grime defectors
when i was in Istanbul in December i watched some of the local pop channels on the hotel TV, it was all the stuff you'd expect, will.i.am and flo rida and "dynamite", ... Euro hitz and Turkish takes on all of the above... and then Shakira comes on, and I'm thinking I don't really see the appeal, and then this cheeky chappy pops up all of a sudden!
i had to smile. boy's gone far hasn't he? wasn't going to Corner himself, knew there was a world out there beyond the ends and beyond the Mercury/middlebrow/stifled-by-acclaim zone...
talking of ship-of-grime jumpers, the whole UK Bass world (FACT-Dissensus-blogs etc) not said a peep about Plan B's remarkable self-reinvention. if i hadn't stopped off in HMV in Heathrow on the way back and seen the CD in the Top 40 racks on the wall jostling alongside Kanye and Tron I might well have never known that The Defamation of Strickland Banks even came out. now I read that his Amy Winehouse/Duffy retro-soul make-over's gone triple-platinum in the UK and is about to get launched in the States.
must say I never rated Mr B particularly. that whole acoustic guitar/mind-of-a-lunatic style lyric-scenarios combo (very Odd Future now I think of it, although Odd Future themselves are very Big Black if you think about it).... not convinced. not enticed either.
his new shtick though -- it's a bit like The Commitments re-directed by Guy Ritchie
christ how depressing
by which i mean: i can remember when this stuff was revived the first time around, in the early Eighties