 10/08/2007 The Rascal is back with a record that ricochets between musical styles and mind-states like a stray bullet. Dizzee’s third long player has as many edges as a lavishly cut diamond, but these conflicting egos and impulses are all brought into check by his unmistakable delivery. ‘The more they hear it and get used to it, the more they accept it,’ is how the rapper’s theory goes; wrapped up in this logic remains his fierce endeavour to be real, to stay true to that ‘Boy In Da Corner’ we met four years ago. Identity is both the conundrum and the trophy to which Dizzee constantly returns – ‘Maths & English’ is what pride and paranoia sound like smashed together. Swaggering, sneering, rejoicing and fearing all at once, Dizzee presents his most challenging and exhilarating work yet.
Studying the varied memorabilia among XL Records HQ – a gold Prodigy vinyl here; The White Stripes’ artwork there; a framed array of covers from which warily looks out a teenage Dizzee Rascal – a wide-eyed Dylan Mills
is entertaining himself during a gruelling day of promotional duties. Phone interviews with Japan and the States before our meeting forecast a fidgety Dizzee, and indeed, ‘It’s shit, it’s fucking unbelievable,’ is how he rates today’s exchanges so far. Still, the guy shimmies and shifts on the spot to whatever his shuffling ipod throws up - Brazilian beats; Motown classics; krunk numbers; raga tunes - and a monster bag of pick n mix tempts from
the board room table. ‘I had to approach this like a new artist, like I was starting again,’ is how he begins his story.
‘Sirens’ is the public’s epic introduction to Dizzee’s new material. A confessional tale of ‘badness I did when I was a kid,’ the track is ushered in by penetrating police sirens and the bombastic, eerie drumming that signals fighting in a martial arts film. Ensnared by accelerated rhymes are ‘a robbery and a fight,’ while the backing track rages via thunderous metal guitars. Their summoning within hip hop recalls last year’s grindie phenomenon – ‘I’m into music, genres are just a way to sell it. People use different instruments differently, that’s all. Any merge that produces good music is good – a lot of my fans are indie listeners and why not, man, I love that Hoxton indie thing.’ He finishes with a comic tribute to the white-boy-with-guitar spazz action, robotic in his chair. ‘That stiff dance, I love it, man, it kills me!’ The track salutes Dizzee’s first favourite band; serving up riotous riffing from the Grammy winning ‘Here To Stay’ (2002) is a Korn tribute group – roaring guitars propelling his inevitable punishment; ‘I’ll break the law / I’ll never change...’ But does a reformed Dylan Mills like the rozzers? ‘There’s stuff they go about wrong... But give anyone that authority, it’s tempting to abuse it, you know you would...’
Does crafting petty crime into rhyming couplets make it, as the man says, ‘art’? With his ‘trigger finger itchin’’ a possessed Dylan Mills and his mate act ‘like we were from hell... Hit his wifey up as well...’ Ask Dizzee what he regrets from that ‘phase’: ‘Nothing. What’s the point? I just did it ‘cos I thought that’s what time it was – I didn’t go as far as some friends did. I tried to do some good - music for a start. I worked hard, went however far, climbing buildings for a couple of extra hours on pirate radio, paying to get in, all kinds of crazy shit... It was my choice.’ His comment commands the LP’s spirit – with the ‘Bigger picture in (his) eye,’ (a lyric from what he calls a ‘swagger tune for the hood,’ ‘Bubbles’) Dizzee the artist is concerned only with progression, while Dylan the man has trained his vision to be forward-looking, fate-mastering even.
‘It’s surprising, people like ‘Sirens,’ the girls like it.’ But what about kids rappingalong to a criminal’s anthem? I ask Dizzee whether he has ever felt pressured to censor lyrical content since his Mercury Prize made him a household name.
‘More people listening is incentive to make more. I might bend towards... Censorship? Ppfff... Come on man, this is me, innit!’ And the little rascals tearing around shrieking ‘Pussyole’ (the second track)? ‘I can’t wait!’ Dizzee creases into a dirty laugh. ‘Nah, it can’t be helped. I apologise! I ‘m going to chat in some schools, not just talk down to the kids. This is serious; kids taking things into their own hands and getting dangerous.’ I mention the recent idea of stab-proof hoodies for school uniform. With a mournful headshake Dizzee, now 22, looks down and continues, ‘It’s sad, yeah... But this is some shit that ain’t new to me. That shit ain’t nice, man. ’
These mean streets were Dizzee’s stomping ground, where family and friends remain – intense places still interrogated by his music; ‘It’s part of me, everything else I’m learning now. Coming from council estates where people wouldn’t have much interaction with anyone else, it’s alienating - feeling lower class, you lash out. I don’t think grime artists are trying to reach anyone outside of the hood, and that’s human nature as well. Aside from the music, they ain’t got much, but this they have cultivated, it’s their own and they don’t want to see it taken away. They need to open their minds but, it’s hard ‘cos of their social situation... Catch 22.’
‘Pussyole’ relates a toxic friendship with a fellow pirate radio MC – estranged Roll Deep brother Wiley ‘thinks it’s about him.’ ‘Don’t make me get old school!’ is how he stirs it up over an awesome early acid rave hook. Mob-like backers yell ‘Pussyole!’ (‘Me having a laugh,’) while Dizzee raps an adversary’s doom along to the jump-up ‘Woah, yeah!’ sampling of ‘It Takes Two.’ Between the beat-keeping ‘Woah!’s and classic rave chords (‘Maths’) and Dizzee’s scathing lyrics (‘English’) the scene is set . How do these diverse disciplines balance? ‘A lot of the crowd, they don’t know all of your lyrics but they know the tune. I love responses to the music, but I also like being heard!’ And hear him you will.
‘Suck My Dick,’ does what it says on the tin - a straight-up ‘swagger tune.’ The melody he raps (and for the first time ever, sings – ‘It just felt singy, I’m not gonna be Usher!’) echoes schoolyard taunting, just as ‘Suck it! Suck it!’ chants from behind. Brazenly warping ‘Yankee Doodle,’ is how the track drops – ‘I don’t give a shit who likes it / I don’t give a shit who don’t’ – then a quickwitted rhyme chain where ‘dick’ topples into ‘Dingo / I got the lingo... Star like Ringo...’ Such balls (pun acknowledged) from a rapper within ‘This UK hip hop culture of not letting yourself grow... It’s shameful to do well.’ He catapults himself into an American attitude, but with his British identity and signature East London accent intact. ‘All this moaning about people don’t support UK hip hop, you need to make them want it, it’s business... People rapping in an American accent, pisses me off; I’d rather do it until I hit the thing that makes hem know what the fuck I’m talking about...’ Forget confusion here. ‘My big black dick’ is paraded before Dizzee signs off with a devilish ‘Whoo-ha! Ha! Ha!’ Something between orgasm and belly laugh, it’s a choice conclusion to this boisterous wind-up track.
So far, so familiar on a substantial level; a troubled or a posturing Dizzee we quickly recognise. However, a threesome of tunes beefing out the middle of his ‘widest’ ‘Maths & English’ LP introduces Dizzee the party host, indulges Dizzee the ladies’ man and reacquaints us with Dizzee the motivator (hear ‘Stand Up Tall’ – ‘Showtime’). Tapping into Dizzee’s sex symbol potential (I’m the cover lover / Girls call me buff ting’) is Wiz’s video for ‘Sirens,’ where he is chased
– the ‘urban fox’ in his fur-trimmed parka – by a herd of white officials riding white horses. Disturbingly, the ‘story of my life all my life,’ and no, ‘it’s not an attack on white people,’ Dizzee quickly insists. One female pursuer fancies our boy from Bow – ‘I only read the script at the end!’ She leaves with his blood smeared across her cheek and stunned ecstasy in her eyes. Does Dizzee get spun out by this packaging of him and his music; or indeed its social and racial connotations? ‘I’ve been used to girls for a while now, don’t you worry about that!’ Then there’s that word again: ‘I see the art side of it,’ the Rascal repeats.
It’s all about aesthetics in ‘Flex,’ which lands us in a London sweat box for Dizzee’s ode to sexy ladies – ‘I can never watch a butters girl grindin!’’ Bold ska horns and tropical garage beats – not to mention his lust object generating some dancefloor heat - follow Dizzee’s conductor-like: ‘Slow / Fast / Up / Down...’ Dance fads ‘Bubble’ and ‘Butterfly’ sound suggestive in his mouth (he tells me his vocal performance is generally clearer and slower). Safe, sane and single, his lyrical eye gazes upon a sweat bead trickling down that particular female’s thigh, how she miraculously stays ‘high and dry.’ Dizzee, however, struggles to hold it down – ‘Got my tings risin’...’ From debut to third LP, ‘Sittin’ Here’ - ‘I really don’t feel like movin’ so I cotch,’ - finds its foil in ‘Flex,’ a lively call for club-clearing skills. The paralysed paranoiac has morphed into a party starter: ‘Life’s too short to be cautious innit? / Don’t just stand on da edge, come live it!’ ‘People think I’m a melancholy, unhappy rapper. Then it was the easiest shit to write about, but now I want to bring my fun side out too. This is my most complete album, with little things like bridges, complete songs... I liked ‘Laffy- Taffy’ (D4L’s 2006 chart scorcher), that made me jump up, and I started raving again – I went AWOL at Ministry last week, right in the middle of the dancefloor. At festivals I was moving to anything – gabba, techno, drum n bass, r n b...’
‘Flex’s’ bubbly garage bolsters Dizzee’s ‘Let’s dance all night,’ refrain. He plays a Latino keyboard ditty, but is this the closest the Rasket gets to writing a love song? ‘I couldn’t do the Bow Wow thing – you know, ‘I love you but I’m fucking everybody else’ – I tried it in the studio! I had to look for other aspects of love. This is the other side, I’m rapping for the girls ‘cos I love to see them doing their things in the club. Skanking an’ that is the most exciting way to see a girl other
than when you’re havin’ sex...’ I have to ask who his ideal woman is when he continues, ‘I’ve always loved the ladies, ridiculously,’ – ‘Beyonce, all day man,’ is his immediate reply. But then, ‘There are loads, I’m a connoisseur!’
Which leads us neatly into ‘Da Feelin,’’ an ode to the scantily-clad season and a nod to Dizzee’s musical debut as a jungle DJ, produced as it is by Shy FX. Shy calls up a familiar euphoric sample while Dizzee sets about ‘Put(ting) aside the traffic, air pollution and the grime,’ to celebrate summer in the city. A ravished Dizzee exclaims, ‘I love you!’ three times over a warm string-laden breakdown, while he also chats of jet skis, power boats and Hummer- cruising around Ibiza. This opulence marks ‘Bubbles,’ named after the ‘Nike One-tens’ Dizzee coveted as a youngster; ‘On the estate growing up, you had a pair of those, you were the man!’ Far from a cynical blag to bag some more trainers – Nike needs no persuasion – this is a stomping ‘feel-good tune,’ where he spouts ‘Money, money, money, girls, girls, cash, cash – I let the champagne splash!’
High times indeed. But what goes up... ‘Paranoid’ plunges right back into the darkness of ‘Boy In Da Corner’; ‘No rational thought I’m low... Tell myself I ain’t got no friends... Fuck my people / Fuck my ends.’ So we have therapy as well as frivolity; depression and self-doubt twisted into beats and rhymes and made public reveal that ‘Everyone feels that way sometimes – then everyone feels good.’ Dizeee treasures his mic as a vehicle for mass communication rather than self-indulgence: ‘That’s what set me apart as well, always thinking about whoever else, people in general. I’ve always been open, able to get on with all different types of people; black, white, purple, pink, rich, poor, tall, short...’
But the folk he can’t abide –‘Pussyoles’ aside – are gangster poseurs. Two tracks see to their swift execution: the saccharine Lily Allen is a shrewd selection to slam a few fakers – ‘Your mum buys your bling!’ (‘Wanna Be’) – while certified Texan gangster rappers Bun B and Pimp C lend their battle prowess to ‘Where’s Da G’s,’ which also features Dizzee’s funniest rhyme: ‘You’re a fan of hip hop wanking / When you hear those rappers talk.’ Bun B and Pimp C put out that hyphy hip hop DJ Shadow championed in ‘The Outsider’ (2006). When Shadow recruited gangsters to spit verses it was twee; a white hip hop curator with a black hard man fetish. Here, conversely, their presence adds even more weight to a very real atmosphere, especially considering Dizzee’s violent past.
‘I’ve seen so many friends being stabbed or shot, I’ve been in loads of situations... People don’t really know the truth either, one day I’ll write a book...’ There was Dizzee’s threatened kidnapping – ‘That’s ‘The Sun’ doing what ‘The Sun’ do, they kicked that down,’ and the ever-perpetuated media myth surrounding his stabbing in Ayia Napa, aged 19 in 2003. ‘I weren’t stabbed four times in the chest.’ Dizzee shifts up in his chair, ready to demonstrate: ‘It was once in my chest, once in my armpit, once in my back, twice in my leg and once in my bum. So it was six times but they dispensed it evenly, they were kind to me.’ This etiquette of stabbing is something I’m not versed in; Dizzee’s way of diffusing my shock is ‘I ain’t dead though.’ With cheery reassurance he wrenches apart the taboo and stamps out its trauma as casually as if he were brushing a fly from his shoulder. Surely he must be a religious man? ‘It’s on and off for me, I lose my faith and the whole thing of religion is so contradictory. It’s just proof of man, innit?’
‘Excuse Me Please’ extols the madness of our society – belligerent, divided, corrupt – over a funked-up, suitably broken beat. A policeman who kills a suspect is ‘Just another lost soul in our community,’ while Muslims’ and Christians’ ‘errors are the same.’ ‘Is it me?’ splutters an incredulous Dizzee before he threatens to ‘punch (the) stupid face’ of whoever ‘is in charge of this stupid place.’ But ‘there’s so much good as well,’ and so a spark flickers that gets licked into a flame with album opener and flagship track ‘World Outside.’ Liquid, dreamscape electronics and an ominous gongo-like drum vie with distant sirens and the actual metallic tear of knives being sharpened: the cacophony of two disparate worlds colliding. Against this dramatic backdrop runs Dizzee’s lyric: ‘Fuck the suffering and the hurt / Because it’s all good / There really is a world outside of the hood...’ He explains: ‘I wanted to put that across to people where I’m from, underprivileged backgrounds or whatever. I’ve got some friends who are going through some things, I’m not going through them things no more, I can see outside... I just wanted to give something back.’
Dizzee’s is a veritable rags to riches story. Does he reckon the mainstream can assimilate another grime artist like him, or is he the golden exception? ‘The fact that people see me as having opened some doors, that’s a major achievement – as cold as I can be, I’ve got a heart, I want to help people.’ By reflection, ‘World Outside’s’ very rhythm is a heartbeat; the rapper’s sense of himself, his sharp, open mind and his healthy body straddling these alien territories and strengthening him. Because bar one attack of self-loathing (‘Paranoid’), with ‘Maths & English’ it is Dizzee’s commendable sense of self, the vice-like grip he has over his identity that allows him to assail any subject, no matter how perplexing; to face any enemy, no matter how beastly. Like he raps on ‘World Outside,’ ‘I wouldn’t call it an escape / The roads are in my heart.’
His firm sense of selfhood is exactly why he can write a song about a pair of trainers more convincingly than Mike Skinner or Run DMC, or is so offended by gangster pretenders, or insists upon that Ibizan Hummer, or, crucially, why he constantly pays homage to his Bow home. Not in the Wiley ‘Bow, E3! Bow, E3!’ riot-raising way (Dizzee doesn’t bother opening his mouth to comment on his ex-best mate moving the release date of his new album to match that of ‘Maths & English’), but in an uplifting, cerebral way that can only help to foster the ‘revolution’ he spies in the distance.
So the enduring message this record utters is one of hope, but on the condition that we look both ways; ‘get political, interested in the real shit that’s going on... Like two kids killing each other in the space of a week, this has been happening forever.’ Protest , believe, flex, swagger; know yourself, stay true, and yes, fix up, look sharp – these are Dizzee’s dictates we could do well to obey. Although he calls the ‘Boy In Da Corner’ a ‘constant part of me,’ it is Dizzee’s almighty alter-ego that expresses itself so thrillingly; ‘Hands around my testicles / Middle finger risen / Every step that I take / Is a step with precision.’ Precisely. Just suck it and see...
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