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Feb
17
2004
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Wiley and Dizzee Rascal |
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Monday, 16 February 2004 |
Dizzee Rascal's name is already hard to avoid, and not just on the underground. Major record labels are taking notice, legal radio have jumped on his self-produced and vocaled debut track I Love You, music magazines across the board are scrambling to get their slot with him - and all this with only a few thousand white labels flying off the shelves.
Wiley on the other hand needs no introduction to many. Garage anthem Nicole's Groove, signed to Relentless Records in 2000 was one of Wiley's first offerings under the guise of Phaze One. Formerly a member of the Pay As You Go Cartel (where he produced underground smash hit Know We), and who made their mainstream debut with Champagne Dance, 24 year-old Wiley, has since reinstated a firm position in The Roll Deep Crew, branching off into a niche of exploratory production and lyrical dexterity.
Dizzee was soon drafted into The Roll Deep Crew alongside nine other members.
"I finished school last year and made I Love You, I just did it cause I was struggling to build riddims. I wanted to make as many as possible cause I just enjoyed doing it. I was in the studio I quickly built that beat and it gave me some new sounds, and I always get excited when there's new sounds. I went home and I wrote the lyrics to that Jay-Z tune Is That Your Bitch and then I laid it all down...But I had to sit on it. If I had brought it out then it would have just been another tune, I needed to build myself up."
Wiley appears on the remixes of I Love You, as hot as the original, which unfortunately won't be released in the near future as Dizzee elaborates;
"They ain't coming out.. They will be on the album which I might call Dizzee New Heights. I haven't put anything in any order yet, I know I'm going to shock a lot cause if I Love You does then the rest, in general, well..."
The music been made by the new breed of street producers is a far cry from the garage of yesteryear. Many of the origins can be found in the tempo of 2 step but there is much talk of a whole new genre of music emerging given the influx of bass driven, minimal, often off key tracks, and a new skool of emcee's chatting on a flex about life, decidedly similar to their hip hop cousins as Dizzee explains "We came in to garage, we elevated from garage, and our music's difference, so we're in a circle. We went in to the garage scene and tried to adapt as they were emceeing at a slower pace, but we didn't adapt, we branched off. There isn't a name for the music yet, so we can't call it anything, but our sound has got a market and it's not the garage market. It's on a big scale already. It's part ambition, part initiative, doing what we want and garage and hip hop DJs are playing it... and when it comes to lyrics what we do is we live, everyday. We go through things. Because it's a street thing, we're more like rapping our experiences..."
Wiley adds "Say me and him were walking down the street, and someone came and tried to rob us, then that's a song, or if we get arrested, or if we're on curfew, you have to be in by 7pm... I've got community service (for petty theft three years ago), I have to be real to myself."
Whilst most artists aspire to a large advance, a record deal and the chance to appear on prime time TV, Dizzee and Wiley (who are still without a distributor and deliver all the records to the shops themselves to maximise profit and cut out the middleman), are looking for much more.
A serious Wiley says "Major deals for big money isn't always the way. Sometimes you can take low money at the front end and make the thing work, recoup quickly and then you'll see your royalties. I don't want to sign on or do something low, I want high money and to live nicely, go back to church and then be ready to die. I want to mean something, to make a change, to have status, set trends..."
Dizzee concludes "Sometimes I don't just want the set trends thing but to get respect for being able to make a crowd knowledgeable from listening to us. I don't think I could do my lyrics on Top Of The Pops and I don't believe in being watered down. I want my mind respected, it's one thing respecting a person but another respecting their mind."
Times are still progressing for Wiley and Dizzee despite the constant lack of garage nights. White labels fill the shelves whilst rumours circulate of a new deal with Def Jam UK, but their's no doubt in anyone's mind that Roll Deep time is indeed near.
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