What Music are you listening to? Discussions Welcome!

Dandy Old Man is what I'd have played at both my wedding and funeral, if it were up to me, even though I'm most certainly and regretaby not very dandy:

 
@1994, what do you reckon, Scorcher back in the day was probably the best MC man. Prez T as well though, why are you driving my dad's black R type, crazy bars

 
Vashdaman said:
@1994, what do you reckon, Scorcher back in the day was probably the best MC man. Prez T as well though, why are you driving my dad's black R type, crazy bars

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Yeah Scorcher used to be so devilish. His bars were probably the most crud/violent lol. Axe FM was big for North London (can hear Cookie in the set with his 'boy' bars takes me back to private caller days). Basically Axe was North's answer to Rinse FM.
 
Heat was the big grime station in North, but yeah Axe was great because it wasn't so hard to get on, growing up in North London I had loads of mates at the time who were able get their first exposure on Axe, it must have been one of the first internet Grime stations too. Some crap acts for sure, but plenty of good too, used to enjoy hearing people like Disturbed Mandem, who I think are the biggest overlooked North London crew, you don't get Grime like that these days.

 
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Vashdaman said:
Heat was the big grime station in North, but yeah Axe was great because it wasn't so hard to get on, growing up in North London I had loads of mates at the time who were able get their first exposure on Axe, it must have been one of the first internet Grime stations too. Some crap acts for sure, but plenty of good too, used to enjoy hearing people like Disturbed Mandem, who I think are the biggest overlooked North London crew, you don't get Grime like that these days.

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Tbh all those kind of MCs either gave up or moved to UK Rap sadly. Grime took a few step backs in 2010-2013. Guys went back one liners/gimmicks but it was so forced. It's getting better now but still, I prefer the more technical MCs like Ghetts, Dot Rotten etc.

Speaking of Dot, I first heard his favourite bars of mine on Axe FM. He gets wheeled so many times - too bad he's now resigned to just producing as 'Zeph Ellis'.


With regards to pirate radio anyway, I kind of missed out on that generation of pirate radio Grime given my age but I did manage to catch those Kiss FM sets by Logan Sama and Westwood shows before Giggs and the rest of the UK Rap thing really took off. A lot of the classic grime I listen to is done through research but I still love it. Sadly most my age are concerned with what's big now rather than realising how big Grime was in the early 2000s.
 
Tell me about it man, all of those aforementioned mates of mine who did Grime semi-seriously jumped straight onto the rap bandwagon in like 09 onwards and I'm guessing just gave up completely on music in the end. A shame. I stopped following Grime myself from like 09-13 and missed out on loads of decent stuff, like Silencer and all that, and UK rap has never piqued my interest very much honestly, it just became all about who was the "roadest" road man and dead beats, in my opinion. What happened to the fun? I want my video gamey ps2 produccy and off-beat nonsensical lyrics back, man. But it's long gone, and it was good while it lasted. I reckon Grime in it's current incarnation is a bit like a Zombie, it's weird; UK music left Grime behind in the dust like it did all the other prior underground scenes, but this time nothing new and fresh came to replace it. The London kids of 2015 had nothing new and cool to rave to, so Grime kind of got reheated in the microwave and spliced with road rap to get us where we are today. I enjoyed all the fun of the Big H vs P Money clash, and thought that was a proper classic Grime moment purely for Big H's antics, but I just can't get into any the stuff by the new kids on the block.

Pirate radio was a lot of fun, and was where most of the good stuff was, but the great thing thanks to the internet is you can find so much of it saved online on Youtube and whatnot. It's great for me too, as back in the day I could mainly just get Heat and Freeze and some other minor stations, and hardly ever got reception on the big East London ones, but now I can go back hear so much stuff on Youtube. It's still a lot of fun listening to it.

This is a tune though:

 
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Agree. I myself used to make grime instrumentals at the age of like 14-15 but by the time I was 16-17, I'd moved onto Rap, not through choice but because Grime at that time was so boring. Also, Rap artists are a lot easier to get in contact with I find - I've worked with Fekky and Skrapz no problem but an MC on their level? They just ignore people. Another thing I dislike is that Logan Sama and other DJs would show love to really not that great producers - Preditah, Zdot and Faze Miyake are probably the worst, especially compared with people like Rapid, SKITZ, Rude Kid, Maniac, Bless Beats, Dot Rotten, Dexplicit and others that dominated the mid-late 2000s.

Also that's a good point about having nothing to replace it - Rap replaced it but that doesn't feel like UK music to me, it's just British accents over trap beats that sound exactly like their US originators.

I've been to Eskimo Dance a few times but it never gets as hype as I would like it to and how I see in vids on YouTube. It's just middle class kids that think JME is the best the scene has to offer in terms of lyrical content lol.
 
Perhaps not my favourite New Order track per se, but Power, Corruption and Lies is my favourite New Order album and 5 8 6 is definitely my favourite track on it.

 
Massive New Order fan here too. I think Technique is probably my favourite album of theirs (and of all time, in general) but I have a soft spot for Republic and Waiting For The Sirens' Call too. As for their earlier stuff, if I had to boil it down to a couple of favourite songs, it's definitely between Ceremony and Bizarre Love Triangle for me.
 
The second half of this past week has been kinda difficult. I guess my disposition took a turn for the worse and I don't even know why. Still, one of my better decisions in recent weeks was to semi-impulse buy Google Play's £1.99 Album of Last Week, Melanie Martinez's Cry Baby. I really love it, and I am almost disappointed I didn't know about her sooner. I could have probably picked any song from the album, because I love all of them. I guess I like the idea of pop music without the optimism and hope. (Kinda like Passion Pit maybe, but more akin to commercial pop music.)

 
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So I was in Canary Wharf today and, since Bow and Poplar are like next door, I saw Scratchy walking through Cabot Place shopping centre. SO, when I got home I wanted to watch the Scratchy vs Footsie Lord of the Mics clash, sadly Jammer had removed it and put it up on iTunes so couldn't simply YouTube it. I always rooted for Footsie as I'm from E7 also but Scratchy definitely did a lot.


I did, however, see that Wiley and Kano's clash has been uploaded to YouTube. Still one of my favourite clashes ever, it's up there with Skepta vs Devilman.

 
Scratchy what a legend, being brave enough to have hair that long back in those days and not giving a ****, and the weird sounds too. That Wiley vs Kano clash is still the clash of all clashes, even though Kano completely and easily ran away with the win. "Newsround I'm a new found young star" WHOA! I smoked so many splifs to that DVD. Wiley wasn't at his peak yet back then though, it would be a couple more years until then, but by the time of the Nightbus dub Wiley set the levels so high it was inevitably going to be downhill from there. That tune is the best grime tune that will ever be made in my opinion. I'd take that tune over the whole of Boy in the Corner, whoa that's a bit controversial. I guess I just loved the war, which is weird since I hate real life meanness, and I suppose lyrical war is real life meanness, 90% of the lyrics on that Nightbus tune are totally reprehensible, but the energy and passion. You could tell the beef was pretty personal by that point.

 
Yeah Wiley and tbh most of the Grime scene back then were not on Kano's level, he was the first to use multi-syllables etc. I used to be like 'huh?' when people said Ghetts is a Kano clone but I listened to a 2004 set with them (think it was a recorded 2004 Sidewinder set) and yeah you can definitely hear Ghetts was influenced heavily by Kano.

That Boy Better Know vs Movement era was really exciting, it was when I was just getting into Grime and man it was so hype. Tbh I actually prefer Nothing Less to Nightbus Dubplate from Wiley, especially when the beat slows down and Wiley keeps spitting - man like Scorcher couldn't switch it up and had to take a breather in his response lol. I did always think that war would have been better fought between Ghetts and Skepta but I think by then Skepta's warring days were over and Ghetts slewed him on Logan a bit later on imo.


Also, one of the other great tracks out of that beef was Devlin's diss to Wiley... He was particularly savage for a 17 year old.

 
Yeah all of Wiley's tunes over that beat were good, but that Nightbus one is maddest one by a long way for me. That Devlin dub was alright, but he was just saying the same stuff everyone had already said about Wiley by that point, pretty boring in my opinion, but I guess that's a problem most people had when clashing Wiley since so many people had warred him. Wiley beat them all with Nightbus by himself. Although Frisco did slew Scorcher too. I reckon Goodz did a better job of clashing Wiley during their second war than the whole of the Movement did, but again there was just no coming back from that Angry Garden Gnome one, he gave it a good go but there was just no chance. That was great clash though.

 
Wiley and Kano had some great stuff back in the day - it was definitely the sound of an era, and doesn't really exist any more.

I was a massive fan of Devlin's first album - but the stuff he's put out since then really hasn't been to my taste at all.
 
Yeah since Bud, Sweat and Beers he hasn't been the same. The Art Rolling is still his best work - him and Ghetts were such a good tag team.

Devlin - FU ft. Ghetts
 
London City was definitely my favourite of his - I love songs that really capture a sense of place and time, and as someone who's lived all their life in London, that track just felt so spot on in terms of encapsulating the feel of London at night.

In hindsight, I have a certain amount of nostalgia for that weird time where 'pop' grime was a thing, with people like Dizzee Rascal, Tinie Tempah and Tinchy Stryder topping the charts - I was in my first year of Uni then, so it was all you heard in the clubs - quite a change from now where the majority of club tracks are either remixes of US artists or dance tracks from Europe.
 
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