UK HipHop or Grime, which do you prefer?

They're both ****e.

Seaneh wrote: »

Really dont like Wiley.

No accounting for taste I suppose...



I'm on the fence with this one really, I probably listen to more UK hip hop than I listen to US hip hop, but very little of it really moves me the way Grime does.

Grime is also scientifically proven to be about ten billion times better on a dancefloor than Hip Hop. More energy, more movement.

The way I see it, grime is to hip-hop what Nirvana was to 80's hair metal.

I know there's heads like Giggs who sort of flit between the two - "road rap" they call it apparently, but ultimately as far as I'm concerned grime has the definite edge because of it's roots in raves, reggae and london pirate radio.

Wiley's old pirate radio bars are going to be studied like Shakespeare by future generations of academics.

Seaneh wrote: »

Really dont like Wiley.

If all you've heard of him has been the more commercial stuff then I suppose I forgive you, it's not exactly easy to track down the finest Wiley moments, most of them are buried away on **** quality pirate radio tapes that have been copied, copied and copied again and ripped to low bitrate MP3's...




^ decent work on that, especially after the rewind on the first beat.


Decent four part video of Roll Deep & assorted other MC's doing a radio jam on top of some godforsaken tower block (first two parts are a bit slow, only really gets going towards the end of pt. 2)







^ that stuff is as fundamental to Grime as Brooklyn block parties were to Hip Hop, and it came about for completely different reasons, Hip Hop was actually a bit of an aberration in that it only really came about because Kool Herc noticed that nobody in New York really dug his reggae records so he had to play pretty much anything else but reggae to make people dance at the block parties, the idea of talking over the records in rhyme definitely came from Jamaica though... UK had the soundsystems and a Jamaican community since the 50's and while they did take the music in a different direction from the 80's onwards the basic mechanisms underlying the whole UK reggae scene (soundsystems, mc-ing, rewinds, cutting dubplates, soundsystem exclusives) went on to completely underpin the UK Rave scene, Hardcore, Jungle, DnB, then Garage, and then Grime and Dubstep, and now UK Funky...

It's a completely different narrative to the US one (although electro did blow up big in the UK in the 80's, plenty of the older DnB heads - the guys who are in their 40's now - who are still around will tell you they started off breakdancing, but that was hardly a direct influence on the birth of Grime)

So on the one hand you have that incredibly rich narrative of the continuous birth and fizzling out of new styles each building on the previous one, and on the other hand you have the UK Hip Hop heads basically doing the US stuff with a UK accent...

Still can't call a favourite though, I don't think, although if it were a choice between the entire UK Bass music continuum versus Hip Hop then I'd pick the former in a heartbeat.

As Executive Steve says I like grime emceeing and production cos it's a totally different strand that is uncompromising and UK centric. The rappers tend to do double time and they swing like the beats. It can get a bit repetitive cos the tempo lends itself to rhymic emceeing rather than storytelling type stuff. Not that it doesn't exist but I think they could do with doing more low BPM stuff and less I'm Better Than U bars.

I can appreciate Klashnekoff and Jest and stuff but I don't find them that interesting. Stig of the Dump is probably my favorite UKHH rapper. His debut album is out round about now. Think he has it back from mastering.

Everybody has seen that thing. I went to a strip club with him (now that's hip hop). He was playing the fruit machine and batting away the strippers cos he didn't have any money. We were just there for late pints.

I love battling, but I enjoy his tunes as well. Homeless Microphonist is a class EP. Can't wait till his album comes out cos it's been delayed to fook.

His freestyles are hilarious as well. Check this one out where someone mentions a wrestler and then everybody starts vibing on that topic and mention like 20 of them.