Why is it that we don't have award show performances like this in America? I mean, yeah, this is, in some ways, typical bombastic fare for your Grammys etc. But you've got to admit, when on a US award show have you seen a crazy-ass mash-up featuring two interesting, groundbreaking artists (well, at least one anyway), with a shit-ton of harps and confetti? The best we got at the Grammys this year was Elton John singing with Lady Gaga, Stevie Nicks singing a Taylor Swift song, and Beyonce singing Alanis Morissette. What the fuck?
It's a little more than just the glory of this one performance, isn't it? Why isn't Dizzee Rascal big in the U.S.? After his latest album, I'm hardpressed to tell you why--it's dancy, it's club-ready, it's funny; it's just generally way more interesting than something like the aforementioned Gaga (sorry, Lady G; you may dress like a cowardly lion that lives in the house from the end of 2001, but your music is still boringsville), and Dizzee has got tons of what we blue-blooded Americans love: chutzpah, some would call it (and rightfully so). So again: what the fuck?
And seriously, if you haven't checked out Tongue N' Cheek, you're doing yourself a fucking disservice. It's funny, it's "Bonkers," (har-har), and Dizzee is better than ever. It's probably his best album to date, in my opinion; the weird, Euro trance/house production actually suits him really well. On reflection, the super brittle grime stuff of his early albums could never fully support the bulky fluidity of his rhymes. The hyperactive clubby shit works to his advantage, though I never thought I would enjoy this sort of thing until the album dropped. Dizzee's rapping seems to recontextualize what I would generally consider to be shitty.
I don't know how it works, just that it does:
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