So und hier noch eine 1 seitiges Spezial aus der SUN (
www.thesun.co.uk) vom Freitag. Sehr nett zu lesen.
Dizzee bekommt 4,5 von 5 möglichen. Und sorry für die Tipfehler. Ist ja nicht gerade wenig.
Even if your background is crap, you can have the world
It´s only when you´ve had it hard that you really appreciate things in life.
Take Dylan Mills, the boy from a tough East End council estate who grew up to be dazzling Dizzee Rascal.
"There´s loads of shit out there, man," says the 21-year-old rapper. "And you really can have it. You may come from a crap background, but you can have the world."
Fast-talking Dizzee found a way out of crime and povertythrough music and sees no reason why other kids shouldn´t strive for a better life too.
These feelings loom large in
World Outside, his mission statement that kicks off
Maths+English, comfortably the most compelling Hip-Hop album of the year.
He says the track strives to be "realistic" about what ghetto kids can achieve and avoids some of the obvious cheap shots.
"It would be easy for me to shout about having a great time. You know. I drink champagne. I **** loads of girls. I drive the biggest cars.
"Buut there´s the other way of seeing it. Some of theses kids really donßt know nothin´ else other than crack and poverty."
This attitiude sets the tone for a third album that follows his mercury prize winning debut
Boy in the corner and
Showtime. The secret of Dizzee´s success lies in the sheer honesty, style and convincing street savvy. He may be a star but he never forget´s his roots.
The new album´s blazing first single,
Sirens, a riot on full-on inner city sounds, revisits the darker days of his teens.
"where I grew up, there was burned-out cars all around me," he says. "When you´re very young, you don´t know any better than what you see around you.
"I don´t want to get it twisted like I don´t know any better.
"Everyone makes their choices. There are people who live on council estates that work hard and try to do good all their lives and never get involved in anything.
For the young Dylan Mills, however, "there was a bad patch. I was quite reckless and I was aware of what I was doing. You go through a phase of not giving a shit basically."
Crack
So, did music stop him spiralling into a life of drugs and danger? "Yeah - I suppose so," he replies.
"By the time my friends got to the age where they dabbled in crack and everything else, I had money from selling records.
"I was rolling with my friends but I didn´t need to do that. I´d be doing raves and they´d be doing that other thing.
"It was a natural progression. I didn´t choose music over crime. I was just into music and followed it through."
One possible cloud on the current horizon is Dizzee´s fallout with fellow grime merchant Wiley, founder of the Roll Deep Crew.
The new song
Pussy´ole is rumoured to be about him, and Wiley´s new Album,
Playtime is Over, out on the same day as
Maths+English, includes a rap calles
Letter 2 Dizzee.
"I don´t speak his language, man, "say´s Dizzee. "I don´t really care that he is putting a record out the same day. Everyone else does." So is Pussy´ole about him? "Nah, Pussy´ole´s is about Pussy´oles."
Another key track is
Hard Back (Industry), which deals with the perils of the music buisness and talks about finding a label that "isn´t full of pricks."
The rapper says that "right now I´m actually out of my record deal" but he adds that indie label XL are "cool, man". "There´s some things we don´t always agree on. Theye´ve got stronger and weaker points like I have but other our relationship´s been good."
At a time when Hip-Hop´s getting a bad press, Dizzee´s showing a clean pair of Nike trainer heels to many of his brothers in music, particularly those on the other side of the Atlantic.
He doesn´t seem bothered working in a genre where sales are down and great albums are in short supply.
"I´m seeing this picture, man" he says. "I´m a fan of Hip Hop but I come from a place calles England that´s rich with musical influences. As well as Soul and R&B, I got drum´n´bass and loads of things to play with so I´ll always be experimenting."
To Dizzee, cracking the American market is not the priority it was once. He says: "I´m not so enthusiastic about it. Now I understand what America is socially and culturally and there are things about me they´ll never understand."
It´s clear too, that he loves his fellow homegrown young artists, whatever their style.
"Yeah, people like Lilly Allen or Joss Stone or The Streets or Amy Winehouse - they can understand what the **** I´m saying for a start."
Wanna Be is another sond that squints in brighter horizons by cherishing home comforts and features an addictive singing part from Lilly.
"Yeah, we clicked," he says of his time in the studio with her. "Professionalism, man. Everyone I worked with on this album stepped up for me."
Punky
That sentiment also goes for Arctic Monkeys and particularly singer Alex Turner whose distinctive voice graces Dizzee´s new version of the Sheffield band´s
Temptation.
The rapper explains:" I sent smoke signals saying I wanted to work with them. They asked me to vocal their song
Temtation. They came to london and I did that. It was the B-Side for their single
Brainstorm. Then it was remixed, sampled, had a beat put underneath it and I wrote some extra verses. That´s the version I´ve got on my album."
Maths+English sense of British contemporary music history also comes into play on
Suck my Dick, a fun song that marks Dizzee´s singing debut.
"It´s a punky song, innit!" he exclaims. "The John Lydon thing, the whole Sex Pistols thing. I thought of the beat, came up with the melody and wrote the lyrics.
"It was one of them spontaneous ones. I thought I´d go the whole way with it." He adds: "I know I can´t sing like Usher or R Kelly but I thought I should make a job of it. This album´s about fun."
While there´s a gritty thread through the album, this obvious determenation to keep things upbeat comes across all the time.
"I wanted to entertain more, make it my most entertaining album," says Dizzee. "I wanted to branch out a lot more. I´d been on tour getting to know who my fans were.
" They weren´t necesserialy the same as when I was doing raves in London. I realised I had to vary things.
"I made a point of making the album a bit clearer, a bit simpler. It´s definetly my most defiend album. I´m real proud of it, man."
Maths, he says, means the beats and English means the words.
We say Maths + English = Ace.