a popular guide to unpopular music
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if you haven’t been paying attention to the Genre Known as Grime lately, i’d recommend checking Durrty Goodz’ new 9-track EP, Axiom. It’s shockingly good. (Has he always been this on-fire?)
As a grime MC, Durrty’s taste in backing beats is unbeatable: riddims by Bass Clef, Coki, Fireworkz, and more. haven’t had time to absorb lyrics & digest his mic-persona-aura, but there are some virtuoso, challenging flows around those beats. Case in point:
blubber!
while i’m an advocate of self-released music — don’t eliminate the middleman, become him/her — my brothers in grime should either spend more time with photoshop or hire a designer. Goodz loses points for his X-Files / Star Trek cover, which feels like wack German techno from 15 years ago:
Yes, that is a red fingerprint in outer-space.
german techno is wack 15 years later
sir, you are wrong. German techno is still AWESOME 15 years later. “Der Klang der Familie”, anyone?
i am a woman, you! ladies read mudd up, too.
i used ‘wack’ to distinguish badly produced german techno (with bad packaging) from well-produced, interesting german techno — there’s a lot of each, naturally…! i dont hate on techno… used to be into it…
but anyhow, Durrty!
j
I was just wondering what happened to Doogz / Goodz – he was always a fave. Thanks for the tip, Jace! Now, how to find it stateside without paying an arm and a leg in exchange rates and postage….
Grime probably has the worst aesthetics of any music out there – a mix of the crappiest elements of 90’s Jungle and Hiphop graphics. I guess all the good designers are working on Dubstep stuff.
i love the cover art.
re: Goodz — search out his (apparently not official, but still hott) Durrty Whirl mixtape if you can — a lot of hip-hop beats and a scant few grime cuts (“Gangsters” is a favorite), but his flow never ever stops.
damn right, he needs to attend to a good photoshop workshop !!
axiom ep has good vocals AND nice grimey/dubstep productions as opposed to TINA TURNER beats.
The Axiom EP is incredible the music and lyrics are banging and the artwork is on point.
This is a must have for anybody that is feeling real UK street music.
Phat Beats, Sick Flows and Big Concepts
Best thing to come out off the Grime scene since Dizzee.
This is much better that Wiley.
true most people have farted better covers than that but if grime loses that cheap street edge it might start to follow in the footsteps of shiny hiphop, a direction it’s already veering dangerously close to. dubstep is still so studiously documented and recorded in the annals of bass history that it needs decent artwork to accompany it like monarchs’ portraits in history books, but grime exists mainly on mp3/ phone/ whites and is accordingly easy to delete from memory. most grime producers are more concerned with bringing out new beats than accumulating a ‘respectable’ archive to be remembered by.
“if grime loses that cheap street edge it might start to follow in the footsteps of shiny hiphop, a direction it’s already veering dangerously close to.”
why would it suck if they were making money and getting to use more of that to put out a better package? they already talk (or yell, whatever) mostly about making (or trying to make) money anyway, just like their shiny and not-so-shiny counterparts on the other side of the pond.
“but grime exists mainly on mp3/ phone/ whites and is accordingly easy to delete from memory”
most commercial music nowadays exists mainly on mp3/phone/whites (remember that famous stat? three quarters of hip-hop CD BUYERS in the states are white). actually, i’d go so far as to say that grime’s harder to find in mp3 form than, oh i dunno, rock music! plus, the fact that grime is inextricably linked to dj culture puts more emphasis on the physical form (single) of a producer’s archive.
whites = white label vinyl records. i.e. 12″s in paper sleeves with plain white paper center label, with minimal or no packaging/info.
whites also = the MAN.
damn. doi. oops. and yeah.
carlos: dunno where this argument has come from really, it wouldn’t “suck if they were making money and getting to use more of that to put out a better package”, i was talking about “street edge” (admitedly cheap…). the fact that they yell about “trying to make money” is interesting, but many MCs, even ‘famous’ ones, buy designer brands and whatnot but still live in tiny flats and have next to nothing in savings. many people from road live like this. trying to get money does not necessarily equal the ‘shininess’ i was going on about. (shiny has a place of course, but grime’s place is (and should remain) separate- i’m talking productionwise here).
as for mp3s n that: grime is harder to find than rock. it’s a much smaller genre.
phones: i have heard dubstep ringtones but the bass is not quite DMZ standard; grime just works better cos the vocals are reproduced quite well.
whites: many grime tunes don’t ever get a release on wax (due to money shortage) and therefore never make it into the physical world (we can debate the physicality of CDs elsewhere…). the fact that whites have no artwork and all look alike was what i was chatting about when i said “delete from memory”- i dunno if you DJ or not but i generally find myself going for the coloured sleeves and even forgetting what’s on half the whites i own if i don’t write on them immediately.
apologies for the long ting post
bless