So Riko's 'The Truth' is finally out after a tortuous gestation period that probably makes it the 'Chinese Democracy' of grime (except good, obviously). Of course, you'd naturally expect nothing less from an album with songs called 'Informer Must Dead' and 'Boy Try Disrespec Spec Spec Spec' (I'm honestly not making the latter up). However the real highlight is secreted on the Bonus Disc with this Wiley produced 'Freestyle'; as the stripped down, deliberately unpolished beat turns decomposed rising New Order synths, a single metallic drum kick and the sound of someone tuning in a radio underwater into a C. Difficile-catchy, child-like melodic bed for Riko to spit his geezer/soundbwoy threats over ('I'm on straight up war and it ain't nuttin' long').
Best bits: 0:05 - Riko audibly snorts a greenie up his nose just before he starts to spit. 1:03 - 'It's the Riko the Dan (dan dan dan), anywhere mi go the dancehall a fi ram (ram ram ram), rock fi the woman an mi rock fi the man (man man man), nuff a dem a talk 'bout counteraction'. 2:09 - Riko shouts '2004' on the outro. Meaning that Wiley not only created this little gem of perfectly crafted pop goodness simply for his mate to chat his deliciously hype rudebwoy gun-talk on, he then sat on the resulting song for a good four years, before letting it be snuck out on the bonus disc of said friend's mixtape project. See, I told you he was a genius.
Wiley, Tommy Gunz, Riko and Brazen - Vega Freestyle
No ridiculously long dissertation tonight. This track, taken from Roll Deep's never officially released Creeper Volume 1 mixtape (2003) manages to cram verses from 4 mc's into just two and a half minutes of hyper-adrenalised spitting. As Lewi White's chopped-up Mariachi horns cast Wiley and his Roll Deep/Wile Out Onez cohorts as the bad guys in a high noon, death or glory Mexican shoot-out (if that sort of convoluted descriptional imagery doesn't get me a job at the NME nothing will) Eskiboy sets things off with a verse that perfectly encapsulates the simple, hypnotic power of a one-line flow;
Carry on trying it, you will get hotted up, trust me, I've come to the end of my tether now, trust me, know what I've done and I know what I'm doing and I know where I'm going; to the top now, trust me, going on dirty when I flow now, trust me, girls wanna know about us, trust me, in school I used to get cussed, trust, didn't have it, I learnt how to cuss, trust, book Roll Deep for your dance, trust me, it's a must we're kickin' up dust, trust me, I know about life I'm clued, trust me, I know about raves I butt 'em up, trust me, I know about gangsters, trust me, I know about pranksters, trust me, I just can't flop this, trust me, It's all getting better now, trust me, I'm a rude boy now, trust me
so much so that by the end you're thinking about giving him your credit card/car keys/passport/girlfriend for safe-keeping.
After Wile Out Onez (Roll Deep's youngers) member Tommy Gunz' own dextrous contribution comes my favourite moment on the whole track as Riko Dan, in full-on cockney sparrer/soundbwoy killer/Al Pacino-in-Scarface mode swaggers up to the mic and barks:
'So, there you have it, Tommy Gunz tellin' you, take it to the fuckin' grass, fuck the long cocky argument, it's not that with the Roll Deep entourage.....'
Never mind that what Tommy Gunz said actually sounded a lot more like 'grance' because Riko in top form then slews the competition in typically fired-up style before Brazen finally comes through on the clean-up. So, in the words of Riko, there you have it, 3 of the absolute best mc's in grime (sorry Tommy) all on the same throwaway mixtape track, a strength in depth that is one of the most coherent arguments for Roll Deep's status as the greatest crew in grime history, and if you don't agree just wait for the Roll Deep reunion at Wembley Stadium in ten years time: Wiley, Dizzee, Flow Dan, God's Gift, Trim, Roachee, Killa P, DJ Maximum, DJ Target, Karnage, Riko, Scratchy, JME, Skepta, Breeze, Brazen, Jet Li, Manga... Biggie Pitbull... Bubbles.
And if there's a song that makes you look cooler (well... to impressionable school-kids at least) as you wheel-spin out of your work's car park, windows down, cigarette in your chops, crummy casette audio with jerry-rigged ipod straining to the max, well then Wiley was probably involved in making that too.
Aside from the overt parallels to the classic children's book series 'Where's Wally?' (bumbaclart bad man) the phrase 'Where's Wiley?', the title of the 'hidden' track on Wiley's 2007 opus 'Playtime is Over' is significant on quite a few levels. The first and most obvious is that it's an instrumental track, the only one on the album, thus 'Where's Wiley?' is the first question you ask as his mc-ing becomes conspicuous by its absence.
Secondly, of course, is the fact that 'Where's Wiley?' is a question asked countless times throughout his career by journalists, djs, photographers, ravers, fellow mcs, people sat on their sofa watching Saturday morning music chart shows, video directors, etc. confounded by Wiley's disregard for the laws of time, geography and contractual obligation. The photo above is of Wiley arriving so late for Roll Deep's 'When I'm 'Ere' video shoot (which was the first single off their first major label album (well... it was on Relentless Records)) that he almost missed it completely. When Roll Deep had a No. 11 smash with 'The Avenue', a song that Wiley not only produced but also rapped first on, he didn't even bother showing up for the resulting desultory Top of the Pops and CD:UK appearances. When Mike Skinner arranged a meeting to offer him £50,ooo to sign to The Beats, I expect you can guess what happened then too. Wiley even had the chutzpah to use his own limitless propensity for lateness/no-shows to diss Ghetto in their epic, unfinished war of 2006: 'We all know that you are harder to market than me... and i don't even turn up!' - Wiley - '6 Minute Dub (Nightbus)'
To hear Wiley tell it this is just one facet of his complex character:
'There's a time and a place for everything, sometimes I don't wanna do anything, I just sit in my yard and watch Sky Digital, I don't wanna do anything' - Wiley - 'Time And A Place'
and of course, to simply focus on his lateness is to be misled (which may of course be his intention, for instance many have postulated that his habit of no-showing at Roll Deep-related events was a deliberate strategy to force other members of the crew to step up to the plate in his absence and prepare for a time when he was no longer involved). Firstly, if it's that important, he'll probably be there (eventually), as evidenced by his pirate radio appearance record. Secondly, to judge an artist like Wiley on something as facetious as whether he turns up on time for interviews or video-shoots or even raves is to focus on trivia rather than substance, Wiley understands that first is forever and that his importance to grime and to music history rests on something far more significant than his timekeeping:
'Wiley won't turn up, Wiley don't turn up, I burn energy everyday in my scene, so what? i don't kiss arse at 1Xtra, they wanna act like I don't rep for the scene' - Wiley - 'Crossfire Snippet'
Finally, in an age of scrubbed, castrated pop-rock eunuchs Wiley's talent for undoing the best-laid plans of Mikes and men together with the fact that he appears to treat with contempt the fame-grasping niceties that most musicians are content to happily deep-throat (despite such activities' inevitable negative correlatory effect upon their art) is a happy dose of anarchy in today's music industry.
Plus, as anyone who works or socialises with me knows, I share a penchant for inexcusable lateness with the Eskiboy (I swear there's some sort of time portal in my bedroom). It's not easy living your life 45 minutes behind the rest of the world:
'cos time don't work with me, I'm chasin' time everyday of the week, tryin' to be on time everyday of the week, and I'm ALWAYS late' - Wiley - Roll Deep - 'Had Me Convinced (Unreleased)'
ANYWAY, BACK TO THE MUSIC. I see 'Where's Wiley?' as a final 'fuck you' statement at the end of 'Playtime Is Over'. A message to anyone doubting Wiley's production ability; him saying 'my beats are so far ahead that I'm going to take my heaviest, most avant-garde production and hide it on the end of my album... and I'm not gonna bother to spit on it either'. And he doesn't need to because it's utterly monolithic on its own. Those shimmering syths, that murderous, slimy, slitering bassline when the beat breaks down, that brief, fleeting moment when the tempo shifts to 4/4, the in-human robotic sheen to the whole production, like Wiley nipped to Paris and teefed Daft Punk's helmets and is currently rolling around Bow in the silver one with 'Suck Ur Mum' scrolling across the screen. In many ways this piece of music sits most comfortably alongside all that exciting, atonal, uncategorisable, dance music being produced by acts like Justice, SebastiAn, Mr. Oizo, Puzique, Steed Lord, D.I.M., Danger and Kavinsky (to name-drop a few), yet Wiley has equalled them at their own game without trying or even being aware that he's doing so.
Of course, the final irony to all this is that as thrilling as this beat is as an instrumental I would quite happily give £50,000 of my own money to Wiley to simply hear him vocal it. Similar to his epochal 'Ice Rink' it's a riddim that requires all out attack and some serious skills, but he wouldn't have made it if he didn't think he could handle it would he?
The most apposite description of Scorcher's production showcase 'The Movement Presents Thunder Power' is that it's a curate's egg (always wanted to use a cliche inspired by a 19th-century Punch cartoon for an album with song titles like 'Fuck Off Officer', 'I Learned to Rob' and 'Still Move Work'). When it's good it's absolutely blinding, when it's bad it's fucking terrible (I'm mainly thinking of the r'n'b joints here). Highlights include previously-released gems such as Ghetto's hyper-adrenalised 'Menace' ('I do music, shot and still claim benefit') and Devlin's frankly beautiful 'Actual Artist', but also Bashy's typically intricate 'London Underground', Wretch 32's utterly banging 'Play With My P's', and Terminator's other-worldly '05'.
DIGRESSION: I really used to think Terminator was the worst MC I had ever heard (admittedly, this was before I'd heard DSR's 'Throwback Song'), but now his appearances make me smile like the return of an old friend. Discarda has also recently undergone a similar trajectory of re-evaluation. END OF DIGRESSION.
Anyway, as someone who counts 'Diplomatic Immunity' as one of my Top 10 albums of all time I'm probably the last person to offer objective analysis of this album given the Pavlovian head-banging response that Dipsetesque beats still provoke within me. Although Scorcher invites such comparisons by recycling samples used by the Dips themselves (Wretch's 'Never Argue' uses the same as Cam'ron and Juelz's 'You Outta Know', Revolver's 'Rest In Peace' jacks Verdi's 'Anvil Chorus' like 'Santana's Town' and every Soviet propaganda film I remember from GCSE history did), the album's high points occur when he is able to combine grime influences with the Heatmakerz template (squealing guitars, hi-hats like a Parkinson's sufferer on a hot tin roof) to create music with the visceral nature the title suggests.
The absolute pinnacle of the album occurs with the appearance of Wiley, and its fair to say that it was listening to this track on the way to and from work for about a fortnight that inspired this blog. The track begins with what will probably go down as one of my favourite moments in music this year, when after a few scene-setting adlibs Wiley mimics the beat by going 'derr nerr nerr derrrrrrrrrr' in the style of a hyperactive kid singing the riff to himself whilst legging it to the shops. After that we get a standardly brilliant Wiley pop culture tangent:
I'm a Karate Kid like Daniel LaRusso, Crane Kick, anywhere go I see 'em try and do the same kick, and the Crane Kick ain't even my main kick, my lyrics are like kicks from Van Damme, swinging in the rain with 8 pricks, none of them are swingers in the Matrix, his wife's got a link to the matrix, I've said too much and I hate this
He then sends a subtle shot in the direction of a member of the very crew whose mixtape he's appearing on 'newcomers do what their mates did.... hold tight them man, I still can't see ya' before once again subjecting his legendary ex-mate God's Gift to a carefully crafted barrage as he remixes his own bars in a torrent of nimble spitting honed by years of pirate radio:
I've been away for a minute, got swayed for a minute, I was in the hood selling cocaine for a minute, sent for God's Gift but he didn't wanna spray for a minute, his heart weren't in it but I'm in it to win it, I got past it, Will's got no limits, win wars with fists and guns, knives and gimmicks, your last hit was donkeys years old, I'm not suprised that you still sing it, I carry weight like Carribean Joseph, top boy, what boy? everybody knows it, them man are lucky I never had the strap 'cos I swear to God I would have emptied the whole clip, I'm like Spragga Benz, I'm fully loaded, most man in the game lost it they eroded, I'm roamin', I'm E3 area-codin', and I didn't flop in the game like Jerome did
The last verse contains a typically thrilling Eski-welter of unlikely celebrity namechecks, urgent and justified self-mythologising, an obsession with the transmission system of vehicles (as witnessed on 'He's Too Much' from Tunnel Vision Volume 2, his 2nd dub for Dizzee and by Scorcher on the Wiley-guesting 'Red Light'), familial tribute and a brief reminder of his mastery of one-line flows:
You see the level I'm on you wouldn't last long, 'cos I'm on the moon like Neil Armstrong, I was the first one, I'll be the last one, you're too lazy, wanna be a star in the hood come and ask one,(hello Tinch) what it's like really, sittin' in the top everybody wants to try and pull a fast one, so i step off the top spot, want some advice from a legend? (love the next three lines) I wrote this bar at midnight O7 January 1st, I learnt to drive manually first, me and my sound we were angry first, if shots are getting bust I'm like 'can we' first, used to like school but I kept getting kicked out, what about music? bring a few hits out, I've got it in me, Mum, Dad, brother too, plus I didn't want to be the one who missed out
red = my words.
So there you go, the anatomy of an MC at the top of their game like Fabregas. Go and buy Scorcher's album, you'll find it irresistible to avoid pumping it out of a car window at an anti-social volume. And I'll be back with more overly-in depth analysis of Wiley next week.
i believe grime is the most exciting, innovative and socially important music scene happening anywhere on planet earth at the moment. i believe wiley is a musical genius on a par with bowie or king tubby. this is my attempt to declaim these beliefs to a wider audience, innit.
