Dizzee does the establishment.

Let us discuss this



Recent dizzee interview:

Interviewer: What kind of music do you like?

Dizzee (quick as a flash): I like songs about sex and violence.

Brother silverdollar long ago mentioned dizzee's talent for beautiful quips such as this, in a post also mentioning his predictions that he'll rise to be 'a pop star who knows EXACTLY what his point is'. This is what I wanna talk about with the above video.

I think that, really, Dizzee has done exactly what we wanted him to, but we're still disappointed like pricks. What else did we imagine would happen? Dizzee rapping (well) in a tuxedo to harps with the latest indie star feels intuitively wrong (and part of his ongoing attempt to emulate jay-z), but what else could he do?

Roll Deep were on top of the pops once, in the dying days of both institutions. They did a little dance routine (wiley's alarmingly fond of dance routines it'd seem). It were reet 'orrible. I saw Wiley live after wearing my rolex had just properly landed and he did the 'authentic' grime thing; 25 second songs before a rewind. And he was getting bottled.

Do we really want dizzee to be a pop star (which we do) and just continue to do stuff like this at the NME awards? Bloggers complaining about him going commercial are properly bullshit, let them eat vinyl. I think why we wanted dizzee to get massive is cos he was obviously a subversive genius with such a universally applicable way of looking at things that he just HAD to be massive. But he was good cos he was shocking. And this is shocking.

To do it the Wiley way, which is the idea that what's shocking and new in 2003 will just be amplified if you do it in front of a crowd of indie kids, raises less eyebrows than what dizzee's done in his dinner jacket.

Rappers need to appeal to middle class white kids to get properly massive. The NME probably matters more to dizzee than any grime publication or blog, and has done for a long time. I'm not saying this is a good thing. But I am saying that he's gone down the only path possible for him to become massive. And this performance is actually good, as well. Let's not forget that.