The comeback was short lived

I'm now tumbling.

I'm the black Branch Rickey

Quick Kanye et al. recap:

KiD CuDi (gotta get the capitalisations right) was on first and he played before roughly 13 people, including me. Cudi's got talent and tunes (and an incredible Crookers remix) behind him but seemed lost on the big stage before an empty arena. I'm a big supporter of the dude but his live show was obviously designed for packed, drunk clubs. "Day 'n' Night" was pretty good though.Consequence followed with a "professional emcee" type performance. Played all his good tracks, displayed good energy, let DJ Craze scratch a fair bit and entertained.

I seem to accidentally see New Zealand's Scribe at every one of his Melbourne shows. He's got like one or two good tracks, which he played pretty much right away after a brief "A Milli" freestyle and little else. He's still better than every Australian emcee (by far) and he filled his mostly decent 45 minutes pretty nicely.

Accompanied by a full live band for some reason, NAS came on stage and stole the damn show. He ran through most of Illmatic, dropped all his hits, played some rarities and the best tracks off Untitled. He even played my favourite unheralded Nas track, "You're da man." Perfect energy, crisp clear delivery and he generally played as if he was the headliner. Pretty much a perfect set really.

The show was advertised as a Glow in the Dark show but instead it was a "new" show, sort of a mix of the GitD light set up with a new set list and the band actually on stage. Kanye played for like over 2 hours and ran though every damn song you could hope for plus assorted extended autotune freestyles (see above). I loved his charisma, egomania, freestyled temper tantrum after a dude through a "penny" at him and an epic first encore of Jesus Walks and Stronger. Honestly, he played for way too long and his rants about the media and telling us to "eat shit and die" (again see above) was a bit much. We left before his second, even more extended encore since there was no way he could top his seemingly 20 minute version of "Stronger".

All in all, a pretty great Arena show which almost justified the price.

Call it a comeback

The blog is back. More soon.

Feel like I'm the one doin' dope

boxer

Don't call it a comeback...

Top 25 Albums of the Year

1. The National - Boxer
2. M.I.A. - Kala
3. Daft Punk - Alive 2007
4. Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
5. Prodigy - Return of the Mac
6. El-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead
7. Justice - †
8. Burial - Untrue
9. Muscles - Guns, Babes, Lemonade
10. Jay-Z - American Gangster
11. Midnight Juggernauts - Dystopia
12. Panda Bear - Person Pitch
13. Battles - Mirrored
14. Black Milk - Popular Demand
15. Frog Eyes - Tears of the Valedictorian
16. Jens Lekman - Nights Falls Over Kortedala
17. Wu-Tang Clan - 8 Diagrams
18. Beirut - The Flying Cup Club
19. Kevin Drew - Spirit If...
20. Too Short - Get Off The Stage
21. Sean Price - Jesus Price Supastar
22. R. Kelly - Double Up
23. Brother Ali - The Undisuputed Truth
24. No Age - Weirdo Rippers
25. UGK - Underground Kingz

Top Shows of the Year

Peter Bjorn & John / The Walkmen / Midnight Juggernauts / Love Is All / et al. @ St. Jerome's Laneway Festival, Febuary

2manydjs/Soulwax/New Young Pony Club/Gildas & Masaya (Kitsuné)/Rub 'n' Tug/Bang Gang Deejays/Valentinos @ the Metro, March 30th

Brother Ali & BK One @ the Espy, June

Bob Dylan @ Rod Laver Arena, August 17th

Justin Timberlake @ Rod Laver Arena, Nov. 17th

Daft Punk / The Presets / Cut Copy / SebastiAn & Kavinsky / Bang Gang Deejays / Muscles @ Myer Music Bowl, Dec 13th

Daft Punk @ Myer Music Bowl, Dec. 14th

Listening to: UGK - Cocaine in the Back of the Ride

AMG is the machine

DJ Drama funds terrorism

The symposium went down yesterday and, for the most part, went amazingly well with everything basically on schedule, OK attendance and a pretty high quality of papers. There were no major fuckups and it almost seemed as if we had a clue to what we're doing. Running a conference has been a pretty great experience as you don't appreicate all the little details that are involved until you actually get down and try to think through every point. Shout-outs to everyone on the collective, all the speakers (including keynotes), and the random people who showed up including Lawson, another Melbourne blogger who found out about it through this very blog - Regulate the Voice's pull is (still) massive, yo.

I did a paper DJ Drama too. It came together over the past week and goes some places that I didn't think it would or could. I don't know if it's really any good. I'm quite unsure about my use of the law in this paper. It's journalistic and polemic (especially near the end) and it's also much more of a close-reading-free cultural studies essay than anything I really have done before. I should also say here the citations and shit are a bit fucked - I didn't have time in the past few days to properly MLA cite everything so don't look down it for those reasons. Anyways, enjoy:

Mixtape Drama: Piracy, the RIAA and the Case Against DJ Drama

Feds takin’ pictures of me
Still snitchin’ on me
-Young Jeezy on DJ Drama’s “Takin’ Pictures” (from the forthcoming Gangsta Grillz album on Atlantic Records)

On January 16th, 2007, a news report by Stacey Elgin aired on Fox5 News, the Atlanta area’s local newscast from its Fox affiliate. Elgin stands on a poorly lit and seemingly empty street in front of 147 Walker Street in “Downtown Atlanta” – the recording studio of DJ Drama (Tyree Simmons), a famous hip-hop turntablist, entrepreneur and mixtape producer who is the creative force behind the acclaimed Gangsta Grillz series, and the office of the Aphilliates Music Group, DJ Drama’s company that he co-owns with Don Cannon and DJ Sense. In Elgin’s words, earlier that night, “agents came here, SWAT teams raided the business” and “confiscated everything.” “Agents” here refers both to Fulton County police but also members of the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) Anti Piracy Unit. Her story follows and announces the detention of “17 individuals” (later reported by the New York Times to be “mostly interns from local colleges”) and the arrests of DJ Drama and his associate and fellow mixtape DJ Don Cannon for the production and distribution of, to use the words of Matthew Kilgo who is the RIAA spokesman who is interviewed during the segment, “illegal CDs.” Kilgo also refers to the mixtapes as “counterfeit CDs” although the CDs shown on the news report are clearly not bootlegged versions of artist albums but mixtapes. In this context, mixtapes are album-length collections of songs (both new and old), “freestyles” and skits that usually feature one artist or group. The tracks are mixed together using traditional techniques of turntablism and often “hosted” by the featured rapper or one of his or the DJ’s associates. DJ Drama’s mixtapes are notable for their penchant for breaking quality songs, the trademark Gangsta Grillz sound effects, the vocal drops from DJ Drama and the skill of DJ Drama’s turntablism and track sequencing. While Kilgo comments that the CDs have “no stigma attached to [them],” DJ Drama’s mixtapes are instead revered in a number of commercial and critical settings. DJ Drama and Lil Wayne’s Dedication 2 mixtape, for example, was named one of the top recordings of 2006 by influential critical sources such as Pitchforkmedia.com and the New York Times.

In any case, with a hint of strained judgment in his voice, Kilgo notes, “[t]hese guys are actively advertising online. They’ve got a website that they’re advertising from. That’s where you place your order and that’s how the order is shipped out.” Elgin also tells us that the police confiscated the company’s CDs (figures vary from 25,000 to 81,000 individual units), computer equipment, recording gear, money, bank statements, assorted promotional material and “even their cars” but did not find any other “illegal activity” such as drugs or weapons. Elgin and Kilgo though do not tell the audience that DJ Drama and Don Cannon were specifically arrested on charges of criminal racketeering under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. The RICO Act, to quote G. Robert Blakey, one of the major and original architects of the bill, “covers violence, the provision of illegal goods and services, corruption in labor or management relations, corruption in government, and criminal fraud” (451). Originally intended to fight organized crime by reaching both the legitimate and illegitimate commercial enterprises of criminal organizations such as the Mafia, RICO has also successfully tracked and attacked the criminal infiltration of legitimate organizations such as the American Labor Movement.

This paper thinks through a few cultural resonances of piracy through an investigation of the arrest of and charges against DJ Drama. This incident opens up critical space to interrogate the role of piracy in popular music and specifically hip-hop culture as well as the response against piratical traditions in rap by organizations such as the RIAA. That is, the importance of the case against DJ Drama is due to the DJ’s prominence and popularity (in turn due to his Gangsta Grillz mixtapes) which is evidenced by his responsibility in part for the rise of platinum selling artists such as T.I., Lil Wayne and Young Jeezy. (Stacey Elgin’s news report, for example, features a brief shot of a framed platinum record – King by T.I.) Additionally, DJ Drama himself is set to release an album that will be structured and sonically similar to a mixtape (albeit with cleared and thus legal musical samples) on Atlantic Records in late 2007. I argue that this incident reveals two important valences of piracy in the music industry of the United States. First, piracy itself can be an important economic driver in the industry and the arrest exposes an incoherence in the RIAA’s war against digital piracy. DJ Drama’s mixtapes work as promotional tools for the artists’ “official” albums released by transnational corporations, related concert tours and ventures like the film ATL which starred T.I. and featured contributions from DJ Drama. Thus, while the arrest of DJ Drama is an attack on piracy itself, it simultaneously works against the interests of the music industry to market artists, sell records and make profits. Second, the fact that DJ Drama has been charged under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act suggests that DJ Drama’s mixtapes have been defined and policed as tools of organized crime rather than as artistic commodities and documents. The arrest of DJ Drama marks a major and novel articulation in the industry’s war against musical piracy – from attacks against consumer to those against a producer.

But, first, I think I should briefly discuss the RICO Act and racketeering itself before turning towards a discussion of the case against DJ Drama. Finding the preexisting anti-racketeering laws to be “unnecessarily limited in scope and impact” (qtd in Blakey 451), Congress passed the RICO Act in 1970 by margins of 73 to 1 in the Senate and 431 to 26 in the House. RICO makes it “unlawful for any person who has received any income derived, directly and indirectly, from a pattern of racketeering activity […] to use or invest, directly and indirectly, any part of such income, or the proceeds of such income, in acquisition of any interest in, or the establishment or operation of, any enterprise which is engaged in, or the activities of which affect, interstate or foreign commerce” (18.I.96.1962). The Act defines “racketeering activity” in roughly 55 different ways but, in interest to this paper, are related acts indictable to section 2318 of title 18, United States Code which prohibits the “trafficking in counterfeit labels phonorecrords, computer programs or computer program documentation or packaging and copies of motion pictures or other audiovisual works” (18.I.96.1961). In order for a product to be considered to be a counterfeit, the “identifying label or container […] appears genuine, but is not” (18.I.113.2318) and these counterfeit copies must be reproduced and distributed “during any 180-day period, [and] of at least 10 copies or phonorecords” (18.I.113.2318).

The charges against DJ Drama then rest upon the assertion that his mixtapes can and should be defined as counterfeit. Using this logic, the labels of DJ Drama’s mixtapes thus intentionally mislead and confuse customers due to the supposed resemblance of unofficial mixtape to the official album. The profits made from mixtape sales (Matthew Kilgo puts the ratio at “900%”) are then funneled by DJ Drama and Don Cannon into an organization such as the Aphilliates Music Group, which, through the sales of the mixtapes, disrupts the interstate (and foreign) commerce of the recording industry. We should think back here to Matthew Kilgo’s emphasis on DJ Drama’s active advertisement on the internet and the mechanisms of ordering (and paying for) the mixtapes. Kilgo’s statements thus at least attempt to establish that DJ Drama’s activities meet the criteria of RICO in relation to counterfeiting since (a) the quantity of mixtapes seized easily exceeds the set standard, (b) his tapes are both illegal and counterfeit which is the essential point to make a RICO case against DJ Drama, (c) the products are marketed across borders through their website and (d) the money made from these sales is turned into “legitimate” capital.

Criminal RICO charges against artists signed to one of their member companies have not typically been the modus operandi of the RIAA in its fight against piracy. Instead, the RIAA has focused its efforts upon the elimination of the production of actual counterfeit CDs, shutting down websites and peer-to-peer file sharing programs such as Napster (through, among many tactics, civil RICO proceedings) and lobbying congress for stricter laws and greater enforcement of existing statues such as section 2318. In the case of the latter, the RIAA has deployed its Executive Vice President of Anti-Piracy, Brad Buckles, to appear before the judiciary committees of both the House and the Senate. On February 12, 2003, Buckles, a former director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (commonly known as the ATF), appeared before the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property of the Committee on the Judiciary alongside representatives from Microsoft and the Motion Picture Association of America to petition the American government on piracy. Perhaps surprisingly, instead of speaking against internet based peer-to-peer piracy, Buckles emphasizes the need to effectively police the production and dissemination of increasingly sophisticated counterfeit CDs that exhibit “a more expensive CD pressing technology, high quality graphics and packaging, and make the final product appear to look like the real one” (31). He claims that this type of piracy costs the industry “hundreds of millions of dollars […] every year” (31) before explicitly linking piracy to “sophisticated syndicates, including organized crime and international money-laundering rings” (35). When looking at these statements in retrospect, one is struck by the degree to which they anticipate the use of criminal RICO in their linkage of the production of counterfeit CDs to centres of racketeering activity.

As a means of emphasizing the importance of piracy, the RIAA argues that it ultimately connects to much larger issues such as American culture and terrorism. Buckles notes that piracy is “threatening to the bedrock of our American institutions, our American culture and our American economy” (33). Furthermore: “[t]]he creative industries demonstrate one area where American exports are booming, and in many countries epitomizes their experience of what it means to ‘be American’” (34). This emphasis on American values and identity must be understood within its historical context: namely, the aftermath of 9/11 and the War on Terror. Buckles himself makes this connection explicit earlier in his testimony when he commends the subcommittee for investigating “the involvement of crime syndicate and terrorist groups with CD and DVD piracy, which provides quick and untraceable cash to carry out nefarious activities” (31). In testimony to the Senate judiciary committee on March 23, 2004, Buckles goes further when he claims that “[s]ome intelligence has been obtained to indicate that these [terrorist] groups are involved in the fabrication, distribution and sale of counterfeit music […] to raise funds for their operation.” Buckles lists 6 examples of tangential links between piracy and terrorism such as street hawkers in Mauritius selling videos of 9/11, Pakistanis in South Africa who ran a piracy syndicate and professed sympathies to Osama bin Laden, and discs with images of bin Laden in Paraguay. As evidence for the latter, Buckles offers, “[t]here is a large population of middle-eastern origin in Ciudad del Este.” I have quoted Buckles testimony at such length to indicate the level and style of rhetoric that the RIAA has employed to paint piracy as an operation that threatens both American culture and security, while simultaneously framing some forms of piracy, most notably the counterfeit CD, as enforceable by provisions of the RICO Act.

One of the most important aspects of the case against DJ Drama though is how different it is in many ways from the international examples that Buckles highlights in his committee testimony. That is, DJ Drama has no known links to terrorism. Instead of being “anti-American,” one of DJ Drama’s aliases is Mr. Thanksgiving, a name that explicitly alludes back to and celebrates, to use Buckles own words, “our American institutions, our American culture and our American economy.” The most important difference is that DJ Drama is a signed recording artist who, through his supposedly “counterfeit CDs,” has probably led to more sales of RIAA sanctioned albums. For example, Kalefa Sanneh notes that Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter II (Cash Money/Universal) “sold more than a million copies, though none of its singles climbed higher than No. 32 on Billboard’s Hot 100 Chart” (Sanneh). These incredible sales without a true hit single are “hard to imagine […] without help from a friendly pirate” (Sanneh) such as DJ Drama who, prior to the release of Tha Carter II, dropped the mixtape Dedication 2 to great critical acclaim. In 2004, DJ Drama was hired by Def Jam to produce Tha Streetz Iz Watchin’, a mixtape for Young Jeezy. Jeezy’s subsequent album was a RIAA certified platinum record. T.I., a rapper who employs DJ Drama as his touring DJ in addition to the production of various mixtapes, sold 522,000 copies of his album King in the first week alone (Haster).

The classification of mixtapes as “counterfeit CDs” is crucial and misleading. It is true that DJ Drama’s mixtapes exist in “a legal grey area” (Shapiro) in terms of their uses of unlicensed samples, songs and practices of distribution that exist outside and counter to RIAA certified avenues. But, mixtapes are not “counterfeit CDs” in the strictest sense since they are not merely copies of albums. A cursory examination of a mixtape cover like Lil Wayne’s Dedication 2 in comparison to an album such as Tha Carter II would bear this point out. The classification rests on the somewhat credible assertion that the Gangsta Grillz mixtapes successively mimic album covers in order to deceive the customer. Even this point is complicated by a general trend that has blurred the boundaries between the illegal mixtape and the official album. Even after the raid on DJ Drama and the Aphilliates Music Group, Dedication 2 was available at major chains such as Best Buy and FYE, as well as on the iTunes Store (Shapiro); all of those outlets would not deal in clearly counterfeit CDs due to their preexisting relationships with record companies. Also, Lil Wayne will also release Dedication 3 as an official album on Universal Records in 2008. Additionally, albums that are structured like and explicitly thought of as mixtapes such as Prodigy’s Return of the Mac or Eminem’s The Re-Up have been released by record companies like Koch and Interscope. Finally, DJ Drama himself has signed to Atlantic Records and will release the official Gangsta Grillz album in late 2007.

What I have been gesturing towards is that a number of record companies have both sold more records due to piratical mixtapes and have started to subtly shift the role and prominence of the mixtape from supplement to primary text. In other words, piracy can be and already is an important financial driver in the industry. Journalist and hip-hop historian Jeff Chang notes, “[t]he whole industry shifted to massive economies of scale, and mixtapes are a natural outgrowth and responses to that” (qtd in Shapiro). Thus, the RIAA led raid and prosecution of DJ Drama reveals a fundamental incoherence in the American recording industry’s strategies which employ DJ Drama’s piracy as a means to sell official records, concert tickets and non-music related ventures like fashion or cinema (T.I.’s starring role in ATL, for example) while deploying legal means like criminal RICO prosecution to take back control of the music industry. While Brad Buckles tells congress he lobbies on behalf of artists first and foremost, his organization makes it possible for local police to charge one of those artists with a felony. The DJ Drama incident ultimately reveals a sort of cannibalization of the music industry where one hand attacks what the other is doing to evolve its business models in accordance with the wider changes in hip-hop and in the music industry itself.

Finally, the case against DJ Drama defines mixtapes as tools of organized crime and evidence of racketeering activity instead of as artistic works or musical commodities. The shift is significant because one of its wider cultural resonances is perhaps a modulation of what Brad Buckles calls “the value of music in America.” That is, perhaps Buckles conception of what it is to “be American” (his value of music) is challenged directly by mixtapes which redraw American values both through their lyrical and musical content, which I have not had time to discuss in this paper but also the production techniques and economies of scale that are essential to mixtape producers like DJ Drama and increasingly the recording industry of America. It would then seem to be entirely appropriate to use an outmoded and awkward tool like RICO (a law born of a different age for much different purposes) to try to reclaim past models that make the RIAA possible if not necessary.

----

Discuss.

Listening to: Willie the Kid - Get You A Gun (Produced by Don Cannon)

Feds takin' pictures

piracy

Sorry for the near total silence for the past month or so (or more). I've been (a) working on (too) many projects, (b) uninspired, (c) losing passion for blogging (the death of the blogeur?) or (d) found something better to do with my time. Take your pick because they're all true to some extent.

So, along with the rest of the antiTHESIS collective, I'm organizing a conference on piracy hilariously entitled "Rum, Sodomy and the Lash." (Apparently, I've been put in charge of the "sodomy" portion of the title, for some reason.) The event's going down on July 13th and is totally free to attend (in fact, free drinks and food are to be had throughout the day). Tony Mitchell (University of Technology, Sydney) is doing one of the keynote addresses. Mitchell is one of the premier transnational hip-hop scholars in the world (check out his book Global Noise) and he'll be speaking about musical piracy, cultural citizenship and a flea market in Mexico City. If that's not enough, I'll be "DJing" the after party so good tunes are guaranteed (I've got some mu'fuckin' heat lined up, no doubt). More information will be here sometime soon.

In another of my 18 billion projects, I'll also be doing a paper (and chairing the music session). I'm going to speak about Mr. Thanksgiving, the iPod King, etc. etc. etc., my boy DJ Drama. Abstract:

Mixtape Drama: Piracy, the RIAA and the Case Against DJ Drama

This paper thinks through the cultural resonances of piracy through an investigation of the recent arrest of DJ Drama who is a well known hip-hop DJ, entrepreneur and mixtape producer responsible in part for the rise of platinum selling artists such as T.I., Lil Wayne and Young Jeezy. On January 16th, 2007, acting upon a tip supplied by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Fulton County, Georgia police officers and SWAT teams raided the recording studio and office of DJ Drama. The police confiscated over 81,000 CDs, computer equipment, recording gear, four automobiles and assorted promotional material. DJ Drama and his associate DJ Don Cannon were arrested on racketeering charges related to the allegedly piratical aspects of the production and dissemination of mixtapes. I argue that this incident reveals two important valences of piracy in the music industry of the United States. First, piracy itself can be an important economic driver in the industry and the arrest exposes an incoherence in the RIAA’s war against digital piracy. That is, DJ Drama’s mixtapes work as promotional tools for the artists’ “official” albums released by transnational corporations, related concert tours and ventures like the film ATL which starred T.I. and featured contributions from DJ Drama. Thus, while the arrest of DJ Drama is an attack on piracy itself, it simultaneously works against the interests of the music industry to market artists, sell records and make profits. Second, the fact that DJ Drama has been charged under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act suggests that DJ Drama’s mixtapes have been defined and policed as tools of organized crime rather than as artistic documents.

In a first for me, this paper basically follows directly from a previous blog post on the subject. The rest of the conference should be good or at least interesting enough to get you through to the party. We've got panels on the law, feminism, new media, transnationalism, literature, music and "creative arts" with contributions from people at the University of Melbourne, RMIT, University of Queensland, University of New South Wales, Fordham Law School (NYC!), Charles University (Prague!) Australian Catholic University and a couple other places. Keynotes by the aforementioned Tony Mitchell and C.R. Pennell (University of Melbourne). Anyone in Melbourne should make an effort to come out and say hey. So, to recap:

Rum, Sodomy and the Lash: A Symposium on Piracy
Graduate Centre, University of Melbourne
July 13th, 2007
9 AM to LATE

Drinks/party at about 5 PM in the John Medley Building's 5th Floor Function Room.

Listening to: Notorious B.I.G. - Ready to Die

Human after all

human

It's been a couple days and I still don't really know what to say about Daft Punk's Electroma - the new film written and directed by DP, which tracks two "Hero Robots" in their quest to become human in Inyo County, California. On one hand, it's exquisitely and somewhat imaginatively shot with memorable imagery, a promising concept and a stylishly deployed aesthetic that I really sympathize with. But, on the other hand, it's slow, pretentious and, worst of all, boring as fuck at times. You really couldn't shake the feeling through the entire film that it was the ultimate vanity project with the omnipresent Daft Punk leather jackets (designed by Dior Homme, of course), robot masks aplenty and the heroic trajectory of the robots.

Despite the wank, there are some moments of undeniable quality. The long sequence of sweeping desert and sand dune shots ending with an image of two dunes connected at a 45 degree angle, complete with a silhouette of a large bush at the apex was truly vulvosophic. The scenes set in the town were consistently engaging and clever. Finally, the whole film was filmed beautifully, especially the smashingly effective concluding sequence, complete with its robot suicide, smashed helmets, and spectacular fire related ending which brought together much of the film's imagery into one statement.

The film's pacing though seemed to invite tedium, particulaly during the neverending hike through the desert in the second half of the flick. After the town scene's relative activity, visual interest and humour, the desert trek (two robots walking at basically a steady clip over blank desert for 45 or so minutes) front loaded the film and left the awesome ending to be more of a relief than epiphany. Comparisons to Van Sant's Gerry or Gallo's Brown Bunny are inevitable but I found Electroma, on the whole, to be much more immediately likeable (maybe due to the lack of Vincent Gallo) than either and probably worth another viewing. Oh, I should also mention that the soundtrack features absolutely no Daft Punk but instead an interesting mix of Curtis Mayfield, Brian Eno, Chopin, Haydn, Todd Rundgren and a lot of white noise.



Also: Late pass, but Dizzee Rascal's Maths & English leaked a week or so ago. The first five or so tracks are pure hot fire - the type of material that makes almost everyone so excited by Dizzee. The rest of the album falls off a bit (especially he nonsensical and terrible Lily Allen collabo) but it's still basically decent if not good. The undisputed highlight of the album is the long awaited track (rumours of which have been swirling since 2005) featuring the mighty UGK. The whirly beat perfectly sets the table for all the emcees, nicely straddling a border between grime and dirty south. Dizzee starts and delivers a slower than usual verse taunting an unnamed fake gangster and then Bun B follows with his usual generic standout verse seemingly about nothing. But, it's Pimp C who confidently owns the track by casually adapting his flow to drop a heap of quotables, non-sequitors and name-drops ("Bitch, I've got a lot of names"). This transatlantic creative partnership is, in a word, dope and it must continue.

Download Dizzee Rascal's "Where Da G's (featuring UGK)" here.

Addendum: R.I.P. Stack Bundles.

Listening to: Dizzee Rascal - Sirens