Can I Get Four Brits Over Here Please? (A Little Deeper - Ms Dynamite)

Name: Peakly

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Product:	A Little Deeper - Ms Dynamite
Date:	13/02/03 (223 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Talent is S-E-X-Y, Music Isn't Dead Yet, Groooooovy Beats

Disadvantages: Krazy Krush

Not that it’s any of your concern, but hip-hop and garage are not genres of music I’ve ever been greatly interested in. But I’m young. I want a culture of my own. I want to hear exciting music from my time and place, because, like it or not, this is my time and place, and the question that keeps surfacing in my mind is this: your generation had Led Zeppelin and The Doors, your generation had The Sex Pistols and Joy Division, your generation had the New Romantics, yours had Madchester and trance. What, pray tell, does that leave us?

Certainly nothing to do with rock and roll, that’s for sure. Rock is riding increasingly shallow waves, producing bands that are not only generic and uninspired but, to curl one’s nose, ‘stylish’. Rap music is all well and good, but there is a limit to how far one can appreciate the guns and ‘bitches’ of the Bronx sitting in a Northumbrian middle-class suburbia singing at a pasty white reflection. So what I finally realised, to my initial dismay, is that the genuinely innovative and ground-breaking music in Britain today is pretty much where it’s always been – on the streets, not in the studios or on the television. The most exciting music is that which has yet managed to avoid the creative oppression of Sony, MTV, et al. Right now, that’s garage and hip-hop. In a few years of course, just like grunge and punk before it, less-accessible though infinity finer garage music will be lost in an ocean of hand-crafted replicas, who’s team of record producers will re-address the standard of the music to the detriment of music it’s self (though, of course, to the benefit of the multinational corporations they represent). MTV will kill garage, just as it joyfully strangles the life from rock music at present.

Anyway, that’s all irrelevant. What is relevant, is a certain Ms. Dynamite. Music, above all, needs originality and sin
cerity to be truly great. Thank god then, that this beautiful, modest woman has both in bucket loads. Her album ‘A Little Deeper’, looks initially like the work of every other Britney/Christina/Whoever that currently wave their bum about, yet in reality it is the work of a hugely talented and mature musician. From the opening track ‘natural high’ (which to be fair, does sound a little cheesy) Ms. Dynamite asserts a confidence and vocal strength that accurately foreshadows the rest of the album. Her lyrics are wise and unmarred by pretense. Throughout the course of A Little Deeper, she tackles her life, her loves and loses, and her culture. She speaks out against drug abuse with a tact and precision that is neither preachy nor half-hearted. On the album’s crowning track ‘Watch Over Them’, in which she sings without any musical accompaniment at all, Ms. Dynamite reflects on black culture and sings, beautifully, about the counter-productivity of gang warfare in the struggle for racial equality – ‘damn hypocrite don’t be disillusioned, yeah life is tough but that’s not no solution, you go on like your brave – that’s an illusion, a brave man wouldn’t kill his own he’d start a revolution’. Her lyrics disregard poetic device, imagery, metaphor, ambiguity and instead resonate with raw, honest beauty and power. The song ‘Put Him Out’ is an unflinching address of unhappy women everywhere, calling for the assertion of independence and the rejection of being mistreated – this is the kind of ‘girl power’ The Spice Girls couldn’t have hoped to promote in their entire careers, let alone in one song. There is confrontation in her music, but unlike her male contemporary Eminem, the confrontation is neither over the top nor self-centered. I’m not black, nor am I women, but this music makes me feel empowered and, if I were either, quite p
ossibly proud. Music providing kids with footnotes on life isn’t an idea I usually entertain, but it must be said how many good messages Ms. Dynamite’s music carries.

On top of this, of course, comes her talent as a vocalist, message or no message. Good singers have range, can hold notes and keep in time. Good singers win pop idol. The singers we’ll remember in ten years time (or at least should), however, are the singers with the enviable ability to carve their own sound, their own range, their own timing. Otis Redding could do that. Whitney Huston has done that. So too does Ms. Dynamite. Whether she’s rapping or singing, her voice remains unique and beautiful. Her sense of resonance, pitch and rhythm reveal a natural talent for music no amount of time or money could produce (although some people find the ‘I’m Ms Dy-na-mite tee-hee!’ annoying). ‘A Little Deeper’ contrasts the pain and soul of songs like ‘watch over them’ and ‘brother’ with the more jungle, hip-hop sounds of single ‘dy-na-mi-tee’ and ‘now you want my love’. ‘Seed will grow’ appears mid-album, with contributions from Kymani Marley, throwing a modern reggae sound into what has been widely recognized as a vast collection of musical styles and influences (hence an ‘album of the year’ mercury award). Only on later track ‘Krazy Krush’ to things begin to sound the tiniest bit pop and bubble-gum like, though on an album so rich with bold dialogue and gigantic garage beats, one can forgive a moments commercial concession should it ensure the continuation of Ms. Dynamites career.

And here’s the truly remarkable thing – after two pages of writing, I’m still itching to go away and listen to the album again. That’s never happened before in the last hundred opinions. Please, don’t let anything that otherwise would d
issuade you from listening to this album. I’ve walked the earth with a smile on my face the past few days, because a weight has been taken off my mind – music is in good hands, just not the hands I was looking for. The sun shines and the birds sing because, Ms. Dynamite, I love you.

I love you.

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