Yeah that’s right, I fucking love it- I love lurid coloured Nikes, I love people wearing those obnoxious no lens Cazal glasses…

Yeah that’s right, I fucking love it- I love lurid coloured Nikes, I love people wearing those obnoxious no lens Cazal glasses and I love fruity looking rappers unashamed that you can see the outline of their cock and balls through their skinny jeans. LOVE IT! But I digress…I’m aware hipster rap and the bulk of the Philly scene isn’t new anymore but I had a second wind of admiration after seeing Spank Rock at Fabric this weekend and it got me thinking about the UK’s own music scene.

So, granted the bulk of the warm-up acts for Mr Rock were generic hipster fluff usually involving two blokes bouncing round shouting over Diplo, I mean they were shit but they were fun at least. But on came Spank Rock and cue me being pleasantly surprised. This dude can put on a fucking show; I bumped to ‘Bump’ and I did indeed shake it till his dick turned racist to ‘Race Riot on the Dancefloor’. That shit was fun! Obviously rap purists have bitched endlessly about these queer looking wannabes à la The Cool Kids, Plastic Little, Spank Rock etc.etc. being mediocre trash. Yes, they’re not fucking Biggie but at least they struck out and thought it’d be fun to experiment. Their beats are different and the lyrics make me smile, so boo fucking hoo.

Anyway getting to my real point, pre-Spank Rock’s set I met this stereotypical Brooklyn hipster on his first time in London. We had a very pretentious chat about how the UK is always producing exciting, influential music, how he was just getting to grips with our silly talented dubstep producers and had just discovered the mighty Pure Garage back catalog. But then I brought up UK hip hop. There was a split second the crumpled look on his face made me think he might give me a swift punch in the crotch and just walk off. Apparently he “just didn’t get it” and I couldn’t blame him. UK hip-hop is the equivalent of those Columbine massacre kids that went mental and shot all their classmates. Just kinda insular and convinced the world is against them.

…look away now if you’re an overly sensitive UK hip-hop head because I’m going to make some sweeping generalisations and probably piss off some musicians who I have a lot of respect for…but fuggit…

UK hip hop will never blow because the scene doesn’t want it to. Those that have experienced mild commercial success have either had it fleetingly or obtained it by experimenting with newer, trendier genres and been criticised for pandering to the mainstream. If UK hip hop were to takeover the charts the scene would bitch relentlessly about how it’s lost its credibility. I suppose it’s a very British attribute to wallow in despair and romanticise the underdog. Fair enough stick to your guns, don’t give into The Man, keep the boom-bap dream alive, blah blah blah oooh or y’know ‘keep it real’ *shudder*. But how you gonna get so precious about a genre that isn’t even ours? For example I literally cannot get it into my skull how there’s often this weird snobbery towards the popularity of grime. If anything, isn’t grime the real UK hip-hop? I mean it’s evolved here, the artists rhyme in their own accents and it has it’s own distinct sound?

That in mind the real UK hip-hop gems for me have been the tracks that sounded different from the expected, not produced with some hip-hop cookie cutter. I’m not saying that Jehst slipping into a pair of nut suffocating neon pink skinny jeans and rapping about fixed gear bikes or Skinnyman having a jaunt round Hoxton in ironic gold chains will revive UK…but something…anything! What significant changes have there been since the UK hip hop heyday? I mean where is it going exactly? I’m asking not beefing, so someone enlighten me and prove me viciously wrong!

Tags: Hipster Rap, Spank Rock, UK Hip Hop