Maths + English

We Say...

Review by Martin Clark

The Dizzee Rascal story goes a little something like this: in 2002 a hot teenage MC comes through the ranks of the UK’s premier crew (Roll Deep Entourage, the Chelsea or New York Yankees of the scene). Alongside his then-mentor Wiley, the young visionary co-founds much of grime from the ashes of UK garage, wins the coveted Mercury Music Prize for his incredible debut album Boy in da Corner, leaves Roll Deep after a violent incident, produces an angry second LP and then tours with major international acts (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Justin Timberlake). In 2007 he drops Maths + English.

In the intervening years Dizzee has grown immensely — in both confidence and world-view — from the troubled “boy in da corner” of east London school exclusion to become an international act. Maths + English strongly reflects this. It opens with a blatant statement of intent in “World Outside.” While much of grime’s lyrical narratives are an introspective reflection of violent and intense inner city London living, London isn’t an environment that’s a primary influence on Dizzee’s work anymore. “There’s a world outside the ‘hood and I want you to see it/ I can see it…” he explains, before going on to rap about Ibiza, collaborate with Texan MCs UGK and spit over a heavy metal riff.

When Dizzee released a solo LP but didn’t bring the rest of his Roll Deep crew through, there was a lot of criticism from his peers. Yet in many ways Maths… is everything much of the grime scene wishes it were: popular, successful and celebrated. Just listen to much of the Movement’s mixtapes, especially Scorcher’s Leader of the New School, and you hear hooks and riffs simply screaming out for an audience beyond the ‘hood. While the grime scene tears itself apart over these US rap-influenced beats (is it grime? Is it not? Does it matter?), Dizzee moves unapologetically upward though indie venues and broadsheet coverage, transcending the invisible barriers that hold back his peers. As someone who’s loved all types of music since childhood (Dirty South rap, trance, dance, metal…), this is Dizzee’s vision, for better or worse, miles beyond the scene that first gave him a platform.

The album has a confident post-genre musical freedom: from old school hip-hop (“Pussyole”) to drum & bass (“Da Feelin’”) to collaborations with Lily Allen (on “Wanna Be” — Lily “LDN” Allen: now there’s a wannabe!) and Artic Monkeys (“Temptation”). Its nearest relatives, in vibrant eclecticism, must surely be a Basement Jaxx or OutKast album. The video for the rap-metal “Sirens” might enclose Dizzee in the maze of the class system, but the irony is that the MC — through musical freedom and the trappings of fame and success — is the least trapped of all his (former) peers.

To judge this by grime’s standards, past or current, would be in some ways to miss the point. This Dizzee’s unleashed: the album grime needs, as it reaches new audiences and finds new fans. Yet at what cost? Maths + English might be popular, fun and entertaining, but at its core the very message that made Dizzee’s debut album so vital, so essential — the best album of the decade — that very message is lost. Sure there’s bars about "‘avin it in Ibiza," but did it require Dizzee to tell us that?

Much of what made Dizzee so utterly compelling has been discarded, a unique message replaced by the everyday urge to entertain. “A couple of years ago in my road-yout days/ I was into pirate radio, I guess it was a phase…” spits Dizzee on “Pussyole.” It’s a tragic admission. While the track as a whole lays into his former mentor Wiley, those bars cheaply dismiss pirate radio, the medium that first afforded him a voice and that continues to function as the voice of inner city London that mainstream radio will not allow. If Dizzee has fought his way to the heart of commercial media only to lose his message, did the end justify these means?