Dizzee Rascal – Boy in Da Corner - Appeared in Portfolio Oct 2003
Dizzee Rascal – Boy in Da Corner [XL Records: 2003]
Dizzee Rascal is this year’s Mercury Music prizewinner for best new artist in the UK, and unless you’ve spent some time hanging out on the streets of East London you’ve probably never heard anything like Boy in Da Corner. He’s an 18-year old with a checkered past and is currently at the top of London’s hip-hop scene. If you can manage to get your hands on a copy of the import, it’s worth a listen just to hear what the BBC says “encompasses everything that is exciting about British music past and present.” His musical style is most accurately described as garage-influenced hip-hop (garage is a type of up tempo, R'nB-ish house music). The beats are sparse, with sounds you might not normally expect to hear in hip-hop, but it’s the vocals that stand out the most. His voice is, well, very odd. If you’ve seen the movie Trainspotting, imagine a slightly more coherent, trebly version of “Spud” on the mic.
Dizzee’s stories are about as bleak as his surroundings in London’s east end, but his lyrics are a far cry from the macho pimp stuff that is so dominant in American music. Take the single “I Luv You,” for example. In it, he rhymes about teenagers dealing with an unwanted pregnancy: “when you said [I Love You] she forgot other boys / it’s over you better start buying the toys.” He blends harsh music and words together to create a new disjointed musical space that’s captivating - if only for the novelty of it all.
Americans have been exporting hip-hop overseas for years. It’s starting to come back around and I for one am looking forward to the next British invasion. If you can’t wait for the US release of Boy in Da Corner, you can actually download the ring tone version of “I Luv You” for your cell phone at www.dizzeerascal.co.uk. Now how much more European can you get than that?