DIZZEE RASCAL SPEAKS TO ATM

BOY DONE GOOD

Words: Mark O’Donnell

"One thing I’ve learnt, nothing comes for free. No one owes you nothing in this world, man. If you don’t go out their and take it, you’ll be sat a long time waiting."

This quote isn’t Tony Montana from Scarface, but from the gifted mouth of Dizzee Rascal. In a world where people expect instant success and crave fame without wanting to put the graft in, this one quote from Dizzee sums up his streetwise mentality and on-the-ball business hustle that’s turned him from grime boy wonder into one of the biggest artists in the UK, period. One day while scanning an internet forum, ATM came across a link to a recorded show from the legendary station, Kool FM. Along with the usual suspects: Skibadee, Fun and Ruffstuff, was none other than Dizzee Rascal. Intrigued to find out how the Bow-born-and-raised rapper sounded over drum and bass, we downloaded the clip and were impressed with his flow over classics like ‘Dark Soldier’ and ‘Special Request’.

"Drum and bass is a part of me," explains Dizzee. "When I was a kid, originally I wanted to be a big jungle DJ; I weren’t even a rapper or nothing." This was when he was 10 or 11, getting his drum and bass fix by sneaking into house parties round his local area and through pirate radio. So you had some decks? "Yeah I had some turntables; I had a few different ones. I started off with some shitty wooden ones with no pitch control, using elastic bands to make ’em more like Technics," he says in unmistakable accent.

On the Kool FM show he rubbed shoulders with one of his major inspirations from back in the day, D Double E. "When I was into drum and bass as a kid he was the MC I listened to, him and Riddles, Wiley, Rico, they all started off doing jungle." It was a long time coming for UK rappers to be comfortable using their own accents and not trying to copy what their American brothers were doing and jungle MCs played a big part. This is something not lost on the Rascal. "Jungle MCs made me feel like it was OK to sound like myself, I still listened to American MCs, I just didn’t think I had to sound like them."

To this day his love of classic jungle is as strong as ever, he name checks Trend’s ‘2 Degrees’ and Die’s ‘Clear Skyz’ as personal fav’s. When he was asked to stand in for Zane Lowe on his Radio One show, Dizzee dropped Shy FX’s remix of ‘Chopper’ amongst tracks as surprisingly diverse as Vanilla Ice’s ‘Ice Ice Baby’ and Guns & Roses ‘Welcome To The Jungle’. Of course his link with Shy extends to the track they made together for his third LP ‘Maths & English’ and there’s a few more tracks to come from this hook-up in the future.

Reproduced with permission of Mark O`Donnell @ ATM Worldwide. To read the full interview buy ATM Worldwide Issue 76

http://www.atm-mag.co.uk/