grime and the hardcore continuum

at some point pre-metalheadz and post-prodigy i'd say there was lots of hardcore floating around that was "for real", in that it references the real situations and conditions of the millieu ... even a track like "RIP" is rooted in the real insofar as it compares the rave experience to soundclash culture (compare to "hyperspeed" or "g-force" which compare it to space travel or god knows what!). and even in 96-97, after tracks like "metropolis" and "to shape the future", when it went all bladerunner on one side, you had this parallel jump-up explosion, rooted in y'know, sexuality and aggression and whatnot...

i think one of the other interesting things is the role of the voice, while the voice has always been central (and yea, mcs on pirates riiiight the way through), not on the tracks in the same way, ie: not mc focused. the others might all have been mc-heavy at club/on pirate, but not really on the tracks, not in the same way as grime

ragga-jungle is interesting in this, because that was when for many in the scene it got too hip hop, too mc oriented, and there was a severe backlash against that from many jungle originalists, a schism within jungle which you could say partially eventually led to its demise much later, possibly.

i think the london-hardcore-continuum has 2 key elements. 1) london, 2) house music. i think the first element is still there, for all the reasons outlined above, but the 2nd is gone, in a wider sense too, and there is a realignment with hip hop as centre rather than merely key element

northwest london overlooked in all this, harlesden etc

what about the london-hardcore-continuum pre 92, does it exist? in what way? i think not, due to too much focus on belgium/america, but the key elements outlined by others above were all there, so why is that not part of the lhc?

Just thinking about all of the "old skool" 2 step heads hating on grime and saying that there's no "garage" in it...

yeah i think you could trace the prehistory of the 'Nuum back before '92, shut up and dance obivously, but the elements are coalescing all through the eighties--pirates etc. probably even further back -- i just read this book Bass Culture on reggae and they actually had dubplates and prerelease specials in the UK in the late 1950s!

i really think there could be a 2step reinvention soonish, the ladies massive aren't digging the Grime (judging by some things i overheard n the basement of blackmarket last summer, anyway), they will assert their Will. the fact that grime raves have no dance element just people nodding to rhymes sort of DEMANDS a return to groove at some point. whether it's 4/4 house vibe as strongo imagines or 98/99 2step we'll have to see, it's almost long enough now since 2step that it could be revived.

i dug out a 99 tape for someone the other day, and it brought a tear to my eye -- the music was so criss and glossy, it was like the scene manufacturing its own sunshine. the sheer sound quality of it was stunning, so bright and clean c.f the cruddy sonix of grime

Adam, "Champagne Dance" is from late '01. The Destruction Mix is an interesting version to track down because it sounds very much like common grime-pop, whereas the original was on more of a soca-beat tip a la K2 Family's "Bouncin' Flow" or the Steve Gurley mix of Zed Bias's "Neighbourhood". The Sticky mix is also tops.

Re: a potential return to house - I'm uncertain as to whether it's worth closely following the urban house scene. It's where a lot of the good times/dancing part of the 2-step fanbase have gone but I have a suspicion that it's not where the next big twist will come from if only because its leaders (Dreem Teem etc.) are unlikely to have two shots at glory. What's been true of every twist since jungle has been the generational passing of the baton: although there were a lot of ex-junglists in speed garage none of the big producers were ever *that* big in jungle (even Steve Gurley's post-Foul Play work as Rogue Unit is relatively obscure). Likewise the only big 2-step producers to have even stayed on speaking terms with grime are Sticky and DND, both of which only really "emerged" as forces to contend with in '01.

If there has been any twists and turns in urban house worth noting, it's been the major-scale revival and intensification of the Todd Edwards influence - some of the tunes have astonishingly complex crosshatching (the best I've heard being Drama's "Keeper of the Keys", which cuts up the phrase "I love raving" (!) into a thing of ethereal beauty). Who knows if this will bear fruit though?

I think fiddo is onto something with the R&B mention though, as this is where I keep hearing the female audience has gone. When I interviewed Sabrina from Mis-Teeq early last year she said that Eye Candy was more R&B/dancehall focused as opposed to garage because that's what all their friends were listening/dancing to and they wanted/needed to make an album that girls would like. But what, apart from Mis-Teeq, is this audience listening to? What music is being made for them?

What I could sort of imagine would be some sort of reconnection between this lost female audience and the slowed-down, more musical sound of half-time grime. It's timely of Prima to bring up "Thuggish Ruggish" because that's a tune which has the potential to unite a lot of different audiences: grime, 2-step, hip hop, R&B, dancehall...

Alternative: an R&B/garage/broken beat/house fusion a la Mis-Teeq's "Eye Candy" (the actual track) which strikes me as being simultaneously one of the most brazenly physical, most feminine, and most startlingly new-sounding things I heard of in '02. Although I never *did* find out who produced it (it was bizarrely and shamefully left off the Oz version of the album).

have you heard knightz of the roundtable 'baby'? (it says baby instead of boy)

just blaze seems to be every garage bods favourite producer.
but more and more uk hiphop (new generation stuff, kalsanekoff, execution squad, rather than your talneted but slightly worthy blak twangs and tys) getting played too.

fluidity is my favourite musical quality, from those breakbeats, to twostep, to just blaze, to target, to james brown etc etc
momentum and fluidity. them two things, and yeah, light ya ass,danny weed, grindin=anit fluidity

(i'd say the beats and cam's chat is intrinsic tho, but this for elsewhere)

i have not heard that kotrt no, i heard 'the siege' tho cos it got onto 12. good stuff, i got my eye on them defo. new just blaze ain't what it used to be, too rigid now (that poison rmx tho, oh!) maybe all grime is secretly a kanye/just blaze tussle, i can imagine everyone riding 'encore' now

its still there
thats the skinny man, finsbury park axis

2-Step did break around the time that Britpop was also at its apex, and that genre and attendant excesses are always contributed to "the Blair effect", so why not indeed?

i don't want to overstate the amount of people involved in crime but,it is a big thing. and if you or even some of your friends are involved in that, whether its nicking cars and selling them on to car yards or individuals, going on shopping sprees with stolen credit cards, jacking, selling drugs whatever, that means pretty much that you'll have friends go to jail, get grassed up, have the police fabricate evidence, get stabbed, or shot if you're unlucky. it means constant paranoia, police and rivals, if you're weak youll get robbed, you might see people you know get addicted to things, you'll find tht with a criminal record you can't get a job no matter the state of the economy, it's a trap in other words, a trap that even if you escape will defintely claim some of your mates if you move in those circles.
'it's just one big cycle here'
everybody involved in making grime has involvement in that world, everybody, even if just by association.

crime doesnt go away anyway, when theres more money sloshing around, theres more to rip. look at hardcore, happy music right, but how much crime was there involved at that time? loads

i think the difference is, when theres a downturn, perhaps it strikes a wider chord, and when music succeeds, it does so by breaking out of its immediate demographic

perhaps but the difference was that the vast majority of the music's creators themselves were NOT involved in serious crime.

ok so if you say drugs is not a core element of the "Nuum" then we'll ignore that, but the influence of house music is now almost completely erased from the Nuum's latest thread...

Main Auditorium : Old Skool Special

RATPACK
DJ EZ (Kiss 100FM)
NICKY BLACKMARKET
SLIMZEE
DJ YANKEE
GEORGE D (Country Club)

MCs : Everson Allen, Ranking, Special MC

Arena 2 : UK Garage / RnB Classics

PIED PIPER
STEVE COURTNEY
ENTERTAINMENT CREW
JOHN RUSSELL
DJ KV

Arena 3 : hosted by TEKNOLOGY. Jungle, Drum and Bass

PHAZE-ONE
DJ FADER
EM-TEK
DOUGHBOY & CARNAGE
MC FLEXA

Upthread you get a lot of stuff abt 2step soundtracking the 'late nineties boom'. Obviously it was the late nineties: but has anyone here thought about how that was a boom exactly, and who benefits from a boom?

I mean the big effects of the 'bust' (which doesn't compare with 1931, 1981) haven't been particularly street-level: far as I know there's been no increase in unemployment, so in fact some things are better now than in 1988-92, economically.

The big economic 'downturn' has affected the financial markets -- but this means pension schemes, banks, insurance companies.

Apart from the international scene, what makes 2004 'grimier,' economically, politically, socially, than 1999?

72 results found:

anyway isnt the main diff, the real pivotal switch from pre-grime dance to grime that the MCs are the real draws now, not the DJs nor the producers?

also, the new skepta tune duppy is interesting cos its a 4-4 tune, and honestly, its all the better for it. its dancey, when roll deep Mc over it, its got bounce, some movement, its not all stupidly stiff

the other thing about grime that might tie it to some previous other dance musics is that a lot of it is so amateurish

LOL. this hasnt exactly changed has it?

"sometimes i think the more the uk mcs try to imitate and assimilate to american standards of mcing they'll lose what they had before, the english quirkiness and parochial charm. while not gaining an iota in terms of a chance of breaking into america"

totally OTM
basically grime is an outlet for everyone who wanted to make rap music in the UK but felt uk hip hop was too derivative and unoriginal, so gravitated towards grime with optimism. but most of the MCs havent really been up to standard, and me personally, i miss not so much the patter, but just the difference between pay as u go and the type of stuff wiley tries to make these days, all the energy on record is mostly gone from his voice, the speed is AWOL, all that early more fire and PAUG and so solid stuff was so good cos their voices werent like hip hop ones, the flows werent, the beats def werent, and it was fresh, and individual....theyre trying to concentrate on ther content when most of the time, they dont really have any. they should stick with the flowing side of things, cos really, not many mcs are good outside of the pirates, i dont know why, maybe its a lasting element of the old rave/jungle MC pitfalls

i'd like to have heard 'duppy', but cameo's irrelevant lately, lioness blog is slacking and the rinse fm stream never ever works. and the forum's locked so you can't get old sets. frankly unacceptable. and when are aftershock getting their supposed radio 1 slot?

(if 'duppy' totally sounds like broken beat then i might have heard it! with an uptown top ranking 'no pop no style' sample intro? coulda sworn it was a jammer beat mind)

also i don't think worry (meh) over american influence covers only mcing - ruff sqwad are (still!) so far up dipset's arse sometimes it's getting silly now.

but then when ruff sqwad spit over an untouched mop/heatmakerz instrumental and release it as a b-side... really what is the point.

*cue all of the internet pointing and laughing at hold tight the hypocrite*

fucker's points have been done to death everywhere you look.

im up for some reactionary nostalgia a la 2001

more gun crime in london?
its hard to tell sometimes with grime how pronounced the influx of urban decay in london really is or if its just part and parcel of the actual genre, i.e. its de facto POV

errm so:

still tippin, dipset, 'running' by the game, jamrock, summer bounce riddim, the throw-riko-a-bone dancehall mix of 'shake a leg' is on scoobay riddim, what else

i dunno

reactionary nostalgia it is then

New Kornel Kovacs LP has some poptimist-tinged broadcasts from the continuum.

https://kornelkovacs.bandcamp.com/album/hotel-koko

Usch is some Nordic garage, works for me but maybe too polished for some. Get Goofy comes a little harder — I’m not sure the vocal totally works tho.

A lot of chatter about the new Burial release but I it’s hard for me to get worked up about, he tends to be same-y imo.

I do think we should have the intention of reviving every different ardkore continuum-adjacent thread if possible.

honestly i think RS might be one of the most overrated crews in grime
sure they have some moments of brilliance/greatness, but they usually pad it out with real sub-dipset crap
they had underground which was amazing, then on the b side they put that rubbish heatmakers-gone-grime track
i want to like them cos grime bloggers love em so much but they seem really inconsistent. i think they just want to make hip-hop really, but somehow ended up in grime (thinking about that now, that might a common dilemma)
i wonder when the next wiley agenda adjustment will come, its been quite a while.
― hi, Monday, 31 October 2005 14:28 (sixteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

That's just an absolute crock. Ruff Sqwad >>>

why is it the hardcore continuum and not the reggae continuum or the disco continuum or something else? what motivates critical attention on this lineage over others? is it something about establishing a narrative throughline for specifically british-based electronic/dance musics? and is it supposed to be prescriptive in some way (which would make sense of bizarre things like jazz influences in jungle being talked about as somehow extraneous or intrusive)?