rap
CD: Aggro Santos - Aggro Santos.comThursday, 27 January 2011While the world of indie bands is, with a very few exceptions, colonised by posh kids with well-conditioned hair and earnest agendas, this country's pop is feeling more like the voice of those who actually consume it than it has for many years. The... Read more... |
Violent grime on the increaseThursday, 11 November 2010Grime music, following its emergence from (mostly) East London clubs and pirate radio stations in the very early 2000s, was archetypical music of urban disaffection. Although it produced characters like the rambunctious Jammer and the oddly... Read more... |
Odd Future, The Drop, Stoke NewingtonSaturday, 06 November 2010Given the somewhat viral nature of Odd Future's rapidly flourishing notoriety, it's both appropriate and a little ironic that their debut UK performance should take place in the basement of a pub in a part of north London where the underground doesn... Read more... |
Janelle Monáe, KOKOWednesday, 08 September 2010The video for this Kansas fantasist’s new single shows Monáe in harshly lit close-up singing the adrenalin-charged “Cold War” directly to camera. But then halfway through the song her concentration goes and she starts laughing and then crying,... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe: Doc Brown/ Imran YusufThursday, 12 August 2010Doc Brown comes on stage in the hip-hop uniform of all-black clothing, lots of bling and black-out shades, and starts rapping “It’s all about me” in suitably bombastic tones. But Brown isn’t all he seems, as the rap peters out, the gear comes off... Read more... |
Being N-Dubz, Channel 4Tuesday, 22 June 2010Tulisa, Dappy and Fazer of North London pop phenomenon N-Dubz – or, if you prefer, Tula Constavlos, her cousin Dino Constavlos and their schoolfriend Richard Rawson – are easy to mock, and Channel 4 know it. The first episode of this showbiz slice-... Read more... |
Rinse and repeatThursday, 17 June 2010Today Rinse FM, London's leading pirate radio station, announced it has been granted a legal broadcast licence after 16 years of illicit transmissions. It's almost impossible to overstate how potentially momentous this event is for the UK's most... Read more... |
Pop-Up Poetry, UdderbellyWednesday, 09 June 2010Performance poetry, I am told, is the new rock ’n’ roll. Poetry nights may vie with comedy at venues up and down the country, and a new generation of twentysomething urban poets and rappers are certainly strutting their stuff, but I’m yet to be... Read more... |
Choc Quib Town, Jazz CaféMonday, 24 May 2010I love a world music gig where there’s hardly a single world music fan present - or for that matter, a world music journalist. By this I mean that it’s a joy to be at a concert where the audience seems to mainly consist of people from the band’s... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Musician Ben Drew, aka Plan BMonday, 12 April 2010Ben Drew, who records as Plan B, is busy on the promotional rounds. He has spent the day at the BBC's Maida Vale Studios being interviewed by Fearne Cotton and others for TV and radio, and performed his new single "She Said" as well as an ebullient... Read more... |
Pied Piper, Barbican & Into the Hoods, QEHWednesday, 16 December 2009Hip hop is the new ballet. Instead of mostly girls in tutus, mostly boys in tracksuits; instead of pointe-shoes, trainers; instead of arabesques and fouettés, handstands and windmills; above all, instead of nice, nasty. The smell on stage is burning... Read more... |
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