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I did a fair bit of Google digging and, despite the fairly large number of threads on Barbelith about hip hop in general, there doesn't seem to be a specific thread about UK hip hop already...
I've recently borrowed and copied to my computer (and not yet listened to more than once each, but i'm going to get round to listening to them a bit more) albums by Phi Life Cypher, Rodney P, Jehst, Skinnyman, Braintax and Lewis Parker, plus a couple of mix CDs consisting mostly if not entirely of UK hip hop, and was wondering if the people of Barbelith had any general opinions and/or recommendations on the subject...
I already have the first 2 Roots Manuva albums, which are both awesome, altho his first ("Brand New Second Hand") is, IMO, lyrically deeper, and more instantly-appealing-to-me (probably because of my dub/reggae background) in production style... "Run Come Save Me" has some fucking excellent tracks too ("Ital Visions", "Dreamy Days" (which samples either "Waterloo Sunset" or "MacArthur Park", which 2 tunes i always get mixed up) and of course "Witness", but IMO nothing quite to match "Juggle Tings Proper", which the rest of the first album comes closer to living up to... Roots Manuva somewhat epitomises what i love about UK hip hop, namely its actual acknowledgement of hip hop's massive debt to Jamaican, rather than purely African-American, musical ancestry (Roots is the Prince Far I of UK hip hop, with Rodney P possibly its U Roy or Big Youth)...
Also i have and mostly love DJ Skitz's multi-MC album "Countryman" (again the reggae influence... nice Twinkle Bros reference there), some of the best tracks on which are those featuring Est'Elle and Tempa ("Domestic Science", bringing some heavy female vibes), Task Force ("The Junkyard" - one of the most hardcore reality-of-poverty tunes in the whole of hip hop, and shitting in the face of the pseudo-glorification crap of most "mainstream" US stuff) and the aforementioned Phi Life Cypher ("Cordless Mics At 20 Paces", with an awesome steppers melodica sample).
plus a few random tracks either downloaded or on old mix CDs off the cover of Hip Hop Connection magazine (back in the day when it was good), from such people as Mark B & Blade, London Posse (who i understand to be somewhat founding fathers of UK hip hop, and among the first to bring the reggae influence... their closeness in sound and style to the (IIRC roughly contemporary?) old school jungle scene isprobably worth commenting on), Blak Twang ("So Rotton", which samples/reinterprets Jah Mali's wicked new-school reggae tune "Politics", is a killer), Task Force again, Akala, Sway Dasafo, Ty, etc (many of which names i know no more about than the 1 or 2 tunes by them i've heard)...
(I'd really badly like to know the tracklisting of a mix CD of (mostly) UK stuff i have called "Knee Deep In Hip Hop", which clkaims on its cover that a full tracklisting is available on www.zebratraffic.co.uk, which website however doesn't seem to contain any such... i was going to yousendit, but was defeated by the fact that, having thought i had ripped it to my hard drive, it appears to no longer be there, and the drive is too full to re-rip it (it's a 55-min single-track mix, about 50MB in mp3) without deleting something else... however, i may attempt to describe the tracks i particularly want IDing in either this or the "Identify That Tune" thread...)
One wickedmeaninggood thing about the majority of UK hip hop that i've heard is that it doesn't seem to have any time for the pimp-glorifying, dollar-centred "bling bling" mentality of a lot of mainstream US hip hop, or for the dichotomy between club/danceable and beardy/backpack/underground - it manages, like the reggae roots it's derived from, but like only a small fraction of what i've heard of US stuff, to move both my hips and my head... not sure if that's because the UK scene is smaller and therefore (arguably) has better "quality control", or simply because of a different mentality that lacks that beats-vs-lyrics dichotomy...
so, any UK heads more knowledgeable than I like to comment? |
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