• Awaiting retaliation from the Tooting Popular Front, come the glorious day...
• Tooting Popular Front? Tooting Popular Front!? We're the Popular Front of Tooting, mate!
• Well, prismatic, one can, indisputably, trace a division in the musical forms generally ascribed the label "grime", for while a case can certainly be made, some would say uncontestably so, for the primacy of the Roll Deep Crew-centric axis of East London crews , with an MC-based sound drawn from the hip-hop tradition but featuring a signature, 'cold' strain of mutant two-step, there are also those who might contend that the less-geographically centralised Rephlex collection of artists have a greater claim to the term "grime" - in which they are connected sonically to the Roll Deep scene via similar heavy synth basslines and minimal arrangements, although being more generally instrumental and originated by solo individuals as opposed to loose, membership-shifting groups - as their seminal compilation albums are the first artefacts to wholeheartedly proclaim their grime origins and frame an explicit grouping of artists that could coneivably comprise a genre (while, those who argue from such perspective point out, the East London scene, already much given to social politics and infighting, often characterised in the form of "disses", has been less than universal over its adoption and connection with the grime terminology, as evidenced by Wiley's crossover hit single "What Do U Call It?"), and furthermore... /keepin' it real wit' ma radio 3 flow
• flashboy: i though the slanguage term was 'slews' or 'slewing', but in any case... i follow the lead of blissblog and simon silverdollar in seeing 'grime' per se (square-wave bass stabs, ringtone melodies, 8-bar beat lines) as an East London sound, and dubstep ('rolling' low-pass filter bass, clean-sounding production, less mc driven) as a South London thing. rephlex seem to consider the whole 'urban' electronic category as 'grime', which is the major difficulty i have with their labelling - particularly the grime 2 compilation, with it's ticking hihats and oriental flutes, and the hypercompressed bass sounds (particularly the kind of 'woMp-woMp' that Kode9 brings) is almost a universe away from the seedy, rapid fire square-waves of Wiley or Jammer. The deranged 'dinka-dink' sound that Wiley uses (a sample from a Sega Ice Hockey game, i think?) - almost his production trademark, like a Lethal B 'POWPOWPOW!' - simply doesn't exist in dubstep, much as the flowing basslines of dubstep don't appear in a Roll Deep production.
• Yes, they talk about then do it. They decide they have to be a badman from the ghetto, and so create the ghetto around them. Then a new generation grows up fearing gun crime for real, and no-one admits it was started by pretentious, stupid little fucking cunts.
• Tee hee. Plasticman asks, plaintively, "Why is everyone calling me dubstep?" Yay for irrelevant debates!
• yeah, saw that one... it's funny (quite apart from the fact that I was listening to the Grime 2 comp just now) but I tended to regard Plasticman as the epitome of dubstep - those heavy, skull-crushing bass tones and the definite hint of weed-smoke in the air... I guess I was wrong.