Angles - dan le sac vs Scroobius Pip

So since when did I listen to british hip-hop/trip-hop/rappity-rop? Since rarely. Since never. But I was taken with Scroobius Pip's lyrics from my first hearing of The Beat That My Heart Skipped. Fortunately for me, that's also the album opener on Angles, an album that claims to be the standard rap battle/mash-up between mc and dj. However, like every track on the album, a second listen (or sometimes just a first listen) suggests that dan (lowercase, please) and Scroobius are more than meet the eye.

They make a bold claim in the spoken intro to the album:

"We ain't pushing the boundaries, we're blowing them up! We ain't trying to
expand the scene; we want the scene to erupt. So make some room on the floor and
somebody bolt the doors cos tonight we ain't seeking applause. Tonight, well
gee? we're just looking to have some good new-fashioned fun, y'all."

It's not about fitting in or playing along, it's about creating new sounds, new lines and a new meaning, about revitalisation. Fixed has the same grand theme, as they chirp "dan le sac? scroobius pip! fi-fixing hip-hop....as best we can" before exploding into a mind-numbing electro-bippity-thumpbeat track.

But perhaps where the beat, the sampling and the language gel best is as the record begins to draw to a close. A Letter from God to Man brings Radiohead into the scene, while Thou Shalt Always Kill, the most straightforward and amusing attack on modern popular music, and attitudes towards it, is hummingly catchy and makes you want to tell all your friends that Scroobius Pip pointed out that all those bands we love and worship are just bands, nothing more! It's great balloon-popping fun, and it certainly gave me that child-like excitement of hearing something said by someone else strike a chord within you.

The album closer, Waiting for the Beat to Kick In, is worth the wait...although if you are going to go by the song title, you'll wait a long time: dan le sac and the Pip manage to hold off that all important beat until you feel yourself physically thirst for it, while weaving a dreamscape of didactic encounters and tips for the future.

"If you can't forgive and forget, how's this? forget forgiving, and just
accept that that's it"

is perhaps most the striking line that trips off Pip's tongue, and certainly the most stark attempt at enforcing an attitude of tolerance, and letting bygones be bygones.

In keeping with the album's title track though, it's not pure refutation of failing hip hop standards or undiluted attempts to open the mind of the listener. There is some good new-fashioned fun in there too, as the beats and rhymes suggest a reformation from within: dan and Scroobius want to influence the scene from within, not without, with a mastery of language and sound that I've rarely heard recently.

"Thou shalt always remember that guns, bitches and bling were never part of the four elements, and never will be"