A FAVOURITE THING - MTV BASE (MTV)

Member Name: Pulsebeat

Product:	MTV
Date:	08/08/02 (2677 review reads)
Rating:

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MTV Base provides a framework for my day. I get up and watch MTV Base, and before I fall asleep I watch MTV Base. It’s comforting, like your own mother’s cooking or your favourite jumper. If you don’t know what MTV Base is, here’s the picture – it is MTV’s own urban music channel, which exclusively plays hip-hop, soul, and r’n’b. However, here’s the best bit, hip-hop, soul and r’n’b just so happen to have the best videos. Here’s a little test to prove it….

1) Make sure that you have cable and all of the music channels
2) Turn onto MTV2 (the indie and alternative channel)
3) Watch dull video of four men standing in a room playing guitars
4) Yawn
5) Turn on MTV Base
6) Watch video of women in bikinis shaking booty in club/by pool/ in hotel room
7) Pray and thank God for MTV Base.

I’m really sorry to sound like such a misogynistic prick, but it’s not so much the degradation of women that I so adore about hip-hop videos, it’s more the way that rappers live out their every fantasy in their videos and as such, it is very entertaining.
There is gold, platinum, diamonds, women, cars, drugs, guns etc, and watching such obscene opulence for at least two hours a day is a necessity for me. It kind of taps into that deep-rooted testosterone thing for me which things like football, fighting and kebabs do for other guys. I’m by no means a blokey bloke, but, when you watch MTV Base, you just feel like fightin’ and rapping and having lots of women in bikinis grindin’ around you.

Anyaway, I should probably give you some more information about MTV Base and its programming schedule. Here’s a lowdown of some of the shows and exactly how I feel about them….

1) Beats Rhymes and Life – This is kind of the life force of MTV Base, it shows all the current commercial hip-hop/r’n’b hits o
n heavy rotation (i.e. at the moment there’s a lot of Ashanti and Ja Rule). I tend to watch this in the morning because the daytime scheduling is much more commercial than the later more specialist programmes, which I prefer.

2) The Lick Chart/ The Lick Chart – The ever so slightly smug Trevor Nelson basically adopts his Radio 1 show onto the screen. The Lick Chart is the top ten most popular urban hits and the Late Lick rounds up the latest new releases along with some classics and interviews. I never really watch these programmes, but he did have an hour-long interview with super-producers the Neptunes the other day, which was very interesting.

3) Flashback – This plays the most popular songs of yesteryear, and as such tends to be very bring. It either plays songs that you’re so familiar with that you really don’t wanna watch them, or r’n’b so anodyne that it makes you sick. In fact I hate Flashback, it ruins my day.

4) Quiet Storm – By far the worst programme on MTV Base, all it does is play girly r’n’b from about 1995, which is dull and pointless and makes me angry. I want to see thugs n’ guns, not soft-focus vocal acrobatics. It also means that I have to start the day and do something a bit more productive when this comes on in the morning.

5) RAW – THIS IS THE SHIT!!!!!!!!! Basically, all those loud, rough and ready tracks. The ones with guns mainly. It taps into some primeval part of me which I know is wrong, but I like it.

6) Fresh – All the newest tracks, which is useful when you’ve watched so much MTV Base that you know literally every single song that has ever graced its screen, and you need some novelty.

They also have assorted ‘Videographies’ of a particular artist, or top tens of a particular artist, or ‘Stripped’, which is interviews with a particular artist, or Diary Of.., which charts the
life of a particular artist, or ‘Making the Video’, which takes a look on the set of the video of a particular artist. That’s about it really, sometimes they have interviews or topical programmes, such as ‘How to Bling’, or something like that…hang on a minute, I forgot ‘MTV Cribs’ which is truly amazing, it follows a rapper round their house, and my God are their houses big. For example, the fat one from Oukast had a shark tank in his front room, and a strip club in his basement. It gives me some personal aspirations for the future.

MTV Base appeals to all my most unappealing qualities, is an unproductive way to spend my time, and rots my brain. And for this I salute it.

"Jill Murphy asked me to write about one of my favourite things to help her celebrate her fourth anniversary of cancer-free living and to remind ourselves of all the nice things in the world. It takes more muscles to make a frown than a smile you know. If you'd like to join in, whether you've only just joined dooyoo, or you've been here ages, you're more than welcome. Just write about one of YOUR favourite things, make your title "A Favourite Thing: [your choice]" and include this paragraph at the foot of your opinion. And post before Friday, 9th August."

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