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Thursday, January 09, 2003
I've recently been watching a lot of music television (probably to the great dismay of my idle, dwindling intellect) and the other day I saw probably the worst music artist to ever grace my TV, aside from John Tesh. This artist is called Streets and he is a rapper . . . from Britain. Yes, you read that correctly; he is a hip-hop rapper from merry old England.
From the people who brought us The Spice Girls, comes Streets, a young man with the distinction of being called "the first British rapper." He also has the distiction of being called (by me) "the worst British rapper." With his indecipherable cockney accent and his sub-par grasp on the definition of "rhyming," Streets will keep your eyes glued to the screen as you wonder if what you are seeing is an actual music video or a horrible LSD-induced hallucination. (DON'T DO DRUGS, KIDS!) It's not that seeing a British rapper is so hard to believe . . . OK, yes it is. This guy is such an awckwardly white rapper that he makes Eminem look like Kunta-Kinte.
Besides being a lame Brit, Streets suffers from a severe lack of anything even remotely resembling a sense of rhythm. The video I had the displeasure of witnessing -- entitled Let's Push Things Forward -- showcased Streets walking down some lonely city street, pointing at the camera, and incomprehensibly rambling on about God knows what. There was a track of music in the video, and it did indeed have a beat. However, in a stroke of pure rapping genious, Streets decided not to set his lyrics to any discernable beat, and just talked instead. I'm not expert in the field of hip-hop, but I'm pretty sure that talking while music is playing in the background is not considered rapping. I think it's considered incredibly lame.
I'm not a huge fan of hip-hop in general, but I do think that Streets is an abomination to the genre. I suppose it could be said that he is a pioneer to the rap scene in Britain, and while the forerunners of rap in the U.S. weren't the most terrific artists either, they at the very least had talent. Streets is to Run DMC as Mac and Me was to E.T.: The Extraterrestrial.
It's hard to believe that Streets sprouted from the same nation that lavished the world with The Beatles and Led Zepplin. But then I guess taking note of their poor showing in the Revolutionary War, their invention of a time of the day dedicated to tea and sconnes, and their contribution of Davey Jones to The Monkees all makes it a little easier to believe.
| Mr. McBastard | 3:19 AM | | |
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