YouTube
South London collective So Solid Crew have made tidal waves in the garage scene - the 20-plus nenbers took away 2 MOBO awards this year for "Best Newcomer" and "Best Garage Act"... Leader of the crew, 21 year ol "Battersea Homeboy" MC Megaman, describes the raw So Solid sound as "straight R&B and hip hop sound but with a little bit of ragga flavour and that's what makes the difference."
Bit of a change of pace this one, but then how could it not be? There aren't many other tracks on Now albums that sound like this. Few acts appearing on the albums have been considered a threat to society in the way that So Solid were for a while back there; of course it's an image they were happy to play up to at the time, even if it seems a little bit odd now.
With hindsight, '21 Seconds' is pop brilliance, especially as a debut single: a simple conceit that stretches to allow multiple MCs a moment in the spotlight: there are longer edits (including the official video) but the edited version here only gives us less than three minutes. I seem to recall Mark Goodier playing a different version on the chart show, one that left out the lyric "Raise up the dead and I worship the devil huh, red is my best colour," but I could be wrong on that. The production is smartly minimal, but with whooshing sub-bass parts that reward close listening, and there's even a sound effect of a waiting taxi to hammer home the urgency. It's gimmicky of course, but in the right way, and one of the few tracks here that seem to have improved with age.
Of course, things went quite wrong quite soon and they didn't exactly turn out to be the future of music - did you hear their Number 82 hit last year? - but there's a brief bit of fun here.
Available on: Ministry of Sound ONE
No comments:
Post a Comment