Hip Hop Ain’t Dead, It’s Just Emigrated

          Recently Simon Reynolds wrote a piece for your Guardian music blog entitled, “When Will Hip Hop Hurry Up And Die?” Although excellently written, well informed and with some shrewd observation, it infuriated me. No doubt US hip hop warrants analysis but what about the UK? The Guardian, being a UK publication has a predominantly British-based readership, so surely a critique of the UK hip hop scene is more pertinent?

In 2007 I picked up a Skitz mix tape from a guy selling them on the street in Brighton’s town centre. On this CD was a track by Doc Brown over Nas’s ‘Hip Hop is Dead’ beat. Doc Brown’s re-interpretation included the chorus, “hip hop ain’t dead it’s just emigrated; now it’s in the UK living in my basement”. Walking through any major city in the United Kingdom will provide evidence that supports the Doc’s theory.

On Friday I was blessed enough to catch London Zoo road block the mini venue Micro on Brighton’s blustery seafront. The group’s primary MC is Dabbla, whose sharp wit and graphic rhymes depict an honest and entertaining picture of life as a London noughty. And this is what really distinguishes UK hip hop from our bonds on the other side of the pond. For over a decade English rappers have been refreshingly down to earth, hilariously self deprecating and often brilliantly incisive when it comes to reciting the woes of the world. Perhaps it’s this failure to fetishize bling, bitches and 24 inch chromes that has stopped them from reaching the dizzying monetary heights of their US counterparts.   

The UK hip hop scene has got a rich and diverse texture from Jehst and Braintax’s post-industrial, bleak northern outlook to Taskforce and Skinny Man’s music from the council estate corner. These guys are wordsmiths who could challenge any of America’s best lyricists, just check out ‘Alphabet Assassin’ by Doc Brown’s fellow Poisonous Poet, Lowkey. This alphabetical alliteration track bursts with dactylic put-downs and urban bard big-ups. But hip hop’s reaches branch out from the initial music to reach the realms of art, performance and education. In 2004 Das from the Rarekind graffiti gallery and record shop was one of the mentors on Channel 4’s programme ‘Faking It’. Graffiti’s roots are obviously in hip hop and his involvement in this show demonstrated that not only can the genre inspire youths to grow up as legitimate and savvy businessmen, but it also highlighted the heavy family focus inherent in the scene. Das welcomed the alien candidate, a middleclass country boy named James, wholeheartedly into his fam – his inner circle of family and friends, or “brothers from other mothers”. And this particular episode of the show confirmed the sense of community that UK hip hop continues to evoke.

Reynolds even acknowledges the flaws of the current defeatest zeitgeist for “Death of…” pieces but goes on to say “No genre went gently into that good night: they all clung on, cluttering up the musical landscape. This not only made it harder for new things to emerge...” Whereas this might be true for the states, in the UK we’ve had a recent insurgence of energetic dance music like Skream’s dark dubstep, Boy Better Know’s hyper grime and La Roux’s ghetto falsetto synth-pop, all flourishing kid categories from the parental hip hop.

Of course there are break through acts such as Dizzy Rascal, N-Dubs and Tynchy Styder who often get compassionate cover from Observer Music Monthly, and although these pedestal examples certainly earn their place in the hall of fame, the rest of the artists get ignored, or simply dismissed into the homogenous mess of the “hoody” subculture. It would seem that we’d rather regale superficial American juke-box rap than our own grass-roots efforts. There are a few saving graces; it’s rightly so that The Streets’ ‘Original Pirate Material’ should be voted album of the decade, but what about the other DJs, MCs and Producers lurking in Mike Skinners shadow?

In mainstream publications, UK hip hop still isn’t getting the recognition it deserves and perhaps if it did, then the proponents could enjoy some of the spoils of success. Not necessarily the meaningless sex with long lines of beautiful women or piles of cocaine that would make Tony Montana sneeze, but earning a decent wage from their rhythmic contributions so that they can afford to keep on creating and brightening up our winters of discontent.