Hip-hop, one of America's last bastions of regionalism, is threatening to exalt itself out of its local roots. Authenticity issues still insist the genre is tied to the street, but where a hip-hop province used to be as compressed as the South Bronx, it's now as sprawling as the Dirty South. Even during the dichotomy of the pre-Chronic days, when East almost never met West, entire coasts counted as local wards. Ten years later, hip-hop is pop music in America, and its global reach is arguably greater than rock's has ever been. From Missy and Timbaland's tabla to Jay-Z's bhangra beats, The Neptunes' Eastern flavor to dj/Rupture's ragga/Nubian/chart-hop mashups and the Diwali-led rise of Jamaican dancehall, U.S. hip-hop is finally engaged in a two-way dialogue with the rest of the world.
On his debut album, Boy in Da Corner, 18 year-old Dizzee Rascal instantly stakes a claim that East London is hip-hop's next great international outpost. East London: Rascal's world is precisely that small, and it returns a sense of rueful perspective to hip-hop lost among the soundtrack tie-ins, Godzilla-aping Bone Crusher videos, and 50 Cent-style mixtape mythmaking. In basic ways, Rascal echoes the wish fulfillment of much of American hip-hop, but he's hardly mimicking their act. Rascal is at ground level, eyes trained on his immediate surroundings. His rhymes, and especially his beats, reflect his area's desperate social, economic and political landscape. Often, this desolation hardens an emcee's psyche (Styles gets high every day to combat his mental strain) or delivery: This summer's post-ecstasy swing toward punishing sounds and pugnacious looks threatens to bleed the personality, humor, and adventure out of hip-hop. But to wunderkind Rascal, the accelerated disintegration of his immediate world pains him-- absolutely wounds him-- and it's the Tupac-esque mix of brio and vulnerability, along with his dexterous cadence and gutter beats, that separates his rhymes from the typical money/cash/hoes triptych.
On the opening track, "Sittin' Here", Rascal concludes, "I think I'm getting weak 'cause my thoughts are too strong." Over ambient sounds of sirens and guns, he laments, "It was only yesterday/ Life was a touch more sweet." Most people Rascal's age crave arrested development, but Dizzee already longs for the innocence of childhood. And yet, the boy in da corner's emergence from adolescence isn't the start of a self-imposed purgatory-- life on the dole, or at university-- it's spent cowering, crouching and ready to pounce, and most of all, watching. Little of what he sees is pleasant: a cycle of teenage pregnancy, police brutality, and friends lost to the lure of crime and cash (if they're still alive at all). What's perhaps worse: For all of his concern and meditation, Dizzee himself offers few suggestions and little hope. He can dish bravado with the best emcees, but despite the eloquent boasts, he remains fragile, apprehensive, and consumed by the possibility of failure. "I'll probably be doing this, probably forever" is as convincing a career boast as Dizzee can make.
The hesitation and anxiety in that claim could also double as a question: whether Rascal will dabble in hostility forever. On "Brand New Day", he touchingly wonders if estate violence is youthful folly that he and his mates will outgrow. Over a bittersweet melody that sounds like a blend of an Asian music box and a Lali Puna lullaby, Dizzee asks, "When we ain't kids no more/ Will it still be about what it is right now?" For someone with enough of a big-picture grasp to announce that he's "a problem for Antony Blair," there's something tragic and poignant about Rascal wondering aloud if settling scores with organized violence is a mere child's game.
Rascal's curiosity about adulthood and responsibility doesn't, however, extend to fatherhood. Although he has girls on his mind, they're approached with suspicion. "Love talks to everyone/ Money talks more," a female emcee insists on "Wot U On"; "Jezebel" laments the cycle of teen pregnancy, blaming a promiscuous girl for bringing other future Jezebels into the estate. And on "Round We Go", a ringing "hey" (borrowed, Just Blaze-style, from The More Fire Crew) echoes the repetition and similitude of a series of loveless romantic entanglements sexlessly listed by Dizzee. Most strikingly, his debut single "I Luv U"-- recorded at the age of 16-- is a he-said/she-said snipe between an unmoved could-be father and a friend of the girl that could be "juiced up." It's a harsh amalgam of atonal bleeps and blips, washes of gabba sound, and low, harsh bass, fitting for the track's ultimately selfish approach to the impending consequences ("Pregnant/ Whatya talkin' about?/ 15?/ She's underage/ That's raw/ And against the law/ Five years or more"). It's among the record's most captivating, visceral moments.
It's on "I Luv U" that Rascal's sound most nods to the hollow shell of UK garage's end days, just before the champagne went dry and the world economy's bubble burst. UKG's move from feminized, R&B; club music to breakbeats and emcee bravado created a thrilling light/dark duality into which So Solid Crew stepped, and it seemed as if they'd be the ones to put South London on the international hip-hop map. When the press and record buyers began to ignore UKG in droves in 2001, SSC's strength in numbers (their crew has upwards of 20 members) seemed like an urgent plea for attention. They got it: "21 Seconds" shot to #1 on the UK charts, which secured for the collective a memorable Top of the Pops appearance, during which almost all of their members were crammed onto the BBC studio's bulging stage. Of course, they were aware that the sheer size of their group had benefits as well as limitations: The title "21 Seconds" referred to the maximum amount of time any one member could spend at the mic on any given track. This faceless, monolithic look and sound provided their music with a rare and unique power, but was eventually their undoing as well.
With UKG seemingly left in tatters, Rascal and pirate radio cohorts crawled into the wreckage, reconstructing its grimiest bits and blending them with RZA's paranoid minor chords, some off-kilter electro-glitch, the low-rent nihilism of Cash Money and No Limit, and the ghosts of ragga-jungle. Sparse and ugly, Rascal's record is an icy orchestra of scavenger sounds, owing as much to video games and ringtones as it does to anything more overtly musical. The despairing beats make the lyrical push and pull that much more severe: When Dizzee is venomous, they sharpen his bite; when he gamely searches for the light at the end of the tunnel, admits his failures, laments his unraveling psyche, and battles with depression, they seem like obstacles.
Despite Boy in Da Corner's garage roots, it couldn't rightly be called "dance music." There are still traces of those long-gone days when hyping the crowd or extolling the virtues of the drugs or the music were about all a British emcee would provide, but they're nods at best. On "2 Far", a helium-voiced claim ("I'm the fitness instructor") tips its hat to a rave emcee leading a crowd through its all-night workout, but now such calls are relegated to the periphery. Instead, the language-- which had often remained subservient to the beat in the UK's previous attempts to grapple with hip-hop (trip-hop, jungle, garage-rap circa 2000)-- is the focus. The point isn't to disconnect from the body, but to train the mind to match the speed of thought with the deceptively high BPMs.
After a cycle of cynicism, dark humor and despair, Rascal closes the album with "Do It", Boy in Da Corner's answer to The Streets' album-closer "Stay Positive". Simultaneously, it's an apology for his antisocial behavior, a rallying cry, a confession, and a lucid realization that, despite his age, he's already reached the crossroads. His resistance worn, he admits that he wishes he could sleep forever: for days, for years, then "for good," confessing that "if I had the guts to end it all, I would." Like he often does throughout the record, Dizzee sounds as if the only thing nearly as bad as dying is having been born.
Dizzee's despairing wail, focused anger, and cutting sonics place him on the front lines in the battle against a stultifying Britain, just as Johnny Rotten, Pete Townshend, and Morrissey have been in the past. The difference between the four (and their claims that "There's no future," "I hope I die before I get old," "I don't want to wake up on my own anymore," and "I wish I could sleep forever") isn't as different as it might appear on the surface: If Rascal grows at a similar rate, it's not out of the question that he could leave a comparable legacy.
