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 Caught in the Carousel - Music Reviews and More
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Dizzee Rascal
Maths + English
Definitive Jax
"Take my advice," Dizzee Rascal sings on his new album Maths + English, "…you need a hard back/Stern face/Play your position/And know your place." A primer for fledgling rappers, "Hardback (Industry)" is an audio guidebook that all rapping rookies should study. Covering everything from personnel choices ("Find yourself a good manager who's really got a clue") to the importance of originality ("First up, it's important that you keep your shit original/Try and keep that copycat shit to a minimal"), "Hardback (Industry)" may very well be a recipe for success, but it's also clearly a list that Dizzee Rascal wishes he could have gotten a glimpse of himself. Taking aim at record companies, fake gangsta rappers ("Where's Da G's?") and the current sate of the world, ("Excuse Me Please"), Maths + English is a blistering set of scathing social commentary. An inventive M.C. whose confident and loose-limbed delivery falls somewhere between Schooly D. and Pato Banton, Rascal is an intellectual in tennis shoes, unafraid of calling out hip-hop hypocrites ("I know killers/I know gangsters/And they've never heard of you"), or making personal declarations ("Yo, I'm not a gang banger/ But I'm good with a mash/Make you scratch your head an wonder/ Is he really that flash"). Elsewhere, there are numbers that confront existential, corporeal fears ("Paranoid") and the state of the world ("Excuse Me Please"); "Flex" and "Bubbles" both have a touch of dancehall, and "Temptation" brilliantly samples the Arctic Monkeys' "Temptation Greets You Like Your Naughty Friend." The album's finest track "Wanna Be" finds Rascal teaming up with Lily Allen and the two waste no time leveling their aim at fake gangsters.
"The streets don't cater for no long term plan," Rascal warns, "these roads don't give a damn about any man/ I try an show these brothers/They refuse to understand/So I'll just keep doin' what I'm doin' while I can." Let's hope he keeps doing it. He's the real deal.
--Alex Green
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