Do It!

The totem pole stuck under a bridge at Caribana in Toronto. Photo by Wes Allen

News just in: Official figures (which we got off some kid on the back of the 38 bus) show that Logan Sama’s grime show on Kiss FM is now getting almost more listeners in London on a Monday night than its closest two rivals, Radio 1 and Choice FM, put together. So while bratty teenagers who spend all day at home masturbating to harrowing accounts of sexual abuse in their mum’s copy of Woman’s Weekly complain that us continually featuring grime is a personal vendetta against them, there are at least 50,000 kids who disagree. So far, rumours of a prime time grime show on Capital FM presented by Dr. Fox are unsubstantiated, but watch this space, innit. Logan also made an appearance at Tinchy Stryder’s recent album launch at Dirty Canvas. Wiley and Ghetto swung it out on the mic and Ruff Sqwad put on a great show until they started performing some shitty new Rapid-produced Southern hip-hop tune called “Monster Music”. While Ruff Sqwad played, Peaches Geldof DJed in the bar to three people, including one MC who was trying it on with her all night but kept getting air. The surprise highlights of the night were P Money from Fatal Assassins and Eskibeat’s Chipmunk, who both merked. Incidentally, Esco (look out for his new mixtape Bars to Bricks) was rumoured to be signed to Wiley’s Eskibeat label, but it’s not really true. It was just something Wiley made up on the RWD forum—his new favourite hangout. He announced on there recently that he’s leaving Big Dada and going it alone. Another really smart move! In other grime-related news, the Prancehall mixtape is finally done and can be downloaded for free at prancehall.com. It contains dubs by Mavado and Baby Cham, Jammer freestyling over Britney Spears songs, grime remixes of tracks from the Bugsy Malone soundtrack and a five-minute ode by Ce’Cile to Prancehall’s big stick. Earlier this month we travelled to Toronto for a huge carnival called Caribana. The weekend kicks off on Friday night when it’s traditional for all the ballers with nice rides to drive through the city. It’s always a good time—30 dudes on Kawasakis and that sort of thing, like in the “Ruff Ryders Anthem” video. We felt out of place rolling through in a Ford Focus but at least no one called us out on it. On the Sunday we went to the parade where some of the outfits were out of control. Our favourite get-up of the day had to be the woman rigged up in the enormous wheeled Native American totem pole. Unfortunately, it got stuck at a bridge and had to be dismantled. We later caught the legendary Barrington Levy at an outdoor show. It was amazing and reminded us a lot of the Jamaican Sting events where the band performs mock reloads for big tunes. A few weeks later back in London, we grabbed our stab-proof Kevlar hoodies and went along to the infinitely more violent Notting Hill Carnival. The whole thing is a weird ritualistic affair for groups of beefed-up future sex offenders to go around molesting girls and drooling over dancers on floats, while puffing out their chests and starting fights with anyone they can, but the music is great. On the Sunday, we saw Marcie Phonix and Hypa Fenn going through the crowds handing out flyers and someone that looked exactly like Sniper E selling dodgy hotdogs in someone’s front garden. On the Monday, despite being sprayed with tear gas and getting a gun pulled right next to us, we had some fun at the Rampage stage. We didn’t hear much grime at all, apart from “Forward Riddim” which still gets a massive reaction. We also managed to catch the last five minutes of Tony Matterhorn on another stage as the carnival was ending. Then, on the last train home, we were treated to a fight between two girls trying to bottle each other. We’ll leave you with a very brief interview we did recently with Sean Kingston, the guy behind seemingly everyone in the world’s new favourite song, “Beautiful Girls”.

Tinchy Stryder and Peaches Geldof at Dirty Canvas. Photo by Riaz Phillips

Vice: Hey, did you star as Leroy the boxer in Bugsy Malone? You look like him. Sean Kingston: What? No, I didn’t star in that. I did acting when I was younger, though. I went to acting school and I enjoyed it a lot. Is it true your producer, JR Rotem, hooked up with Britney Spears? He did take Britney Spears on a date, but as far as him saying that he had sex with Britney Spears and all that stuff, that was wrong. Was this before or after she shaved her head? After. Would you say she’s a beautiful girl? Erm, she is, she is. My definition of a beautiful girl is Beyoncé, though. What if Beyoncé shaved her head, would she still be a beautiful girl? Yeah. She has a nice body. She’s not going to shave her head, though. PRANCEHALL & EASYCHORD