Backpacks, Trucker Caps, Baggy Slacks, & Shoreditch Twats… article 0070 added 06.01.04 words Mr Lingo technical: QED Sometimes you get some funny looking people at hip-hop nights…… sometimes you get a lot of different people going to hip-hop nights, people with different takes on clothes, shoes, hairstyles, music, culture……and what this gives is a bit like the UK in general, a real melting-pot of people/cultures/ideas etc, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah. WHATEVER! I’m not gonna have a rant about that, because what’s the point, it’s all been said and done a thousand times before. What I’m trying to say is that far too often people talk a load of shit about they type of people going to hip-hop nights, what clothes they wear, that they shouldn’t be going to these nights, etc, you know the crap I’m talking about. So why shouldn’t they go? Who really gives a fuck if people aren’t wearing Avirex/Nike/Addidias, to gigs? So what if they don’t look like the average UK head? So what if they are wearing a shitty trucker cap with a bleached mullet sticking out? Does this mean if they don’t conform they’re not keeping hip-hop real? “Fuck the amateurs who scream they keep it real.” Too often people are more obsessed with whether they, and everyone else fit in with their own conception of what hip-hop is all about, and what it looks like. Why? I know art students, with stupid torn jeans, and a pin-striped blazers who like hip-hop, but I don’t think they have any less right to go to Breakin Bread, the DMC’s or Kung-Fu. They are an individual, so is everyone else in this world, if they wanna go let them. If they wanna buy my/your CD/EP/12” let them. It’s no bother is it? My theory is this. Everyone in this scene is directly involved with the way hip-hop in this country is produced/marketed/sold/developed/played/created. This influences the way we talk about hip-hop here, whether reviewing something, or just chewing the fat with mates. What this creates is a back-biting, bitchy atmosphere, where everyone is doing their best to get one over the next-man. Because everyone is involved somewhere down the line in one aspect or another, it means that no-one really has an impartial view of the scene. This bull-shit one-upmanship is nowhere more obvious than when people are bitching about the people at the gigs, or branding certain types-of hip-hop as ‘Backpacker Hip-Hop’. You get crap about stabbing people from Shoreditch posted on the forums, and all sorts of ignorant bull-shit, which 95% of the time I can ignore and laugh at but sometimes, I wonder what kind of people and vibe they go to gigs for. I mean would you rather go to a place where everyone is looking for a fight? Do you wanna go and drink, meet friends, and spend half the night trying to find someone to fuck-up? At the end of the day, why do you think these guys are coming along? They’re not just coming to wind up some wannabe rude-boys, they’re there for the music. Backpacker hip-hop is so widely used as a derogatory remark against certain artists, by why is this so? Just because a few ‘trendy’ people listen to the Roots/Buck 65/Sage Francis etc, doesn’t make this music shit does it? I’ve loved the Roots since I first heard them about 9 years ago, and just because they’ve had a rise in popularity with different people, not just hip-hop heads, doesn’t make them crap all of a sudden. Because their stuff crosses over well with other things, and they increase their popularity from this doesn’t make them any less important, and doesn’t mean they sold out. I like some Sage Francis stuff, I like Buck 65, but I don’t class myself as a backpacker. Nikesh loves Sage & Buck, (I say loves, I mean gushes over) but he is no backpacker……well…… I’m not alone with this take on the way things are, and to be honest, it’s come from talking with a lot of different people from the scene, but all with a very similar standpoint to my own. This piece may seem a little ‘Holier than Thou’ and that I’m preaching to you all, and yeah, a lot of people will give me shit about this piece, but at the end of the day, it’s just my view of the scene and it’s failings. As always, if you got something to say, e-mail is below….  Peas. Mr Lingo. - Mr Lingo

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