HEY! GUESS WHAT?!?!

GOOD NEWS EVERYONE, I'VE GOT AN EP DROPPING NEXT MONTH! THE SURGERY EP WILL BE AVAILABLE FROM iTUNES, AMAZON AND BANDCAMP ON MONDAY JULY 18! SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR THE RELEASE BY DOWNLOADING AND USING THE FLYER AS YOUR AVATAR ON ALL YOUR SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES! THANK YOU ALL :D http://www.megaupload.com/?d=61H8BS65

The “OG” Niki show; an encapsulation of ‘Broken Britain’?

I writ dis on da twennyuf of april, innit.

Having first got wind last week of the furore surrounding “OG” Niki, the new young female rapper from Birmingham on everyone’s lips, it’s only today after 3 times of asking that I’ve actually brought myself to watch and listen in full to the cypher that’s simultaneously polarised opinions and got the majority of the underground talking.

The thing is it’s almost hard to know where to begin with my response, both to the cypher and to the responses it’s received. The UK has in recent years been very fortunate to have some of the finest female ‘urban’ artists the world music scene has to offer; acts like Estelle, Ms Dynamite, Stush, and most recently Lioness and No Lay, have all achieved recognition and varying levels of success; in achieving these things, none of the above have proudly paraded their promiscuity for the world to see in the same way that “OG” Niki has done. One could look at that as evidence that the current hype surrounding this girl won’t last, but the many descriptions of her as being a “legend” and “the UK’s answer to Lil’ Kim” (like that last one’s something to be proud of anyway) make me worry that a lot of impressionable young girls will see “OG” Niki as having set some sort of precedent in the UK which they must follow, not least when they see underground opinion leaders such as DJ Semtex and Wiley openly lending support to her and, in fact, publicly criticizing the many folk speaking out against the content in her cypher.

The cypher itself is nothing much to write home about, content aside; the flow is average at best and lost in places at worst, but what stood out for me overwhelmingly was the unabashed pride with which a girl younger than my little sister told the tale of (I hope I’m not, but expect I’m wrong on this) all her sexual escapades. Now look, there’s nothing wrong with sex, and there’s nothing wrong with making tracks about sex, I’ve done it myself in my time. Promiscuity amongst youths is wrong however, and I find “OG” Niki’s pride in her lack of sexual self-control to be disgusting. Worse still is the proclamation: “I don’t give a f***, my mum knows, why you telling’ her?” Sorry? Your mum’s aware of this behaviour? I give up.

But that’s just it; I can’t give up, and neither should the many contemporaries I know making fantastic music with relevant messages. In fact to conclude, I should stress that I find myself in something of a Catch-22; as much as I don’t want to help the hype surrounding “OG” Niki to rumble on, I can’t sit back and watch this madness unfold without doing my best to belittle it.