It’s been exactly 10 years since grime entered its second golden age. The genre, which blossomed a decade before that, had by 2008 descended into commercial buffoonery (see: Dizzee Rascal’s Dance Wiv Me, Skepta’s Rolex Sweep). But in the spring of 2014, one song changed all that. I remember exactly where I was when I heard Meridian Dan’s German Whip for the first time (the production offices of TV quiz show Pointless, naturally): incredibly catchy, funny-but-not-clownish and still in possession of that icy, industrial edge that is grime’s calling card, it seemed this song had the potential to herald a new dawn for British rap. And it did! By June, Skepta had completed his image rebirth with That’s Not Me. In July, Stormzy began to gain proper traction with his debut EP. Suddenly, the grime revival was in full, thrilling swing, the first proper mainstream youth subgenre for a decade.
Skepta, Stormzy and others made UK rap credible again in the mid-2010s by maintaining an irreverence and relatability that differentiated them from US hip-hop with its unironic braggadocio and overblown horror. The Streets’ Mike Skinner had perfected his own kind of evocatively British rap, full of pedestrian references, winking irony and misty-eyed sentimentality (he even contributed some nuance to our class system in the process: he wasn’t working class, he wasn’t middle class, he was Barratt class: “suburban estates, not poor but not much money about, really boring”). Skinner soon segued into hyper-mainstream edgelessness, yet his hymns to ordinariness were traceable in the grittier output of the new guard: Skepta’s That’s Not Me referenced “girls on the high street, girls on the bus” with its narrator assuring us he that although “used to wear Gucci/I put it all in the bin cause that’s not me”. But it was Stormzy who really ran with this approach. Shut Up begins with a wryly humble riff on rap rite of passage Fire in the Booth (“this is fire in the park”), and its narrator goes on to celebrate his ascent in resolutely normal terms, with references to Baileys, buying his mum a little red car and ordering a “hot chocolate and a panini to go”. It’s a formula he repeats on Know Me From, namechecking David Moyes and Shirley from EastEnders.
Which brings me on to the actual subject of this newsletter. The lyrics never expand on the title of Casisdead’s Pat Earrings - although the artwork provides a clue to the reference - resulting in a kind of cloistered meaning that demands intimate familiarity with British culture. Forget Skepta, forget Stormzy, this song - released in 2017 - is possibly the apogee of British rap. It’s not quite grime, but it wouldn’t exist without it: Casisdead - who is never seen without a creepy flesh-like mask in order to keep his identity secret (including when he won a Brit this year) - was part of the grime community in the early 2000s. Nowadays he makes tunes that are saturated with nostalgic 80s-style synths, but they retain the bristling chill of grime and an almost irritatingly slow vocal pace that I associate with the genre.
However, the lyrical content of Pat Earrings takes the relatable, everyday references of Skepta and Stormzy and plays them into a whole other facet of British popular culture. Narrated by a drug dealer who falls in love with a sex worker (who seems to be humouring him), it is a maelstrom of cringeworthy misconception, tragically ordinary dreams (he fantasises about a “dirty spa weekend at Bannatyne’s” and getting “married at the Marriott in summertime”) and repressed pain. It makes me think of pathetic, delusional British comedy characters in the vein of David Brent or Jez from Peep Show - the bravado almost smothering the self-doubt - but this song relocates that character to a much seedier habitat. It’s a brutal undercutting of masculinity with naivety, and an incredibly evocative, sophisticated example of musical storytelling.
I really don’t want this to become Street Lamps Monthly, but there’s also something evocatively cold/cosy and twilit about this song. I mentioned previously that Pete Paphides described That’s Entertainment as bringing to mind “a wet Cortina under a street lamp,” this song is like a rain-dappled Saab under a street lamp (or, perhaps, the speciality BMW the narrator seems to spend most of the song in). The nostalgia comes from the synths, but also the references - “old brick Nokia man playing Snake” - which are jumbled so as not to point to a specific year, but a more general sense of harking back. So, yes keywords as ever: nostalgia; normality; patheticness; lamplit drizzle through a car window.
NOTES AND RECOMMENDATIONS
This is actually the second time I’ve written about Pat Butcher this week - I reviewed new BBC drama The Turkish Detective (soporifically average), which stars Haluk Bilginer who played Mehmet Osman in EastEnders in the 1980s… who was briefly Pat’s pimp?!?!?
I’ve just finished The Sea, The Sea, Iris Murdoch’s Booker-winning 1978 novel and her magnum opus: unsurprisingly, I cannot recommend it enough (in fact I’m already mentally casting what would surely be an incredible TV version: Felicity Montagu - AKA Lynn from Alan Partridge - would be perfect as Hartley). Despite doing my dissertation on Murdoch’s early work, I never actually got round to reading this - but what was once a source of low-level shame has now turned to gratitude, because I got to binge it purely for pleasure. Revolving around theatre director Charles Arrowby, who retires to the coast where he encounters his lost teenage love, The Sea, The Sea is (like all Murdoch’s novels) an extraordinary, dream-like meditation on love, meaning and the impossibility of seeing other people - and indeed reality itself - with any real clarity; philosophical knots diluted by zippy plotting and a continual sense of arch amusement. However: to the Britishness of it all. Two major things: firstly, it paints a dislocated but still vivid picture of crusty, old-school luvvies - it’s giving Toast of London, but in the correct era; secondly, the novel is fixated on horrible food, which put me in mind of my previous newsletter on Nighty Night. It’s not quite milky prawn-level, but not far off: Charles considers himself an authority on low-effort food prep and good taste. He isn’t. Sample dish: “spring cabbage cooked slowly with dill. Boiled onions served with bran, herbs, soya oil and tomatoes with one egg beaten in. With these a slice of two of cold tinned corned beef.” I mean, what the…
I enjoyed the Britishness discourse in this NME interview with a young Brighton-based musician called Welly (great bathetic/nostalgic name). I couldn’t quite get on board with the music - a bit like a less arresting Art Brut (who, by the way, I was glad to see Pitchfork revisit this week with overdue seriousness, Emily Kane is an evergreen tune) - but I liked his celebration of the suburbia mindset and identification with an “English parochial school of songwriting” that includes Damon Albarn, Paul Weller and Alex Turner. Also:
‘There are worries that this could be a jingoistic celebration of England, but Welly isn’t interested in rehabilitating Britain’s golden past (“which, let’s be honest, wasn’t great for most people”). Instead, it’s a “pragmatic” celebration of the present. “We need new stuff to care about,” he says firmly. “It’s not all just Shakespeare and Winston Churchill. In the past 100 years, this country’s become so diverse and there’s so many people doing amazing different things.”’
Finally, this week I have been reviewing Heavy Jelly, the new album from Soft Play, the Kent punk duo formerly known as Slaves - and I have to say their most recent single, Everything and Nothing, is exceptional. Meanwhile, Punk’s Dead, which was released last year but is also on the album, is honestly one of the funniest songs I’ve ever heard; a deadpan restaging of some of the online complaints about their name change, the Johnny Rotten line is one of my lyrics of the decade (I won’t spoil it, the delivery is crucial).