Author: David Kane

Publisher: Velocity Press

Published: 2024-11-12

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 1913231623

Friday 28 July 2019: Eleven years after Jay-Z became the first hip-hop artist to headline the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury, Stormzy finally became the first English rapper to follow suit. The South London rapper, wearing a customised stab-proof vest designed by Banksy, put in an explosive performance and finished his set by thanking many of the “legends for paving the way,” name-checking the likes of Wiley, Dizzee Rascal, and Giggs. Yet British rap has a nuanced, rich, and often misunderstood history that factors in socioeconomics, gender, identity, music industry disruption, and innovation. Despite how unlikely it looked for decades, UK rap is now firmly part of pop music and the greater hip-hop canon. What Do You Call It? charts the journey of UK rap music over nearly forty years. It begins in the early 1980s when rap landed on our odd little island. Imported through the electro-driven hip-hop of Afrika Bambaataa, the sound was shaped by sound system culture, inspired by punk, and accelerated by rave. The result is a music that does not stand still. From Britcore to UK hip-hop via the deep outer reaches of trip-hop in the late twentieth century, through to the tumultuous opening decades of the twenty-first century and the urban claustrophobia of MC-driven garage, grime, and drill. Through a combination of cultural theory, historical research, and dozens of interviews with the scene protagonists—including Jazzie B, Klashnekoff, Skinnyman, and Wiley, through to contemporary artists like Tion Wayne and Loyle Carner— the book tells the origin stories of classic albums and mixtapes, anthemic singles, vital scenes, long-forgotten but important labels, and the artists who would change the course of British music and culture.