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Spoony: "I'd say, for the past seven or eight weeks, Twice
As Nice has ended with me playing a Wookie tune, Wookie in the
crowd and MC Neat next to me just boosting it, boosting the music,
the DJs, the people, the vibe, everything. I always keep my best
tunes till last, and three out of the last four could be Wookie
tunes. That's how good he is" - DJ Spoony
"He's biased" - Jason "Wookie" Chue
If 27-year-old Jason "Wookie" Chue is the future of
British black music, the building in which he's spent seven years
marshalling renegade snares and throbbing basslines is the monument
to its past. Off an inauspicious Camden backstreet, the walls of
Soul II Soul Studios are hung with the treasure of the UK's last
fully-requited tangle with R&B. Once buzzed through the front
doors, you find no less than three platinum and eighteen gold discs,
the proof that even a place as drizzly as the UK can get jiggy
on a national scale when it really wants to.
In his compact studio, Wookie is dilligently fussing over a CD
burned with eight of his tracks. He's has spent most of his twenties
working here with Brit R&B chancellor Jazzie B, searching ways
to parachute black music onto mainstream consciousness and between
them, they've agreed that the agitated power-shuffle of UK garage
offers the best chance. The exclusive deputation of A&R men
who have heard dubplates of Wookie's thundering new "Battle" tune,
share the same conviction. In an A&R bubble economy afloat
on blisteringly hot white labels, Wookie's new tune couldn't be
more on the money if it was Gordon Brown's pocket calculator.
Wookie is flying to New York to work with Angie Stone tomorrow,
but don't expect him to make much of the fact. This profoundly
considered young man does not do "large". He leaves that
to colleagues "at the sharp end" of UK garage, which
is the reason DJ Spoony and MC Neat bring with them a roomful of
costly sunglasses, half-demolished Burger King takeaways, gold
teeth, glottal stops, traded fists, big rings and massive laughs
when they presently bundle in to Wookie's studio.
Craig David's might be the pin-up of UK garage, but Spoony is
its ambassador. The 29-year-old DJ may describe himself as "not
exactly the finished product as a broadcaster", but readily
delivers a line of endlessly entertaining banter that couldn't
be more suited to the speed burble of the Dreem Teem's Sunday morning
show on Radio One. He drove here in his Merc, has a Nokia programmed
with the James Bond theme and refuses to removes his sunglasses
for fear the very act it might dispel today's eruption of sunshine.
Meanwhile, MC Neat could pass for Britain's Hardest Man, but sounds
like the softest when he begins to talk, which is not often. He's
peculiarly given to deep oceans of silence for an MC, though that's
possibly because Neat simply knows exactly when to talk and when
not to. Because MCing has been his trade from the age of 11, after
all.
Two days before easter, and UK garage's holy trinity meet THE
FACE at Soul II Soul Central amid their own crucifying schedule
of club appearances, radio, producing and partying, but they've
good reason to be so chipper.
It's due in part to its own aborted clubland siege of three years
ago that UK Garage is 2000’s most exciting sound. For whichever
reasons the 1997-model speed garage failed to crossover - snubbing
by by "cool" clubland and national radio, gauche misrepresention
by the media, general miscomprehension by the music biz - on the
third year, UK Garage rose again. This time, everyone's paying
attention.
But don't worry if you didn't see it coming among this year's
other cultural blips (most of the music business were looking the
other way as well). Easily the best thing about this UK garage
is its transformation from a persistent thud under the floorboards
and across the darker reaches of the FM spectrum into a chart-busting "phenomenon" delivering
Moloko-sized guerilla hits at a rate that leaves most music biz
executives nervously thumbing through their chequebook stubs.
But UK Garage 2000's most satisfying feature, however, is the
way struts around the upper reaches of the charts like it was born
to do so yet continues to rule dance music's underground through
a pirate economy run on pure essence of rude. As instant, available
and throwaway as Steps, no less credible than trip hop, UK hip
hop, nu-disco, trance, drum & bass, drill 'n' bass, big beat,
epic, progressive and tech-house put together, proudly suburban,
manifestly superficial and utterly multiracial, UK garage has achieved
the improbable and got Edmonton postmen plumbers dancing to the
same beat as Cheltenham schoolgirls. That's why summer 2000 is
the summer of UK garage.
But if UK garage's single-mindedly get-down imperative is so ergonomcally
correct for a nation that just wants to party, that's precisely
because its signature tunes bridge the distance between the chartland
and the underground. Face it: from Zed Bias' growl-bass "Neighbourhood" to
Sweet Female Attitude's bantamweight "Flowers",
most underground tracks are so effervescently poppy that they would
simply blimp off into the upper ionosphere if they weren't rigged
to the urban experience by the weight of their own basslines.
And so Shanks & Bigfoot's "Sweet Like Chocolate" and
Artful Dodger's "Re-rewind" may have smuggled two-step
into the charts and given a high-res TOTP gloss to the scene -
to the tune of 700,000 copies on the latter's case - but it's indie-launched
salvoes like DJ Luck & MC Neat's '"Little Bit Of Luck" and
N'n'G vs Callaghan's "Right Before My Eyes" (chart entry
placings 11 and 12 respectively) that are the true phenomena, the
people's-choice anthems that have been staples of the garage circuit
for years. There are more hits to come (You want names? Try MJ
Cole's "Crazy Love", Comme Çi Comme Ça
featuring MC Onyx's "Summer Of Love", TC Case's "Do
It Again", Brasstooth's "Celebrate Life and b15 Project's "Girls
Like This" for starters). But while many are being painstakingly
serviced by major record companies, even more are readily available
for £5.99 over the counter of a basement record store, or
on a crackly FM pirate, or pumping out of the bassbins at Twice
as Nice every Sunday.
This summer, it's Spoony, Wookie and MC Neat's world: we just
go clubbing in it.
Why has it taken UK garage so long to arrive?
MC Neat: "The way I look at it, Joe public has spoken. Finally.
All it is is exposure. He's been trying to speak for so long, but
no-one's been listening. The people who know the tunes is the street,
and they buy the tunes - and they buy the tunes in a way that man
can live."
Wookie: "In volume."
Spoony: "Pound for pound, people have the choice. People
can hear the record, they can go an buy it. They can buy Oasis
or they can buy UK Garage, and they buy UK garage."
Has UK garage made friends outside of the UK?
Wookie: "Ha ha! No. US garage producers don't like us."
Spoony: "They think we've bastardised their music. But as
far as I'm concerned, it's not their music these days. In a nutshell,
fuck 'em. Some of them are friends, but fuck 'em anyway!"
UK garage is newly respectable, but isn't the most exciting
aspect to its triumph the way it's been managed through an independent
pirate economy?
Wookie: "It only takes less than 10,000 singles to get oin
the charts legally. If you put a barcode on a tune the way you're
supposed to, you're in the charts straightaway. If people had done
that in the first place, underground would have been in the charts
long, long time ago."
MC Neat: "Try and hit a major with this music five or six
years ago, they'd think you're were a nutter. Straightjacket. Off
you go. But because the the majors' dissed garage, we had to build
it all up on it own. They didn't want this to happen! We're the
winners now, though. We survived, we held out, we've got a healthy
club scene."
Spoony: "We've been in the trenches, running around selling
2,000 copies on our own in the street, dodging the police on the
way into tower blocks, turning up at the venues with no mic. I
approached Touch magazine three years ago to do garage reviews.
They said, "I dunno Jon, there isn't a demand for it." And
that was Touch... But maybe what happened on the past is a blessings
in disguise. Building foundations, getting roots is what it's all
been about. Everyone's gone up to the mountains and come back stronger
and wiser."
Wookie: "Put it this way: [gestures around studio] no
major label owns this."
Is the best thing about the Dreem Teem's Radio Show that
it gives a daytime space to Black British music, or is it Mystic
Mikey B's dream-analysis slot?
Spoony: "It works because it's about fun. Us talking bollocks
to each other. It's not The Word According To The Dreem Teem. Even
if people only tune in for Mystic Mikey, they're hearing 30 UK
garage tunes. He'll tell me about my nose, I'll tell him about
his eyes, and we're having a good crack. It could be anyone's mate
in there to do a radio show. But if it wasn't us, it would be someone
playing house records instead" [winces].
Wookie: "But it's got be taken seriously. It's not a gimmick
or a fad. It's not just here for two or three three years. That's
what we're trying to get across."
Last year, Twice As Nice ran a five-date national tour;
this year, there's a 45-date tour planned. That sounds more like
a national clubland phenomenon than strictly a London "ting"?
Spoony: "Demographically, all those places that are similar
to London are feeling the music: Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield,
Bristol, Cardiff, Huddersfield, Wolverhampton, big cities where
black people are living next to white people in council flats,
not white people living in suburbia and black people living in
the slums."
MC Neat: "Up north now it's like, yeah! You come on
after local DJ and MC, and it's like a switch. It becomes a different
rave.
Spoony: That's because Neat gets all of groupies.
Wookie: Dem feel up yuh batty...
There's a gold-rush mentality surrounding UK garage at
the moment. Have the majors been caught short?
Spoony: "Defintely. Once, A&R men used to got to pubs
and watch people on stage with guitars. Now, they'll turn on a
pirate or Radio One on Sunday Morning, see what we're into, then
go to a club to see if it's being played. And then they'll sign
it. Now they're A&Ring endproduct instead of nurturing artists.
Two years ago, the man could have signed the Dream Team for £15,000
and now they've gotta spend £150,000 to get a single.
It's rumoured that Oxide & Neutrino’s "Casualty" -
a year-old two-step novelty tune sampling "Crimestoppers" and "Lock
Stock & Two Smoking Barrel"s - was licensed by East
West for £150,000. Can you confirm that?
Spoony: "I heard to was more like £100,000-120,000.
But it's still silly money."
Wookie: "Right now, the majors are hungry. They're seeing
the underground making so much money on their own, selling 15,000
vinyl singles. Majors can't sell 15,000 vinyls. They want a piece
of it, so they're signing whatever they see first, going for the
buck. That's why they threw big money at DJ Dee Kline for "I
Don't Smoke". That kind of thing could break the scene. They
did the same thing to drum & bass."
Are tunes like DJ Dee Kline's "I Don't Smoke" giving
garage a bad name by being more populist than it already is.
And it could hardly get more populist, could it?
Spoony: "I don't like 'Casualty', and I'm not into "I
Don't Smoke" either, I don't like them. If DJ Dee Kline came
with something I liked tomorrow, I'd play it. But not that record."
In the last year, UK garage records have has sampled Flat
Eric, Whitney Houston, Faith Evans, Armand Van Helden, Stardust,
Ed Rush, the theme tunes to Rocky, Superman, Dr Who, Blue Peter,
Eastenders and Jim Davidson, I-Roy, Bel Biv Devoe, Public Enemy,
Ali G and Baby D. Surely that's a sign of the scene's vitality
and imagination?
Wookie: But a lot of those tunes tunes are cheap shots, man. Your
shouldn't have money in mind when you're making music. "Casualty" has
taken things people know: to get a hit, you need to use something
the public now. But that's blatant. (i)Blatant(i)."
There's talk in the UK garage scene of "depth" and "longevity".
Are albums are necessary?
Wookie: "It's not all about fun. "Battle" is not
about fun. The fun is the clubs. People like me and Artful Dodger
are trying make it serious with albums adult can listento. The
object is to get the music to as many people as you can. You can't
sell out.
UK Garage's audience demographic is approximately the
same as that of Boyzone: discuss.
Neat: "But they're running out and buying Sweet Female attitude's "Flowers" instead
of Boyzone.
Spoony: "It's definitely about the kids: that's who the audience
is. I played a Monday night at Camden Palace. Two and a half thousand
kids. Actually, kids are smaller than adults, so probably 3,000.
Saturday night when there's adults in there, you can't park for
miles, but I parked straight up outside. It was RAMMED like I've
never ever seen it before, but oustide, you wouldn't have known
it was open"
Neat: No cars! I did the something there with Dane from Another
Level, and there were 3,800 kids there.
Spoony: First track I played was N'n'G's "Right Before My
Eyes" and they went mad, singing every word. I thought: This
is what it's all about."
Craig David is reputed to have turned his back on UK garage
to concentrate of a career as a "serious R&B artist".
A wise move?
Spoony: "Right now, the labels are dropping R&B acts
because they're flipping over garage. It would make so much sense
for UK R&B vocalists to collaborate with UK garage producers.
Dane from Another Level has just done 'Buiggin'" with True
Steppers. Conservatively, I'm saying Top Five. Now, if we put Lynden
David Hall in a studio, we'd have another hit. They took Kele Le
Roc from garage because wanted her to do R&B. Now they want
her to do garage. They'll get Westlife to do R&B, so why do
the need Kele Le Roc to do it? As it is, UK R&B is still a
poor subsitute to Lauren Hill, Puff Daddy and Biggie Smalls. The
difference is that UK garage is what it is. Wookie is Wookie: he's
not Roger Sanchez in disguise. UK garage is real, it's unique,
it's got totally its own identity.
Neat: "Here are the stars. Here is our Quincy Jones, our
Puff Daddy, our Ma$e. People here have grown up looking up to big
American stars, but why should we should we? (i)We're(i) the players
now."
***
With that, MC Neat bustles out to Camden, which leaves the producer
and the DJ poring over Wookie's new track, "Joy & Pain",
a lissome ballad cranked up of angular two-step rhythms. "Too
mellow for the dancefloor," judges Spoony, nevertheless practically
melting into his swivelling chair with a smile as wide as the horizon.
While they're are in the business if choreographing garage's immediate
future, they'll also take a moment to tie up a few ends from the
past. To wit:
1. Did Armand Van Helden really invent speed garage?
Spoony: "Pfft. No. Of course he fucking didn't."
2. If UK garage is true expression of British R&B waiting
for its moment, have you been keeping it real all this time?
Spoony: "Booyakasha! [Laughs] All the people I associate
with - Omar, Wookie, Norris da Boss, Timmi, Mikey B - are passionate
about the music. We live it and we feel it. If that's what keeping
it real is then, yeah."
To recap, then: having been stolen from the USA, gone "dark",
been reduced to a cliché of black men, white girls and Krug,
burrowed underground, subdivided from four-four into two-step and
rewound its way to Number One, UK garage couldn't be any more real
even if it needed to be. Appearances on concept albums and washing
powder adverts may well be imminent, but right now, locked into
the underground, locked on to the charts, UK garage is exactly
where we need it to be. A'ight?
© Kevin Bradddock 1999
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