how important is the question of whether Dizzee is hip hop or not?

DIZEE RASCAL WENT TO THE SAME PRIVATE SCHOOL AS ME, WE WENT 2 CRIQUET TOGETHER. WE ALSO SOMETIMES DID HOMEWORK TOGETHER, EVERY NOW AND THEN MY BUTLER TOOK US TO THE TOWN. BUT NOT FOR LONG COS DIZEE HAD TO BE BACK AT 7:30.

Hey thats almost as sharp as ali g.

heres where I get really worked up and curse you wicked prankster.

Any American hip-hop head with a fucking clue should not have to work out whether something is "hip-hop" or not before they decide whether they like it. Why worry about having a dialogue with anyone who thinks in such dimbrained terms? End of, as far as I'm concerned.

i think grime is its own thing. but you could say its to trad brit rap what the south was to east coast hip hop before the south blew up, i dunno. so maybe it is hip hop. but it came out of garage when garage embraced hip hop more, so again, i dunno.

in the new hip hop connection, theres a full page interview with semtex talking bout why dizzee IS UK Hip Hop. they dont discuss the grime thing once. its just assumed that dizzee sprung straight from hip hop! then again, HHC have never quite grasped non-trad hip hop on the whole, they hate anything experimental. so in the dizzee's case, i think theyre just treating him as hip hop cos they like him!

can't be bothered thinking about this too hard right now, but basically:
it's problematic calling him hiphop because he's only the tip of the iceberg that is grime, and grime is almost equal parts dancehall, hiphop and "dance music", and yet it is none of these things. The world is becoming ever more dominated by hiphop right now, and much of what is exciting about grime is its radical difference. It's not just another bunch of dudes trying to be real hiphop, staying true to hiphop's roots and all that shit, and I'm worried that if people start thinking that's what it is, then it really will become that, and it'll lose what's special about it. Of course, it's appeal is not just in its difference, it IS also in its familiarity to hiphop listeners. But it's not just part of the history of hiphop, it's more importantly (to me) part of the history of East London dance music. Dizzee is clearly trying to represent for LDN, sonically as well as lyrically. But hiphop fans who don't know a lot about dancehall and rave probably listen to grime and just hear it as hiphop because hiphop is so inclusive and has assimilated dancehall and rave elements. Hiphop is almost becoming like Rock, a term so broad that it's meaningless, including token artists picked out of their proper context and inserted into the canon.

actually, the real reason that grime's recognition by a wider audience matters to me so much is that it matters to the artists themselves, whom I identify with. Problem is, they want recognition as individuals, and I don't know if anyone apart from Dizzee will be able to get it

Um dizzee has continually said, wrt to the "not grime" and "not hip hop" that he considers himself simply as an artist and not as part of any particular movement or genre. Yes he is a rapper, yes he has made garage records, but that doesn't make him EITHER hip hop or grime.

i.e. the question is utterly irrelevant

I prefer to think of him as the spearhead of a movement than "simply as an artist". I don't think his music would be anywhere near as exciting without Wiley, Musical Mob, So Solid, drum & bass etc. He's a convenient package to isolate - a great rapper and great producer with two great albums - but there are so many other great grime rappers and producers.

well...... whts the difference between timbaland beats being called hip hop and dizzees beats being called hip hop? what timbo was to dj premier and that lot, dizzee is to whoever produces skinnyman and those guys.

also, dizzee keeps saying he thinks grime is the real uk hip hop, whatever that is, which is a bit problematic. then again, he might just be saying that to annoy people.

What does it matter what Dizzee thinks? Artists aren't generally very perceptive about analysing their own music and its importance.

true. but some MCs in UKHH like klashnekoff are saying that what dirty south hip hop was/is to NYC hip hop, grime is to UKHH. which i understand in a way, even if i dont totally agree with it.

That is clearly complete bollocks. Crunk is the heavy metal to the blues rock of NYC. Garage is the beatles to skinnyman's cliff richard...

But seriously, I think dizzee has consciously distanced himself from either scene both sonically and rhetorically. With the exception of stand up tall, nothing on "showtime" sounds much like garage and none of it sounds much like hip hop.

I think what he's doing is demonstrating that music has evolved to the point where an artist can just be a rapper without being hip hop or anything else, just as someone can be a singer without being "rock"...

its more hip hop tempos on showtime though. actually its more like trip hop tempos. or the trip hop of grime or something.

good point about hip hop evolving to the point where youre just a rapper....

yr all wrong. dizzee is the tweenies to derek b's flumps.
be nice if as US audience could possible even begin to consider music as something in and of itself, without havind to filter it back through its stateside antecedents, as if to claim ownership or something.

Why would they do that, when it pretty much sounds just like hip-hop with a funny accent and under-produced beats?

(/devil's advocate)

its not only US people who think grime=hip hop. stelfox wont like that interview with dj semtex in hip hop connection, cos theyre doing that ownership thing blatantly.

btw, stelfox, it woud be nice if we didnt just contextualise it within US antecedents, but at the same time, grime does have its obvious influences. its not as foreign as say, hip hop was in the late 70s.

"But seriously, I think dizzee has consciously distanced himself from either scene both sonically and rhetorically. With the exception of stand up tall, nothing on "showtime" sounds much like garage and none of it sounds much like hip hop."

I think this is true but people are over-estimating how far ahead of other grime artists Dizzee is. Hip hop tempo tracks have been floating around the grime scene for two years! Tempo of groove is no longer a determinative factor.

Dizzee kicks props to Rodney P in the HHC interview this month!

thats cos he knows whats REALLY hip hop and what isnt!

seriously though, what these new grime boys seem to be doing for the most part (if the run the road comp is anything to go by) is pulling from post-timberland/swizz/dirty south producers the way the old hip hop heads pulled from dj premier/marley marl/45 king etc etc.

haha nobody's actually answering the original question

"In vexed he says he isn't ukgarage."

hes just doing that typical 'im above a genre/scene/style/ thing that all artists do. hes something of a UKG snob also.

"In some 1extra interview hes saying grime is the REAL uk hiphop."

well thats silly, cos if anything is the REAL, whatever that might be, UK hip hop, then its rodney p or roots manuva, or fallacy or someone like that. hip hop music is still hip hop music. any idiot should be able to tell.

"People who say he isn't hip hop are being defensive(?)."

well whos to say just cos hes rapping it makes him hip hop? (not sure where im going with this but uhhh) anyway, yeah, grime is part UKG, part hip hop, part dancehall, part jungle, part etc etc.... so its part of hip hop definitely. some ppl are saying its hip hop in the same way timbaland beats are still hip hop. still, its not changing the fact that these grime MCs came up through UKG so theyre MCing style seems to be part UKG/part hip hop (cos obviously theyre hip hop fans).

"But if grime is hip hop isn't that expanding the scope of hip hop and increasing the chance of a real dialogue with US hiphop (or is that just a dream?) and isn't that a good thing?"

americans traditionally dont care for any sort of foreign hip hop. they might respect dizzee more cos he doesnt sound like them at all, but as far as dialogue, the dialogue is already there. drum n bass ----> timbaland ---> dizzee.

"The most important thing about Dizzee is that he isn't a one off. this is a real movement."

it is.

hiphop is a weak genre. it's hard to define, not for classifying rap music objectively. what are some subgenres of british rap? i heard grime. what are the key grim rappers?

hip hop doesnt much take to sub genres kindly. it resists them with a passion.

This whole thing is like people arguing whether the Beatles were "rock 'n' roll" in 1963. Except I doubt people argued that, because genre purism hadn't yet infected rock'n'roll culture. But maybe I'm wrong.

Anyway, I've never understood this attempted phony differentiation. Of course Dizzee is a form of hip-hop. He raps! He uses beats! He (sometimes) uses samples! What about him is not hip-hop? So his influences include dancehall and garage -- OK, fine. Dr. Dre and OutKast are heavily influenced by P-funk, and Mystikal is influenced by James Brown, and Bubba Sparxxx is influenced by country music, that doesn't make any of them not hip-hop.

someone answer gypsy......

why? he's right. hiphop isn't a weak genre, it's gigantic, akin to rock'n'roll. genre purism is weak, but i like it. is garage rap just british rap w/cheap equipment?

no i didnt mean gypsy was wrong. i just couldnt figure out how to respond.

but the problem with calling grime hip hop is cos its from uk garage. that scene is the one that's nurtured it, not UKHH, who have mostly shunned it, apart from a few progressive people. even then, like in last months HHC, rodney p and skinnyman were saying dizzee was hip hop cos of fix up look sharp, not i luv u. fix up look sharp sounds like nothing else in his catalogue.

if people want to say grime = 1/2 hip hop, 1/2 UKG, then i can live with that. the MCs came up through garage so theyre a bit different to those who've come up through the usual UKHH channels, thats what im saying. sure theyre rapping more lyrically like hip hop MCs but their flows and meters and inflections are from garage as well as hip hop.

the thing is though, like they interviewed semtex in HHC to defend whether dizzee was UK hip hop or not, but how many other grime MCs does semtex play? forgive me if he plays loads, i dont listen to his show very much, but from what i know, its not that many. and if it is, well id say that progressive hip hop fans will take to dizzee, not the staunch trad ones.

he played taz, wiley, sway, lethal b, dizzee tonight, i recall.

dame dash was interested to hear wiley was out of a deal on westwood last nite, to bolster the rumours

ok, i eat my words. i stand by what i said about progressive hip hop heads being into it more than the usual types, but big up semtex in that case.

im tempted to make a 'why isnt grime hip hop?' post.

just be thankful none of you had to write a standfirst for a weekend supplement trying to describe dizzee in five words that would be understood by a predominantly 45+ readership.

what words did you use then?

xpost- as far as outkast using p-funk, etc, some ppl call it funk-hop or things like that. and ppl have been sampling pfunk for years anyway, and the south has used live instruments for years so it wasnt that big a deal.

ok, remember: this is trying to explain the very basic notion of dizzee (he'd done our Q&A) to people who've barely fucking heard of him, OK? it was: "the youthful guru of grimy beats". i know. i know. *blushes*

i asked four relatively savvy colleagues if they had any better ideas, and they couldn't come up with anything at all.

actually, i nearly started a thread here. "i've got this magazine i need to get away by noon, and ..." :)

could have had the spearhead of london grime or the avatar of grimey garage.

its cool, dont worry, that demographic probably couldnt give a shit anyway. im not sure i even believe that all those broadsheet writers even like dizzee even though they cream themselves over his work so much (to digress slightly but not entirely, hes the only artist to get both albums rated 5/5 in mojo magazine incredibly enough!). especially after alex petridis at the guardian called eski beat SKI beat once in a piece.

ski beat?! fucking hell. mind you: was that his fault, or an idiotic sub?

even "garage" was out, to be honest. people would just start thinking about their BMWs :)

i dont know whose fault it was but its on the net, somewhere. i cant remember which article it is. its enjoyable to me though, and somewhat satisfying to know that after all these years, the mainstream are still getting it wrong.

SKI beat - HEAVY soundtrack for da alps.