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Lady Cook
I've avoided writing this 'profile' for a while, always feeling somewhat uneasy about label wearing and flag waving ever since those Socialists convinced me to carry their pretty banner at a demonstration, and my photo ended up on the cover of Socialist Worker being sold outside tube stations. What the latter paragraph is trying to say is that I don't classify myself as a U.K Hip Hop writer, I write about things, phrases, facts, faces, forms and phenomena that interest and inspire me, and a lot of these fings happen to be within our little culture called U.K Hip Hop.
I'm proud of all the content on UKHH.COM because I know it's all from the heart, we're all doing this after our bread and butter 9-5…. this ain't about Jennifer Aniston or Gareth Gates haircuts, about your re-written reputation, about how much pushing your PR company are doing, it's about talent. UKHH.COM provides a platform where unlimited people can access the interviews (I wrote) with Supanovar, Class A and Scorsayzee - who had never been interviewed before by the money-driven mainstream music press, despite each MC collecting underground accolades in recognition of their achievements.
UKHH.COM interviews for me are about talking art with Kobi and Cannibal Ox backstage for hours, making the party happen in a drizzly Notts' street with a plastic deck and mike, the P-Brothers, Cappo n C'Mone (and an audience of a strange guy walking his dog) and sitting in Ninja Towers still pissed from the night before questioning New Flesh…. and then slaving over a typewriter so you can hear about the people behind the tunes.
Oh and the miscellaneous facts:
Favourite Hip Hop tune: Salt'N'Pepa: Push It.
In New York I got into a conversation with a guy watching a DJ XXX set at Wetlands, NYC he asked what I thought and I launched into a drunken mini-rant about bloody longwinded scratching that goes on forever, we talked a little more then I asked his name, DJ
XXX he said, whose high profile name I recognised because he'd just finished his DJ set containing a just a little bit of… bloody longwinded scratching that goes on forever.
Some nice shows I saw that were pretty damn impressive:
(in no particular order)
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Mos Def, Talib Kweli and Co' Flow - Subterania London
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Kool Keith - NYC
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Cypress Hill - Amsterdam
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First Battlescars, Subterania, London
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New Flesh, Shadowless and Ty - Cargo, London
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And I have to give The Roots a special mention for the 2nd Glastonbury mud year, performing with plastic bags over their shoes in the trench like conditions.
True Confession: I bought an MC Lyte speed garage 12' once, the Soho garage head record shop guy was being so snotty about it and I remembered her from years ago, so I bought it…it was quite shite but I convinced myself it had a certain 'different appeal'.
I taught Art at a summer camp in New York a few years ago. Disorda kindly donated some Mind the Gap tapes for the kids, I gave them to a few of the teenagers and the next day was entertained with hours of impressions of every accent on the tapes, they assured me that it all sounded just like Austin Powers to them.
I would like to especially cover women in U.K Hip Hop in writing for UKHH. I feel that the media and heads haven't really acknowledged the 'female voice' and 'female story' and it is only recently that women have gained a bit of a higher profile.
Graffiti: I sprayed 'SLUT' on a skirt once and sold it to a Japanese woman on Portobello Rd, it was funny at the time.
I sat on a Panel Forum at the ICA London in early 2002, and 'discussed' graffiti with other heads including Pry, Nancy Macdonald, Brian Taylor from BTP and Andrew Pelling of the GLA. It was quite ridiculous almost to be sitting there with these establishment figureheads and then realising they don't know what young people are like, they don't talk to young people, they just talk about them.
I personally think it's beautiful that young men sit in and perfect their drawing techniques, occasionally venturing out to write or paint on walls and trains, thus deferring more socially approved methods of behaviour such as drunkenly bottling each other or meaninglessly shagging as many women as possible.
I'll defend art and graffiti till I bore you to sleep. You don't like the lyrics to that tune and find it offensive, well I find Britney offensive. You don't like that tag well I don't like that smutty billboard poster either, my grandfather drew Hiroshima shadows on pavements so nobody can ever tell me it's morally wrong for us to decorate our outdoor environment.
That's me folks, Lady Cook, if I don't like it I won't write about it, if you don't like it don't read it.
- Lady
Cook
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