Youthful aggression and unjustified arrogance will get you a long in the world. Young people may be naïve, inexperienced idiots, but they don’t half do some fucking incredible things because of it. I Luv U smashes you over the head and grabs you by the balls. It sounded like nothing else then, and it sounds like nothing else now, and even though Wiley should take some credit as the pioneer, I still think it’s the greatest thing that grime produced, so kudos to Dizzee for killing it. Hell it might the greatest thing we (the UK) produced this decade. Its all of those good things about music that gets you excited, it original, its unique, and it catches you off guard, and of course Dizzee was only bloody 16 when it dropped.
Sonically it’s the sort of fierce fuck-off bass that makes me feel justified in using the word ‘sonically’ when talking about a four minute blast of popular music. Appropriately the lyrics are concerned with teenage relationships, sex, he said/she said back and forth, chatting shit to talk yourself up, and in the end pregnancy, delivered and handled with humour, realism and conviction. On record its bass blasts, processed hand claps, and previously unheard bleeps and processed sounds (sounding like the halfway house between futuristic and 8-bit), a surprisingly pop call and response chorus for new generation, and an MC with an English accent that had charisma and finally didn’t feel the need to ape them lot over the pond; as much a lyrical assault as a musical one. Once in a decade impact, a little bit of rare innovation in a stagnant cesspool of British music, something new that blew everything else away <insert your own comparison to punk, rave or bronx born hip hop here depending upon your age>, and despite some of his recent hip house shit, Dizzee is undoubtedly a talent who put together more than a few great pieces of popular music over the decade. (Side note – someone who won the mercury music prize and actually deserved it?) He’s become a bonafide star to boot, just shame it didn’t happen after he’d dropped this one rather than that Calvin Harris tosh. This TUNE(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) still gives me hope. . .
GE
