Do It!

Ev Starr with Roadside Gs. Photo by Sushi Mane

Dirty Danger and Lee Brasco at Do It! Photo by Elizabeth Sankey

or this issue, we spent three weeks living in the back of a Ford Nova parked behind a skip in a Derby council estate in an attempt to fully infiltrate the niche/bassline house/bassline garage scene. During the day, we grafted away in a tyre factory, and at night we sniffed glue and held parties in our motor, pumping out tunes on our tape player to anyone who would listen. Grime journalism legend Matt Mason first told you about niche in the Drugs Issue, 2005, and since then, we’ve been keeping an eye on what’s been happening. The biggest club nights are in places like Leeds and Sheffield, and have names like Naughty But Niche, Bassline Heaven and United Bassline. The best stuff comes out on labels like Heatseeker, More 2 Da Floor and DJ Q’s Q Recordings. Even grime producers Dexplicit and Mr Virgo have been trying their hand at the sound for a little while now. We like to play it when we DJ because people actually dance to it, unlike a lot of the current boring, nu-skool drum and bass-influenced dubstep. We dropped by FWD>> the other night and almost every tune was built around some horrible, wobbly Twisted Individual-type drop. Basically, Tempa are becoming the Breakbeat Kaos of dubstep, which we guess makes Benga the scene’s DJ Fresh (although “Night” which he did with Coki is great). It seems that only producers like Tes La Rock, Matty G and Shackleton are bothered about making interesting stuff that doesn’t sound like a massive bong-shaped bouncy castle. Apart from Trim’s mixtapes, the only good grime release recently has been Durrty Goodz’s “Axiom EP”. In terms of quality, it’s better than anything else we’ve heard in a while, so it’s lucky he got off that murder charge last year otherwise grime would be fucked. In other news, Kano’s doing his thing with a new album called London Town. It features collaborations with housewife favourites Kate Nash and Craig David. Good luck with that, Kane. Our friend DJ Ev Starr from Toronto was in London the other week getting South London’s Roadside Gs to lay down some freestyles for him in a studio in Bermondsey. Ev has previously worked on tapes with D-Block and Dipset, but he was keen to hear how grime guys would sound over beats from the US. Even though the engineer was possessed with all the finesse of a stoned paraplegic and had the microphone turned upside down for half of the session, we still managed to get them spitting over stuff like “Pop Lock and Drop It”. You’ll be able to hear that and some other exclusives on Ev’s next mixtape. Look out for that. Speaking of mixtape DJs, the Palestinian n-bomb dropper DJ Khaled’s album is possibly the worst thing we’ve heard all year. We’re not sure when it became acceptable for hip-hop producers to take their cues from the Emmerdale theme but that’s basically what Cool and Dre have done with their production work on this album. The whole thing is smothered in these sappy pianos. It’s the kind of over-the-top melodramatic detritus that the Vietnamese weed dealers back in North America love to sing along to while cruising around in their Honda Civics. To top it off, you get Khaled shouting retarded shit like: “I represent loyalty! I am loyalty! I am the definition of loyalty!” over the intro to every track. Moving right along, Atlanta’s Pastor Troy is one rapper that has definitely been slept on. He was the guy from Lil Jon’s “Throw it Up” who sounded like a howling banshee. Shortly thereafter he started beefing with BME and left the label. If things had worked out, he would have been a household name by now. Anyway, he just put out an album called Tool Musiq that is really fucking good. Check it out. DJ OG Ron C is another dude who we have to big up. He used to do shit with Mike Watts on the Swishahouse label, and has released a whole series of R&B tapes called Fuck Action, now in its impressive 49th instalment. That is a lot of fuck action! Ron is our favourite screwed and chopped DJ in Houston, where apparently playing the sound of T-Pain’s voice slowed down to a demonic crawl in your dad’s Dodge Charger is guaranteed to get you laid. We’ve also been listening to a lot of uptempo dancehall riddims recently, like Tremor, Cheerful, Raging Bull and Sativa. Munga’s “Bad From Mi Born” vocal of Sativa is easily the best on the riddim, but we won’t bother to hype him like everyone else is doing. “Pick It Up And Drop It” by Sean Paul on the Madness riddim is also something we can’t stop playing. With its trancey synths, it may mark the start of a new scene called trancehall. Or maybe not. Seriously though, go and track down the Madness riddim—it sounds like Higher Altitude from last year, but faster and catchier. BTW, did we mention our friend Blaise is starting a new dancehall night called Joyride every Friday at the Horse & Groom in East London, where we will be residents? Check myspace.com/joyridelondon for more info. Finally, the most recent Do It! party with DJ Assault, Ruff Sqwad and Starkey was voted the best night ever by Eazy-E, ‘Pac and Big L. Thanks to everyone who came and congratulations to us. PRANCEHALL AND EASYCHORD