| Product: |
They Don't Know - So Solid Crew |
| Date: |
11/03/02 (95 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Amonst this sprawling epic is an outstanding LP
Disadvantages: Too many haterz, Far too long
This LP had every opportunity to become a genre defining classic - something that UK Garage sadly lacks. Whilst Wookie and MJ Cole have released competent debut albums, they both tried too hard to be sophisticated and soulful and hence veered slightly near the coffee table. Oxide and Neutrino's 'Execute' was excellent despite the initial whiff of novelty that followed them after their first two singles 'Bound 4 Da Reload' and 'No Good for Me', sampled the theme from 'Casualty' and interpolated a Prodigy hit respetively. However, 'Execute', for all its merits, is no landmark album, and unfortunately 'They Don't Know' falls short of this status too. This is the only possible sense that you could use the word 'short' in conjunction with this abum, because...my God its long!!! Nearly 80 minutes of the signature So Solid sound is its biggest downfall. At this length, there is bound to be some filler, and inevitably, no more than ten tracks on this album could be called 'essential'.
Despite this major criticism, 'They Don't Know' has presented us with the most exciting group that UK music has witnessed in the last 5 years at least. The So Solid Crew are essentially 29 muggers and a few girls let loose in the top 10. Whilst they may not be the "nicest" people as such - member Skat D broke a 15 year old girl's jaw when she refused his sexual advances; 19 year old MC Asher D is currently looking at doing up to 10 years in prison for carrying a loaded pistol in his car; and various members have been to jail for murder and drug offences - they are utterly compelling.
Essentially, what the So Solid Crew have done is take American gangsta rap and relocated it to Battersea. Though this sounds very simple, no one has dared to make British music this threatening and dangerous in the past. So we have all the familiar hip-hop cliches of drugs, guns, violence and haters
etc...Yeah about those haters actually...they are literally obsessed. It might be that they been smoking 'like a Jamaican' as Megaman boasts on '21 Seconds', but Jesus Christ this lot paranoid about not being liked. Nearly ever track refers to 'haters'in one capacity or another, and at the end of eighty minutes, you will be thoroughly, thoroughly sick of this word. Having just said that, recent single 'Haterz' is an album highlight. Taking an addictive, velvety r'n'b hookline and sellotaping it to a two-note pizzicato string melody is genius in my book, though I do recognize how it may not be to everybody's taste.
The highlights on 'They Don't Know' are literally stunning. The Wu-Tang Clan comparisons (i.e. there are lots of them, they're hard, they're black), though lazy, seem a little bit more precise when considering that the Wu's second LP 'Forever' contained magic sprinkled between its 603,486,9321 tracks
and 'They Don't Know' also shares this tendency. 'Oh No (Remix)'(though far superior in its original form)is capable of cracking dancefloors open with its brilliantly simple bass-line. The single 'They Don't Know' is aggressively menacing and shows perhaps the most sophisticated production the album has to offer. Quite simply '21 Seconds' is the best number one I've heard in years...catchy, ingenious, original and some of the funniest lyrics I've heard in ages ('First of all I'm gonna big up the ladies looking slender and fine, mmmmm...mine'). Other highlights include the Asher D fronted 'Whoa' which veers as near industrial music as I've heard any garage act yet, and also 'Deeper' sung by Romeo and Lisa Mafia, which not only includes the lyrics 'I go deep...deeper than the graves of the foot and mouth sheep', but also 'out of 10, mum gets 10, she like one of the ravers dem'
aaaaawwwww...how cute.
Ultimately when So Solid's mixture of garage, r'n'b, ragga, hip-hop and breakbeat works, it is exhilirating similar to the feeling of being at the Notting Hill Carnival...i.e. you think that there is a very high chance that you might get stabbed, but you're having the time of your life anyway. However, apart from the album's length, So Solid have other weaknesses too, some of their members are outrageously talented - Megaman, Romeo, Asher D, Mr. Shabz, Lisa Mafia, and our dear friends Oxide and Neutrino - but some are seriously below standard as is inevitable in a group that numbers thirty strong. Kaish is particularly annoying and ruins a few of the tracks. He is the 'singer' in the group (i.e. has aspirations to be R. Kelly) and whilst his hook-line on '21 Seconds' is excellent, often he sounds out of place and irritating.
Many people dislike the So Solid Crew on principle, thinking its 'townie'music, but the thing is they're just jealous that So Solid are better than Stereophonics/Coldplay/Dido. So Solid are about the most punk thing to happen to the charts since I can remember - a brilliantly corrupting force on the youth of today, bad role models, aggressive, nihilistic. They only way in which they're not punk is that they're not posh, and they wear better clothes. Let's hope that they make a classic next time. The idea and presentation gets five out of five - the album only just scrapes a four.
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