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The voice, yeah; I mean, for god's sakes, he's a fucking Brummie, and mockney accents and 'Oi Oi, stop trying to shag the birds and fight the geezers' isn't something I used to hear in Erdington. But fuck it. I like the record.
Reasons why:
The Britishness of it. Rapping about full English breakfasts "with plenty of scrambled eggs and plenty of fried tomato"; claiming "I'm forty-fifth generation Roman"; refrences to "Henries" - which I honestly thought was just a very localised bit of slang me and my mates were using; references to Gail Porter, Chinese takeaways and the Criminal Justice Bill; joyriders in Nova's; all of that. It's definitely a British album in tone and content, without being all "the music of Elgar and the paintings of Conbstable."
The sound of the album. I know that it's been worked at hard, but I like the way half the album sounds like it's just been thrown together; the way everything just breaks down when his mate tries rapping on the end of "Don't Mug Yourself", the ramshackle beats on half the tracks.
I like the way that - and this happens on a lot of albums I love - there are sounds throughout the album you're sure you've heard before. The most obvious is on "Weak Become Heroes," which is quite possibly one of the finest song I've ever heard about growing up clubbing in Britain, and contains a piano loop which sounds so familiar yet isn't.
The way he's not scared to let his guard drop; songs about being dumped, references to being scared of "geezers" staring him out; talking about taking drugs and not being able to handle it, rather than taking loads of drugs and finding it wonderful because you're cool - "If you start to think you're a state/ then you definitely are a state" - never a truer word said... |
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