Tinchy Stryder is at Number 3 in the UK pop single charts with this

whattthef*#@!!!!!!!

That's TINCHY STRYDER of the RUFF SQWAD (legendary grime cru, a rinse FM session by whom i actually sat in on while doing a grime piece for spin, thanks to the intercession of martin 'blackdown' clark...

Grime's arc of development in terms of the underground/overground thing is about as weird as any i can think of

It starts at the top of the charts (oxide & neutrino 'bound 4 da reload', so solid '21 seconds', both Number Ones), goes back underground, wins media praise and global hipster-blogger interest, gathers itself for an onslaught on the mainstream, has a measure of success (dizzee, "Pow", few other non-Top 10 semi-hits) but ultimately fails, fades from view, then has this bizarre resurrection last year at the very toppermost of the poppermost with Wiely's "Rolex", that godawful Dizzee #1, and now this Tinchy trance-rap that would be too cheesy to even get dropped at Gatecrasher back in the day

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

sort of vaguely on this theme (the noughties as the decade of pop entropy)i've been pulling together the audio portion of this event and one of the tracks i dug out was Truesteppers's "Out of Your Mind", yes the one made by Jonny L and Kid Andy with Posh Spice and Dane Bowers on vocals.... and what struck me about it, apart from what an incredible production it was (neurofunk d&B mashed into uk r&B), was that it's SLATHERED in AutoTune. Now that was August 2000.... But last year, 2008, that was The Year of AutoTune... last year's Big Thing was an aesthetic of excessively AutoTuning vocals.... And to think there's people who'll try to tell you that pop's pantry is not bare!