Boy In Da Corny: Vijay vs. Matt on Dizzee Rascal

Vijay:
Dear Matt,
I think Dizzee Rascal is a grating horror show for one simple reason: both the vocals and the beats are extremely irritating. Apparently there is some intelligent social commentary hidden within the racket but I wouldn't know because the message is delivered in painful yelps that are nearly impossible to decipher.
More on those so-called vocals: the stuttering, scattershot, hyena on helium delivery is made even worse by the repeated and exaggerated up-and-down pitch of his voice. This isn't flow, this is frantic babbling.
The beats aren't much better. The descriptions of them as warped Nintendo/ringtone bleeps and growls are accurate, the common thread being that they are harshly unpleasant. Might I also add that the music is repetitive, generally uninteresting and frequently atonal.
The complete package leaves me with a splitting headache, simply some of the worst music to ever be so highly regarded.
Respectfully,
Vijay

Matt: Before getting too deep into the Battle of Dizzee I must concede you one point; the beats are a purely love 'em or leave 'em affair. I generally think they're genius in their sparseness — as if the kid was Timbaland's anorexic little brother - but I've tried to turn half a dozen of my friends onto Boy In Da Corner to no avail mostly because they can't get past the lack of Scott Storch's strings or whatever the flair of the month is on Direct Effect. So I don't completely fault you there, though I find it hard to believe that Hot 97 never ate up some of the more American-type joints on the second album like the Miami booty bass strip club anthem waiting to happen "Stand Up Tall."
That said, I feel very sorry for anyone who can't get down with "Fix Up, Look Sharp" (that's the all-drums one with the Billy Squire sample) or "Jus a Rascal," my vote for best not-actually-dancehall, dancehall track ever.
I think when talking about Dizzee and your amazement that he receives so many critical daps it helps to think about the context that most of us first heard him. It was 2003. 50 Cent was on the rise and ushering in the third wave of faux-gangsta inescapable rap as pop or pop as rap or whatever. Meanwhile the "underground" scene was busy rapping breathless verses about how high-minded their art was over Metal Machine Music samples. That may be overstating things a bit, but in the interest of simplicity we'll assume that the American rap scene was played. And here was this 18-year-old kid from East London making his own beats, who wasn't rapping about his rims, women or jewelry, but still wasn't afraid to be commercially viable. He was on the last Basement Jaxx album if memory serves. I don't think anyone ever got a guest spot on a Basement Jaxx album, whether you think that's a good or bad thing, by sounding at all atonal in their own right. Sure it wasn't completely approachable at first, but he wasn't being obtuse for the sake of being obtuse. He wasn't Anticon. In fact the first time I actually saw him interviewed he stared on blankly as the "indie" looking dude on MTV2 name-checked the entire Def Jux roster. He was completely on some other shit.
As for Dizzee's "hyena on helium delivery." To me, that's the sound of making a means on your own desperation. Everything I've read about the grime scene (which Rascal has certainly moved on from by now) had it as its own little self-sustaining community, unaware and unphased—mostly - of what was going on over here. Without getting into some amateur sociology bullshit, Boy In Da Corner was endearing, in part, because it was so foreign. It was a different take on hip-hop when I most needed one.

Vijay: Well said, yet the problem is that I don't find this take on hip-hop (or anything for that matter) endearing just because it is foreign and different-sounding. When it is all said and done, I need some appeal, some sort of connection during the listening process. You have found that attraction, but when the aural assault is so drastic, it can easily alienate listeners like myself.
The idea that the vocals are a function of desperation and outrage raises a similar argument - if it doesn't sound "good" to you then who cares about the root cause or the message behind the finished package?
This is a stretch of an analogy, but imagine there was a movie that wanted to get across the mind-numbing nature of the daily grind so desperately that the entire film was just repeated scenes of the commute and staring at a computer screen, with ambient sounds and no dialogue. I would rather watch a Hollywood action flick (the equivalent of slick hip-pop a la Scott Storch) than be subjected to the torture of the black sheep with a message.
I also find it necessary to point out that the MTV2 dude is named Jim Shearer and he is perhaps the worst television personality of all time. I cringe when he asks bands his stupid "questions," though it is entertaining to watch how different people react to his clear incompetence. I think I remember someone once responding with a exasperated, "are you serious?"

Matt: Ha, I secretly knew his name, but didn't want to drop it for fear of losing points in the match. You're a braver man than I.
Resolved: Jim Shearer is a douche rocket.
That behind us, you totally called me out on my weak-ass argument that Dizzee was special just because of his "other-ness." I deserve the quiet stares of a thousand post-colonial lit professors. That foreign quality got me listening, piqued my interest, but what came me coming back was exactly what I should have elaborated on before - the desperation. For most of Boy In Da Corner he sounds like a better articulated version of the off-his-ritalin paranoid 17-year-old that a lot of us went to high school with. Bugging out over the future and the past with equal dread. The "brag about how ill I am" moments come, but they sound almost like he's trying to convince himself as much as he is the listener.
At the least that's interesting, but I find it pretty damn endearing. Plus there's some genuine wordplay in there: "more disruptive and troublesome than ever, I'll probably be doing this, probably forever."
And the dude pronounces banana baNAHNa - you cannot front on that.
Of course to listen to some of it everyday would be draining but the same could be of listening to that Storch track or Vin Diesel movie. Fuck, I love some popcorn shit - the rise of Houston last year had me all summer - but how many Slim Thug tracks can you take before you start to wonder why this guy is doing it. Listening to Dizzee, you get the sense that the kid would be doing it regardless.