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Thursday May 10th 2007, 4:55 pm

Troooo.

Five videos from this year that are worth watching if you, like me, don’t watch any music tv.

Three Six Mafia’s “Dope Boy Fresh” video points at the people who live vicariously through glamourous rappers, whilst still looking like every rap video out. Not many Hiphop videos are great because of their subtlety.

Tracey Thorn’s “It’s All True” isn’t just the best proper pop tune of the year it’s also got a video that’s the perfect antidote to all the millions of sexy-office-women-strip-to-eurohouse videos. When was working in offices ever sexy? Really? Not even in the 80s. Belinda Carlisle never worked in an office. See.

Dizzee Rascal is a black superhero. Like Rage, Static Shock and the Falcon.
Grime folks and the trendies that seek validation from them would like him to stop being a superhero and stop writing songs. Maybe just kick verses at raves. He doesn’t. He makes “Sirens”, the best video of the year. Oh well.

The Knife’s video for “Like A Pen” is like what Channel 4 was like before it was shit. Only without enough Richard Whitely.

Rihanna’s “Umbrella” is either the catchiest song of the year in a bad way or the catchiest song of the year in a good way, ay, ey, eh, eh. More importantly the video shines the spotlight on mankind’s constant battle with flying mercury and how, when they don’t have an umbrella to hand, our womenfolk can be totally subjugated by teh mercury and become like Metal Mario in Mario 64. Oh also, Rihanna obviously can’t dance cos there’s not one shot in there longer than about half a second. She can walk at the bottom of the sea though. Ay Ay ey ey, eh eh.

I was hoping the video for Eve’s “Tambourine” was gonna be amazing but it’s really not. Let down.

Blogged by Beezer B
Filed under: Hiphop, Other Music, Youtubeism

14 Comments

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I have been meaning to tell you about that Rhianna song all week…I heard it at the weekend and thought it was pretty aight. Its got a good Jay- Z rap on it and everything.

That Dizzee Rascal song and video are superb. There really is no one that does what he does even nearly as well. He is a bit of a superhero in that sense. They have sepnt tons on money on him but it lots of ways he still has that great, raw sound.

Finally, I was gripped by that Tracey Thorn video the first time I saw it…the song is fastastic (certainly a runner for my favourite song of the year so far) and sounds like it was made mid 80s, but the video looks well slick and the thing I like most about it is that its sort of simple but comes across in a really complicated and effective way.

Top Stuff.

Comment by Becca 10.05.07 @ 5:14 pm

Oh, and is ‘Tambourine’ an amazing song to warrant an amazing video?

I haven’t heard it…

Comment by Becca 10.05.07 @ 5:28 pm

Nah its not amazing but the chorus is. Listening to it you picture a much better video than you get.

Comment by Beezer B 10.05.07 @ 5:38 pm

‘dope boy fresh’ reffing being john malkovich of course…

you sure the tambourine video is out yet? whats on youtube is just homemade fan edits

Comment by zha 11.05.07 @ 2:00 pm

Oh for real? Maybe its not the official then. At that quality it looked like she was singing those lines but now you mention it… so maybe it will be a good video.

I thought I’d leave the Malkovich riff for people to see for themselves.

Comment by Beezer B 11.05.07 @ 3:00 pm

Yeah…it says on her myspace that she only recorded the video last week.

Comment by Becca 11.05.07 @ 3:30 pm

the knife video is nice and reminds me of paper rad.
the dizee vid is good but how come i just aint feeling that guy? i’m old that’s why, cos i still think this shit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcx4qQsxzQU
crushes his shit even it did cost -50p to make the video.

Comment by hurks 12.05.07 @ 4:58 pm

You like Gunshot and not Dizzee because you like Hiphop from before Gunshot came out. For the most part you don’t like the intervening HIphop between Gunshot and Dizzee and I don’t believe you had any love for the Jungle and then Garage school of radio/club emceeing so it’s no great surprise that Dizzee raised on those styles that you don’t like, doesn’t appeal to you.
He’s more likely to appeal to non-hiphoppers in that they don’t apply that earlier school of rapping to him.
He’s not the best rapper out of this country but he’s one of the most original and charismatic I reckon. I’d take him over Gunshot but not over Hijack or London Posse.

Comment by Beezer B 13.05.07 @ 3:26 pm

hmm saying that re oldskool britrap tho… is that dichotomy so clear? us brits always did do our rap just that little bit faster innit, and that came from the ragga vibes (hello demon boyz) as much as it did ‘proper rap’ as it were. OR IS IT THAT THE ULTRAMAGNETIC MCS REALLY DID INVENT JUNGLE OMG *head xplodes*

Comment by zha 13.05.07 @ 9:35 pm

I dunno wether the fast style was really ragga influencing hip hop or not. Daddy Freddy was in the guinness book of records for most syllables per minute i think, and then JC001 beat him i believe.
When the US did a fast track, the emcee would usually just use less words per bar whereas the UK would try to fit in as many syllables as possible at as fast a bpm as they could manage it.
Silver Bullet really took it to the next level with a bpm that sounded like it was twice the speed of what we was used to and although he was’nt as good as some people, at 120 bpm+, at the time it sounded ROUGH! So i wonder, would it be stupid to suggest that it was HE who invented jungle?

Comment by Hurk 15.05.07 @ 2:45 pm

Jungle emceeing? Maybe but then I think thats about as important a part of jungle as beat boxing is of hiphop. Probably less important. Musically it doens’t have the rolls of jungle and people were allready doing hardcore/rave that was way more jungle than that.

In my oppinion the reason UK rappers rapped so fast is that British English doesn’t flow well enough to sound good with larger gaps in. Rakim can rap at one word per minute and still sound great but when you ahve all the harsh/hard word endings that an English accent gives it’s hard to pull that off. People haven’t mastered it to this day for the most part. To rap slower takes an aweful lot of care.