Do It!

Plastician and Skepta at Tel Aviv airport

Skepta on the Stansted Express. Photos by Alex Sturrock

Skepta (fucking again) with a bloody Ian from Black Lips. Photo by Queenie

i “friends”. The best grime story we heard this month was from one of our photographer pals. He stumbled across Skepta at Stansted airport on the way to Israel, who was having the contents of his baggage emptied by security. He spotted a bowler hat, a My Pet Monster toy, strawberry-flavoured condoms, a leopard print thong and 14 packets of Jaffa Cakes. Okay, not really, but he went and chatted up a transvestite to prove it was a woman (which it wasn’t) in the departure lounge, and later made best friends with an old lady sat next to him on the flight across. After touching down in Tel Aviv, when the baggage reclaim machine broke down Skepta climbed the conveyor belt to fetch other people’s bags like a hero, before going off to play at a party celebrating Israeli Independence Day. Apparently grime is getting really big out there—you can see loads of Hasidic Jews bouncing around in their Boy Better Know tees in the streets, with their curly locks shaking from side to side. Surprisingly, there have been some pretty decent grime nights in the last month or so. FWD>> recently held JME’s single launch party, where a bunch of MCs like Footsie, God’s Gift and Skepta showed up. (Strangely, Skepta was also spotted at the Black Lips’ show at Cargo). The reaction Gift got when he spat his old school bars was the craziest we’ve ever seen at FWD>> (where guys mostly spend all night standing around picking their noses, smoking shit weed and speaking in a cod Jamaican accent). People were literally moshing. Also performing was up-and-coming Bristol producer Joker, whose music sounds like a souped-up grime version of Timbaland before fatty started hanging out with Elton John and beefing with Scott Storch over who had the bigger man tits. If you read this column last month, and were paying close attention (as we hope you would be) then you should know we were heading to the country known as the United States of America. It was a really fleeting visit and we didn’t have time to see any live shows, so could only lock in to HOT 97 to get a fix of some new shit. Unfortunately we didn’t get much apart from being forced to listen to “This Is Why I’m Hot” and that really annoying “It’s Me Bitches!” Swizz Beatz tune about nine times an hour. On a more positive note, DJ Khaled promoting his forthcoming album on Wendy Williams’s show one evening was the funniest thing on the radio we’ve heard in a while. The interview consisted largely of him shouting, “We the best!” in her face a million times while trying to press that explosion sound effect button over and over again. Halarious, as those crazy New Yorkers might say. When not busy listening to the radio, we headed down to the Fulton Mall in Brooklyn to pick up some clothes, but decided to pass on the size XXXXL printed tees of Warner Brothers characters (Tim Westwood take note) and instead opted for some new mixtapes. We picked up a copy of Dipset’s long awaited More Than Music Vol. 2, which is a good mix of bangers that sound like the Rocky soundtrack and more low-key jams for the summer. Presumably Killa “computers computing” Cam was too busy making embarrassing comments on some prime-time special about rap or trying to recover from getting merked by 50 Cent, because he only shows up on one solo tune. Brooklyn’s Uncle Murder is a guy to check if you’re into that hardcore shit about rocking fitteds and robbing people. He’s been working with Green Lantern and was recently signed to Roc-a-Fella, so you might want to watch out for him this year. Cop Target Practice with DJ Messiah for some of his latest stuff. Soon we were out of New York and heading to San Francisco. The Bay feels like some kind of self-contained universe where local artists get all the shine. You’ll hear dudes like E-40, Too $hort, B-Legit, Celly Cel and Mac Dre (RIP) rotated heavily throughout the day and night on local station KMEL 106. We love to play hyphy here because it sounds like the happy union between ravey 80s acid house and rap—kind of like if hip-house hadn’t turned out shit. If you feel like getting into some more underground hyphy stuff we recommend pretty much anything by The Demolition Men. Their Nuthin But Slap mixtapes are full of insane tunes from artists you’ve never heard of from all over North California. While not busy picking up some new Sperry topsiders (think Vans, but more upscale) we also managed to find some records we couldn’t get over here, like the latest edition of the white label Best of the Bay vinyl series which brings you up to speed with some classics like Keak Da Sneak’s “White T’s, Blue Jeans and Nikes” and Too $hort and Mistah F.A.B.’s “Sideshow 2006”. Moving back across the pond, the last DO IT! night we held was loads of fun. MCs Jammer, C Gritz and Badness all came down and Logan Sama played a grime classics set, which sounded great on the Scala soundsystem. The next big night we’re doing is on July 21 with Detroit’s ghettotech king, DJ Assault, or Craig as we like to call him. We’re planning to make it the party of the year, so come along. Check myspace.com/clubdoit for the full line-up. That’s it, stick a fork in us, we’re done. PRANCEHALL AND EASYCHORD