Tyler, The Creator & Hodgy Beats - Sandwitches on Jimmy Fallon from Alex Harbin on Vimeo.
We're extremely excited here at Chrome Kids HQ to catch the new Major Lazer album when it finally drops. As big respectors of both Diplo and Switch, and all life long Reggae fans this should be one of our albums of the year... however. I have to say that personally I'm disappointed in the latest leak from the project.
It's not the weak lyric writing that bothers me. Dancehall generally has a long history of questionable lyrics that would make most songwriters recoil at their childish simplicity, but it has never stopped me from loving the tunes. Bashment is all about the fire, the passion and the delivery so we can forgive it's lack of poetic intricacy.
It's not even that I hate the way the vocoder / auto tune effect had been dominating the scene. I've long given up that rant and come to simply accept it as a given these days.
What bothers me is that in 2009, artists with such a following in the Dance music scene as Diplo and Switch, infact no the fact that any artists whatsoever, are putting out such blatantly homophobic hate tunes. This is coming from a man who at my own admission had copies of Buju Banton's Boom Bye Bye on both 12" when it came out and 7" as a remix some few years later. I was a regular at Ragga jams as a teenager, where artists would get the biggest cheer for cursing out 'Batty men', and I was one of those cheering. I'm not proud of these facts, but they are the facts no less and I won't try and make excuses for it either. However it is not just me that has grown up and seen the foolishness in such actions, society in general has grown up too, at least I thought it had. Reggae artists have been put under so much pressure not to preach such hatred by having their records banned or dropped from their label or not being allowed entry to countries on tour, that the level of homophobia within Reggae generally has been reduced dramatically. Pressure has also been put on the media as a whole to show homosexuality in a more favourable light and the stigma is just not as great any more. Even the younger hardcore Christian fundamentalists tend to be seen saying, "we think it's wrong but like whatever".
So why with all this in mind does the new Major Lazer track have lines such as "me a zombie and me don't eat gays / cos me don't like the HIV" (which is even more offensive in it's appaling rhyme flow, "cos me don't like AIDS" would have been a far more effective follow up line I would have thought), and make many an un-complimentary reference to "Batty Men"..
Actually, all Andy Milokanis does seem to do is eat brains, smoke cocaine and jack up heroin all day, so maybe we can forgive him his rather misguided outlook on life then, but the other two should know better. As this is just a leak hopefully they will address the point in question and this track won't actually make it onto the album after all.
I deliberated about actually putting the tune up, but as many readers come through various blog aggregators that pick up the music specifically it's been included.
**** late edition to the post ****
having just seen the video of these guys in the studio and realising that Andy Milokanis is in fact Andy Milonakis (and also finding out who he is) I realise that Diplo and Switch might have been so caught up in the darkly humorous fact that this crazy chubby Greek American with a congenital growth-hormone condition is dropping these kind of lyrics that they didn't give the actual content much thought, or consider it to be anything but funny, but unfortunately any humour is lost in the translation to many of us fellas and the track still needs to be scrapped.
This is the guy doing the vocals...
Actually on watching this I have the sneaking suspicion that he is actually gay, in which case the ironic humour isn't lost on me, but like I said, the whole reason for this post was because I took it on face value, I had no idea who this guy was so I think there needs to be some context to it all. I still maintain that it shouldn't be an album track but maybe a video that makes the humour more obvious.
(YSI) Major Lazer (Diplo & Switch) - Zumbi (Feat. Andy Milokanis)
I didn’t have time to write about Electric Picnic before heading to Bestival and I was so impressed with it that I thought I might have found my favourite of the year (an accolade usually bestowed upon Bestival), so decided to do an Electric Picnic Vs Bestival write up of the two. I have to say though, now that I’m back from Bestie, at the risk of being like one of those annoying people who tells you the football scores before you get a chance to watch the game… I was foolish to ever doubt its standing.
Electric Picnic
As I can’t actually remember a large chunk of Electric Picnic and saw few bands or DJs, it is possibly unfair to pass any kind of judgment, but then I don’t really have anything bad to say so I shall carry on regardless. 
The Festival is in County Laois, a couple of hours outside Dublin, and has been going since 2004. This was the first time I’d been but had heard great things beforehand so had quite high expectations. They certainly weren’t dashed by first impressions.
The site, especially the Body & Soul area contained some beautifully crafted stages and general artwork, my favourites being the Lucent Dossier circus stage and one that was built around a big tree. A fine selection of Festival favourites including Chai Wallah, Lost Vagueness and the Inflatable Church were present, as was the Arcadia DJ Booth from Trash City in Glastonbury, which I am determined to DJ on at some point – for those who haven’t seen it this is a fire spurting metallic beast of a booth that looks as if it was stolen from the Thunderdome straight under Tina Turners nose. 
Now I hardly ever plan to see acts at festivals and remain content in bimbling around discovering new and exciting things but there were a few unmissables artists playing at Electric Picnic such as Diplo, The Roots and Modeselektor. Unfortunately I missed all of them and some how managed to watch uninspiring performances from Gomez and New Young Pony Club. I did manage to go and see Toddla T on the first night but with only 4 other people in the tent I couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to stay long. 
There were a few others: Spearhead still remain one of my favourite live bands; The Congos niced up the place beforehand and I was slightly gutted to have missed most of their set; Funkadelic / Parliament were great but with a lack of George Clinton to bring them focus for a good 20 minutes I kinda lost interest. Bootsy provided some quality bitching entertainment by bringin out a ‘F**k George’ banner on stage but I was disappointingly informed he was just a lookalike; and aside from my sets on the Time Machine and The Asylum (Lost Vagueness) that was pretty much all I caught. For much of the time I fell victim (if you can really call it that) to the infamous Irish hospitality and got royally wankered in a small karaoke bar run by a true party prince called Duncan (McGuire I believe). Didn’t actually see any Karaoke but there was a lot of bar.
So you see, even though Electric Picnic had the potential for greatness and was certainly a good craic, I didn’t quite get the most out of its attractions. Still I think it would have been hard pushed to top Bestival, even with all the problems I had there.
This post is going on longer then I expected however so like a bad soap opera you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out what happened next.
(YSI) The Roots - Get Busy (Featuring Dice Raw, Peedi Crakk & DJ Jazzy Jeff)
(YSI) Diplo - Brew Barrymore
(YSI) Modeselektor feat. Puppetmastaz - The Dark Side Of The Sun
Chrome Kids - Knowledge Me
Mix recorded for Adam Walton's Mystery Tour on BBC Radio Wales (Oct 2009)
Posts
All Comments
