Most artists do not fuck around and make a classic album first time in the studio. Let alone produce an album that has managed to not only codify a subgenre of music on the flyâUK grimeâbut become the standard for what rap music could be for an entire nation. East Londonâs Dizzee Rascal managed to do all of that and more at the ripe old age of 18 years when his debut, Boy in Da Corner, dropped back in 2003.
When I spoke with Dizzee over the phone about the influence of his debut, he told me he believes Boy In Da Corner was âto UK hip-hop what Nas' Illmatic was to New Yorkââa bold statement but one I could agreed with. Boy In Da Corner brought grimeâan influential subgenre of hip-hop birthed from the endless creativity of a bunch of kids from the United Kingdomâto the rest of the world and made a young Dizzee Rascal, his country's first international rap superstar.
On Friday, Dizzee Rascal will be headlining the Red Bull Music Academy Festival at the Music Hall in Williamsburg where the UK legend will be performing Boy In Da Corner in its entirety for the first time in his career. In honor of this event, Complex spoke with Dizzee about the influence of the album, discovering Southern rap through No Limit Pen & Pixel covers, and why he wants to speak about social issues in his home country today.
Can you give me a little insight to the Red Bull Music Academy. You will be performing your classic album, Boy In Da Corner, for the first time. What can we can expect?
The energy! Iâve been rehearsing. I donât usually rehearse too much before a show because usually the stuff is quite recent stuff and I donât need to memorize it. Some of the songs Iâve never performed before. Some of them songs werenât made to perform because they were album tracks.
What songs would you be performing for the first time out there?
Iâm not sure if Iâve ever done âDo It!â Iâve never done âRound We Go.â Iâve never done âHold Your Mouf.â
Boy In Da Corner was released in 2003 when you were 18. What are you the most proud about that album after 13 years?
Iâm proud that people have held onto it so much. It feels like it seems to mean to the UK what Nasâ Illmatic means to New York.
How would you describe Boy In Da Corner to a teenager today who hasn't heard the album?
Itâs really energetic. Itâs dark in a lot of places. A lot of it is like mosh music. Again, a lot the stuff 18 year olds are into right now? Thatâs what Boy In Da Corner was then.
Like in todayâs grime scene?
Yeah, but even in the trap music [teenagers] are into, like with Lil Uziâs music or other people like that. Itâs turn-up music. Thatâs how I would explain it to an 18-year-old. Itâs turn-up music.
Did you realize that you were making something special or did the reaction take you by surprise?
I didnât know that it was gonna get taken as serious as it did. I just put everything into it. It was such a fun album to make. Again, I had never made an album before. It was almost like you were pretending to be a big producer-slash-rapper because there werenât really that much pressure or attention on you and it just works.
[Boy in Da Cornerâ] seems to mean to the UK what Nasâ Illmatic means to New York.
The album sounds very free spirited.
Thatâs it. There was no inhibitions, nothing to worry about because I was trying everything for the first time, experimenting and having fun. Thereâs something about [becoming an] elite rapper where the real pressure starts with the next one, trying to be bigger than the last one, having expectations and trying to prove something to critics. I didnât have to prove nothing to critics. I didnât know what âcritically acclaimedâ was and I couldnât imagine never getting a Mercury Award. I never imagined getting anything for it.
You were definitely a pioneer in the UK hip-hop scene to make a sizable impact on American audiences.
Whatâs crazy to me is that I didnât feel like a pioneer for rap in England because UK hip-hop was its own scene. They kind of saw themselvesâpeople like Rodney P, Blak Twang, Roots Manuva, Skinnymanâthat was its own scene. Growing up, I saw that as kind of backpacker-ish and wasnât into it. I grew up on the pirate radio scene which started out as drum 'n' bass music. UK garage picked up and got bigger on the back end of that. I was a drum 'n' bass DJ at first but not any one of note. I was just mixing drum 'n' bass records, then garage came and then [grime music] was kind of on the back of garage. If you wanted to see grime? It might be a garage event but in a smaller room because they didnât really want us there. They didnât trust us.
Why do you think that was? Why did grime have such trouble breaking into the scene when garage was a big thing at the time?
It was a bit more of bougie thing, UK garage. Even though it started with real street persons, as it crossed over, it got a bit more fancy. A kid like me would have turned up in a hoodie and some trainers and thatâs not what they wanted. They saw us as trouble even though garage and drum 'n' bass had its own trouble. We just looked like obvious trouble.
You have always mentioned that you appreciate Southern rap. Iâve always been curious how a kid from East London got into Southern rap.
I just did an interview with someone from Red Bull and they showed me this [mixtape] called A Trip Down Memory Lane and itâs got a bunch of my old tracks and old Wiley tracks. There were two tracks on this little compilation and oneâs called âKrymeâ and oneâs called âBoidem About.â âKrymeâ is like the first one I did and itâs got a dude called Red Rum. Red Rum was this older dude Adrian, and he was into Cash Money and Master P. I donât know how and where but he showed me that stuff and I was like, âWhat the fuck is this?â I remember seeing the album cover and thinking, âWhat the fuck?â Because they used to have the album covers done with the jewelry in the writingâthe jewelry graphics?
Oh, yeah. The Pen & Pixel covers. Those covers were nuts.
Thatâs it! Seeing Chopper City, with the choppers above B.G. I thought it was stupid. But when I heard the music? I didnât think I liked Cash Money at first either but when I heard Three 6 Mafia and Project Pat, the repetition and the tempo was close to garage. Thatâs when I thought I could make beats because what they were doing, and what the Neptunes were doing at the time, was easy to replicate.
I couldnât see myself making garage or drum 'n' bassâit was all too musical. I couldnât play music. I could feel my way through and make some notes and things but Iâm not classically trained. I couldnât play any chords or nothing like that. When it came to Three 6 Mafia, I just loved what they did. When you hear âI Luv U,â thatâs me doing Three 6 Mafia. That actual track is a mix of âWhatâs Your Fantasy?â by Ludacris and âIs That Yo Chick?â by Jay Z. Thatâs my version of that track. Even with the layout having the female and the male going back to back? If you go and listen those tracks, thatâs what that is.
That makes a ton of sense because âI Luv Uâ doesnât exactly sound like Sippinâ on Sizzurp but the feeling is there.
If you listen to âKryme,â yeah? I sample, âAll I wanna know where the Gâs at,â and thatâs from Three 6 Mafia's âWho Run It?â Thatâs Crunchy Black.
I love that song. It's one of my favorite Three 6 Mafia tracks.
That background in southern hip-hop, thatâs what separated me from everyone who was doing UK garage and all that. The tracks I was doing with Wiley at first, they weren't quite UK garage-based because they werenât into southern hip-hop or what at the time was âcrunk.â Everything that Chief Keef, Lil Uzi Vert and 21 Savage are doing now was âcrunk" in 2002. Thatâs what I was into and I was in the super minority because thatâs when everything was listening to whatever was going on the west coast and 50 Cent. No one was into southern rap. Funny enough, up north in Manchester, they were into Master P and all that stuff heavily because it was like gangbanging music.
You mentioned artists like Chief Keef, Lil Uzi Vert and 21 Savage, earlier. Are those the type of younger artists you're into now?
Iâve been listening to Lil Uzi Vert because I wanted to see what the hype was about and again, I listen to his music and yeah, I get it, more so to Keef. Iâm not upset with the simplicity of the lyrics because Iâm a massive fan of Project Pat. I love Wu-Tang, I love Nas, I love Jay Z and all that too. But the simple, chanty stuff I love because thatâs the shit that everyone catches. I love the beats coming through because itâs still a little bit different and little bit quirky.
âFix Up, Look Sharpâ samples Billy Squierâs âThe Big Beatâ and it sounds like nothing else on your album. How did you decide to use that?
[Nick âCageâ Denton] the guy who produced, he just played the record. We were in the studio like we always were and he played and I was like, âOw! Whatâs that?â because I never heard it before. I hadnât heard the Run-DMC version [âHere We Goâ].
I started writing so that the âWoos!â would come at the end of the sentence. I built around that. It wasnât crazy to me because I was into heavy metal and rock and grunge before I was into hip-hop. It was mosh pits that got me excited about music, not breakdancing. Thatâs another reason why Boy in Da Corner sounds the way it does.
Another big reason was that I wanted a song to be on Tim Westwoodâs show. When I was doing my thing on the underground grime scene, I wasnât getting no love in that world. I thought Tim Westwoodâs show was the top show for what people considered real hip-hop at the time. I still consider myself a rapper even though I make a different type of music. I learned to MC over drum 'n' bass music.
Are you making any new music? Itâs been three years since your last album, The Fifth, came out.
I know, man. You know whatâs crazy? Iâve made loads of music but nothing was good enough to put out. I put out the Pagans EP and even though it was quite underground-ish, I wanted to do some big videos for it. As far as an album, Iâm working on it now. The last one didnât do as well as I wanted it to do but it still had big singles. But the way I feel now? I want to make a consistent rap album. Iâm such a fan of rap music. I feel like I want to rap but itâs hard knowing that Iâve done really well off of dance music.
Do you have any idea what the sound will be? Your records have had a gradual shift over the years. Youâve gone from straight grime to working with big time producers like Armand Van Helden and Calvin Harris.
Yeah, Calvin Harris! Calvin Harris wasnât a big time producer then. Iâve got another track with him coming out, too. The last time I was in L.A. I hooked up with him. Weâve got another big banger, another massive dance tune but it doesnât necessarily sound like a Calvin Harris track at first. Itâs gonna be nice to watch that drop.
As far as my album, I wanna rap. I really wanna rap. Iâve missed that side of it. I was still rapping on my last album but that consistent rap album? Thatâs what Iâm into. I know that everyoneâs into this whole grime thing, again which I think is cool as well, but I just wanna make banging rap music.
Iâm looking forward to doing some dark shit as well. The stuff Iâm doing with Valentino Khan is quite dark. I want it to have some social relevance but catchy. I want it to make some good observations about whatâs going on. The worldâs changed since Boy In Da Corner. The area that I come from is not the same. I donât want to be rapping like it was. This album is gonna be more based on the UK and how itâs changed. Thatâs my aim.
Can you explain whatâs changed and how that affects your music?
Crazy gentrification! Iâve covered it on some of my albums. Iâve got a track called âSlow Your Rollâ where it breaks down how I blew up, I went away, I came back and the area changed due to gentrification. How the people I grew up are now trying to kill each other. Just explaining that story of what it was like to go back to that area pre-Olympics and how after the Olympics a lot of things changed. I performed at the Olympics [in London in 2012] and the area has basically changed. Itâs not what it was when I grew up. The crazy thing about it was when Red Bull asked me to do this show they told me that it was gonna be in Williamsburg. Williamsburg was the first place I performed in America in 2004 on the back of a flatbed truck, right when the neighborhood started getting gentrified.
Iâve been in Brooklyn for ten years. It was already very gentrified when I moved in, but now? Sheesh. Theyâve built these gigantic glass condos right on the water where abandoned factories used to be. Itâs certainly stark.
Thatâs what itâs like going on now! Thereâs no way that I can ignore that. I know a lot of people want a Boy In Da Corner II album to take it back. Thatâs not realistic. The closest thing I can do is give you the passion that I had and the excitement and energy of the album. But Iâm not the same person that I was and where Iâm from is not the same place. This album is about my growth and not being afraid to be an adult.