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15 August 2011

Review: Channel 4's 'Life of Rhyme'

For the next 29 days you're able to watch 'Life of Rhyme', a documentary as part of the UK TV Channel's Street Summer series, featuring some of the best UK MCs ever, ranging from Taskforce to Ghetts.
Akala as the host covers the diverse qualities that modern MCs obtain - and explores the contribution to spoken word and poetry speaking to underground legends from hip hop, grime and reggae.

With all the negative press 'rap music' has had thrown at it recently (the latest being historian David Starkey effectively digging his own career's grave in 10 mins) it was the perfect opportunity to show the non hip hop/grime public the deeper intricacies of what the music has to offer! Hopefully this will open a few ears and eyes to the realness out there.

Akala really grills Giggs about the message behind his music, and seems to hit a few raw nerves with the Peckham road rap star and asks some questions not many would include in their interview...

He covers all aspects of what an MC does, from flow patterns, content, styles of rappers and what rap music does when played loudly to large groups of people!

WATCH THE EPISODE HERE:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/life-of-rhyme/episode-guide/series-1/episode-1

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2 comments:

  1. This program was a bit overrated, who is that Giggs guy, is he serious? He can't rap, his lyrics are infantile, and his backing tracks are comic. Akala doesn't seem to be able to stop flailing his arms about in front of him, like a news reporter on crack, when talking about relatively simple subject matter. They had a good go, and I'm glad they tried to make that kind of program, but it was too heavily weighted towards the younger (much shitter) artists. They showed Farma and Chester for all of 7 seconds, no real mention of proper garage MCs, who paved the way for all these shouty, violent grime MCs.

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  2. The Giggs comment was a joke right? Being one of the most hyped mc's at the moment I'll take that statement as an attempt at irony. Other than not knowing who he was I completely agree about everything else you say about him. Akala has become a self appointed mouth piece for the "give grime a chance" campaign and does come across a bit preachy. He is soon gonna find himself (if he isnt already) on the outside looking in - Like a reformed youth worker talking about grime but not really part of it any more. I'm also kinda glad they didn't turn it into a history lesson about grime as that has been done to death (I think they went the whole show without mentioning SoSolid). The real question that I was left with is why these "shouty, violent grime MCs" are where we have ended up. Does Grime go hand in hand with violence and do the theme's of gang mentality resonate in grime the way US hip-hop does with over indulgence and commercialism (Bling/Money/Bitches)?

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