UK HIP HOP - MAKIN SOME NOISE

And don't it just? The 1980s spawned it, the 1990s saw it take its first tentative, broken, steps. The New Millenium can only watch it grow. Grow a little bit, erm, bigger, that is.

With a mother decade that brought us Grange Hill, Like A Virgin, and ear-muffs, UK Hip Hop was clearly born into vintage royalty. Weaned by a wholesome generation of pre-pubescent playground breakers only too happy to cram their schooldayz with ghetto-style ganja deals, bong-smoke, and East Coast imports, then replaced by rave-culture and E, UKHH has finally matured into an adult scene deftly freestylin' a real creativity of its own. There are skilled producers [Nextmen, Skitz], salacious scratchers [Andy Smith], popular artists [Task Force, Black Twang, Mark B, Blade] and full on crews, [Delegates of Culture, Social Misfits]. There are homegrown clubs, [Breaking Bread, Fresh 2000 and Phonic Hoop], beatboxers [Kela], skatekid fans, breaking b boys [Sin Stars], even the odd wild card girl-act thrown in to boot [Wildflower, Estelle]. And more emcees than you can swing a cat at. This September, there are the annual UK Hip Hop Awards, won by artists like, erm, Eminem [Best International newcomer 2000], and London's trendy epicentre of hip, Shoreditch, played home to an entire festival that celebrated UKHH in June. 2001 saw Mark B and Blade reach 23 in the charts and make a raucous debut on Top Of The Pops, while MTV has apparently fallen in love with Cambridge-born boys - Nextmen's - videos. Not to mention the media-hyped 'graffitti wars' of Sheffield, and proliferation of spray-can art colouring much of the UK's urban space. Success! So, has been all big ups and booty shakin' for the UK Posses, a smooth stairway to success?

The answer has to be a cagey 'hmmm, kind of'. Despite valiant attempts by Radio 1's Norfolk-born, grammar school tokin' Tim Westwood to convince Old Blighty that he can speak of da ghetto too, even he, somewhat unfortunately the UK's most prominent Hip Hop icon, shuns da homegrown talent on the airwaves. The truth is that UKHH is one phat, far cry from the commercial, neo-corporate enterprises of US gangster celebrities - the Dres, Doggs, and Ts.of the Hip Hop world, though this isn't a bad thing. As Sin Crew breaker, Kilo, says, UK Hip Hop's underground status is at present 'one of its strengths'.

'Some acts are beginning to break through', he explains, 'but generally they can retain their roots. No money means it keeps it from being commercialized, getting saturated, following trends like it does in the States'.

Are these are the words of UK Hip Hop, then? No money. Roots. Underground. Pie and mash. Homegrown talent. Faith. Unity. Gravy.

Tim Westwood.

'It's nothing but a cheap imitation of East Coast Rap. It sucks!'

Never mind the awards, the peace-lovin' efforts of record labels such as Big Dada and Low Life that have helped win success for artists such as Mark B, Blade, and Roots Manuva, the deep-rooted cynicism most music listeners harbor toward the UK sound is extraordinary. A quick straw poll down the pub provokes a popular consensus of mild contempt for Old Blighty's attempts at keepin' it real: 'It's so American set, it's like buying British Bangra!', 'it doesn't sound as good as US stuff', 'it's just s**t' are all sentiments voiced again and again within hip hop listening circles. Not energetic enough, not raunchy enough, not criminal enough, US stuff is just better.

UKHH.com columnist, Riz, near enough explodes at derogatory comparisons with the US sound. '"But America is better" I hear you say! Well, consider this. If you have been to America you will see what I mean. In America there are thousands of shit Hip Hop crews you have never heard of and never will hear of. Imagine the Atlantic as a filter, it takes all the shit out and only the good gets through. So we in the UK get the cream of US Hip Hop. Where as we in the UK are stuck with the good and the shit and it's a pain in the arse to sift through it all, American is easier cos it's done for you.'

Whether you agree or not that the Atlantic truly does behave like some kind of cultural cheesecloth for hip hop that turns crap into, erm, cream, Riz has a point. The transatlantic divide that marks the relationship between the States and Britain is more than oceanic, it seems - it's culturally hierarchical, a blinker to fresh talent and unity.

Kerosene is a young, London based emcee who spent the first fifteen years of his life in the States. Now a recent Battle Scars champion, he says he owes his emceeing credentials to his UK bredrin, met through the streets of London, who showed him the spirit of hip hop. 'Over here, the majority of people who do this are purely doing it for the love and dedication for the art, you know what I mean. People are truly hungry over here and they deserve to be recognised'. Unsuprisingly, he says the prejudice surrounding UK lifestyle in the States is rife, most Americans still clinging to a hopelessly obsolete image of British culture. 'In America, if you mention London to the average person they'll immediately think of the Queen, Buckingham Palace, tea and crumpets and shit like that. If you told them that there's council estates, guns, and drugs over here then they probably wouldn't believe you'.

You can understand then, perhaps, the reasoning behind US snobbery toward British contributions to hip hop culture. The hip hop world today has reached neo-mythical proportions, cultural vanguard of a fantasy world defined by a powerfully macho, signatory imagery - violence, drugs, excess, finery and women - produced by players who sell themselves as ghetto-born superstars. Somewhat paradoxically, mainstream hip hop is about predominantly black, psychotic superstars performing solely to an MTV, bedroom-audience of predominantly white, middle class wannabe-gangstas.

It's this relationship - the symbiotic tension found in binary opposites - that has always made the hip hop myth so successful. With a simple and effective does-what-it-says-on-the-can foundation force this tension cements consumer to performer, white to black, sane to psychotic, paving the way for players in the hip hop world to easily reinforce and exploit cultural stereotypes. Similarly, the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s radicalised such stereotypes, manipulating white America's fear of the black man to produce a new breed of black anti-hero bristling with a lawless machismo the white male could only ever secretly envy or openly fear. Taking it one, neo-capitalist step further, the hip hop movement of the 1980s and 1990s commercialised this fear into the ultimate commodity in male dreams - the construction of a new, irrepressible male identity. The result is a lot of dollar made for a few lucky players originating from the streets, and whether this is a triumph or not for the oppressed underclass is debatable, though it does explain why UKHH is ostracised so.

Opposites clearly attract, but put the fantasy world and its players in the context of scones, cream and jam, Richard and Judy in an English country garden, and the binary myth inevitably falls apart. Too Ali G, too Del-Boy turned Vanilla Ice to be convincing enough, to American ears UKHH as a concept simply sounds too much like yoda on LSD. It's just too weird.

Why though, the snobbery over here? Surely we Brits are more onto ourselves than our Yankee partners? We know we have deprived council estates, real poverty, an underclass submerged in guns, violence and drugs, that defaced graffiti can even lead to murder. We know we have race riots, police brutality, and, in some parts of our cities, skanking, blazing gang warfare. We know all these truths, so why, until very recently, the reluctance to nod heads along to homegrown hip hop, the average British white boy not only walking away from these home truths, but cringing at them?

When Brits rapped to other Brits why did the fantasy fall flat on its face?

For a start, we all know that the average whiteboy sycophant of commercial hip hop - both in the US and over here - doesn't give a flying f**k about the unfortunate plight of the average, victimised, cop-killing rapper, even less so the plights of Britain's quarantined council estates. A cool, safe, million miles from the US ghetto and its brutal reality, the average Virgin Megastore punter has easy access to imagining he's that rapper, the living-on-the-edge psychopath, without suffering the consequences. Records like Dre's Bang Bang produce in the listener a pure hit of machismo, gangsta-cool but in a sanitised, safe, media-constructed environment. No risk of actually doing anything. No risk of getting caught - by the law, by notorious, actually-quite-scary gang members. Or by your mum. Hence listening to British emcees harping on about violence guns etc is just a too unsettling because it's simply too close to home for comfort.

It can also sound totally trite. 'A lot of people think it's dire but that's because a lot of the time people over here are trying to emulate American stuff', says Dan Arbor, a journalist. 'It's like the Rolling Stones going back to America and introducing people to blues - it doesn't work. People try and approximate G funk gangsta stuff over here and it sounds a little corny, but when you've got someone like Rootsmanuva over here talking about ten pints of bitter and cheese on toast which might sound a little bit colloquial, it kinda works'.

This is true - essentially, when originality is replaced by emulation within the creative process, the result is rubbish (see 'indie' bands like Cast, Smaller etc). Until recently, UKHH artists have been seen to risk this emulation process time and time again, creativity replaced with a homogenous standard of unimaginative aggression served with dollops of misogyny and latent homophobia that is just completely unconvincing and unsuccessful. These are artists more likely to rap about fish and chips, surely, than hoes, guns n drug-drenched orgies?

Quite simply, as the great hip hop queen, Missy Elliot, says - You gotta come up with your own creativity, your own originality, your own style. And this exactly why today's homegrown hip hop sound is so brilliant.

'America never got the Jamaican thing - we have', says Dave, a deleriously wrecked hip-hop lover in downtown Cambridge. He's absolutely right. As garage newly elevates the emcee to hero-status, fresh, urban, quintessentially British influences - garage, ragga, and inner-city Jamaican vibes are finding themselves vibrantly colouring the textures that define popular UKHH records like DJ Skitz' Countryman, generating public interest and new media attention.

There's that Sheffield-started synth-pop sound that finds its own imprint on Run Come Save Me, with Rootsmanuva tributing New Order and Ian Dury as musical influences. And there's Rootsmanuva taking UKHH on its first press-coveted nation-wide live tour. There are artists like the Nextmen humorously marketing themselves as small-time Lock Stock gangsta boys, turning the homegrown hip hop artist from ghetto-gangsta into delectable dandy.

Like a rocket-star rising, as independent hip hop labels nurture talent previously ignored by major industry labels, the new, uniquely British vibe wickedly emerges, deftly graduating the sound from the uncut aesthetics of Phil Mitchell to gangsta-Steve, from Ali G to Goldie.