Jackin' for beats... Kim Jong Un: Keeping it (Kim Jong) ILL

                                Foto by Basil Creese Jr/Brother B/Brozilla/

Don’t let the laid back nature fool you. Kim Jong Un is a vicious kid on the mic, son. The North Korean rhyme spitter has been a fixture on the FreshlyChoppedBasil decks of death recently, so you know we had to hook up and talk about the new Armageddon project that he's working on. Kim talks about the recording process, what he learned from Kim Jong "The ILL Poppa" Il during the recording of the project and how he feels about the consumer culture of he West.

He’s nice on the mic and he’s hungry to leave an indelible mark on Hip Hop. Take a few minutes to get to know Kim Jong Un and I’m sure you'll become a fan.

FreshlyChoppedBasil: Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo! Ya know it. Ya got that right. Brother B AKA Brozilla in the hizzouse, and I have the pleasure of speaking to an extraordinary gentleman making headlines and kicking up dust like a crazy tornado around the world right now AS! WE! SPEAK! Kim Jong Un. What’s up, my brother?

Kim Jong Un: Five hunnid, black. What it do, boss? 

FreshlyChoppedBasil: Man, I'm just chillin’.

Kim Jong Un: Likewise, cousin. Likewise.

FreshlyChoppedBasil: Firstly I wanted to say congratulations on winning TIME magazine's 'person of the year'.

Kim Jong Un: Thanks, Man. I appreciate the love, brother. Hitler won it in 1938, so I'm in good company right there. 

FreshlyChoppedBasil: Sho nuff. Sho nuff. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions real quick. I notice that your new project, Impending Armageddon: Apocalypse Soon is gonna be executive produced by your Dad, Kim Jong Il.

Kim Jong Un: Yup. 

FreshlyChoppedBasil: Now, and I suppose this is the main point, he's actually dead, isn't he? 

Kim Jong Un: Hey, Man, it's Easter. 'Tis the season for resurrection, knowwha'msayin'? The Democratic People's Republic of Korea has got bare cutting edge cryogenics. We be reanimating tissue 25-8, baby including the ILL Poppa. 

FreshlyChoppedBasil: A reanimation programme? That's a mad fact you just spat here, bro. Pretty impressive...

Kim Jong Un: Ya better know it! 

FreshlyChoppedBasil: Wow...

Kim Jong Un: Look at your face, man. I'm just messin' witcha. Eh-Heh-Heh-Heh… Ain't no reanimation programme. This ain't Buck Rogers, bro. My Dad lives right here in me, Brozilla. I'm fully reppin' the ILL Poppa.

FreshlyChoppedBasil: Oh, my days! That is a proper wind-up, blood.

Kim Jong Un: That's how it is, ya get me?

FreshlyChoppedBasil: Sweet. So, your Dad's like a spiritual adviser on this album, yeah?

Kim Jong Un: That's right. I just wanna hold it down like the ILL Poppa did for all those years. I feel like he's right there with me when I'm up in the vocal booth spitting on the mic. He gets an executive producer credit because what he's doing for me here and now? It's mad real, blood. People will look at a picture of me and think I'm throwing up a "W". It's not a "W", I'm just reppin' the ILL Poppa. Four fingers up, two twisted in the middle. Keeping it ill. ILL, ya get me? Much love. Much love... 

FreshlyChoppedBasil: That's some genuinely emotionally, touching sh*t right there. Now, you've got a production team, the Military Posse. Tell me about those cats.

Kim Jong Un: Aesthetically, I'm taking it back to Professor Griff and the S-1-Ws from Public Enemy, 'cos the DPPK is truly fighting the power, ya get me? The Americans want to beat us until we see stars and feel the stripes on our backs, but homeboy ain't havin' it. Not today. So we comin' back hard. Bringin' the noise. Bringin' the thunder... And other precipitation. Plus the stuff the Military Posse did back in the day with the ILL Poppa and Chen Pacino is legendary. That's the concrete all us young cats is walking on today. Ya feel me?

FreshlyChoppedBasil: Oh, indeed. I wanted to ask you what their responsibilities are and how you guys mesh together. What exactly do they do? Do they help you select music? Do they help you narrow the tracklist? Talk about that relationship and how that works.

Kim Jong Un: The relationship with me and The Military Posse is like some big bro – little bro type sh*t, ya get me? They just reached out like a cool minute ago, ya feel me? They said they wanted to work with me and I was like, "What? Fa real?" 'cos they were massive in my Dad's day and had a hand in delivering some of his biggest hits. So we started having sessions together, ya feel me?

We didn’t really talk about what they were going to do with the album. But the only thing they said was that they were going to help me pick my songs and kinda manage the whole project. Ya get me? I’m going to do what I do. I could never be my Dad. Them's some big ass shoes, yeah? Eh-Heh-Heh-Heh... I’m just going to be me, and their job is to help me structure it and tell me what ain't working, or what type of songs I need, like big club bangers and all that… That’s the level we on.

FreshlyChoppedBasil: Okay. Now I want to ask you some questions about club bangers so I'll come back to that in a second. You are on the Axis Of Evil record label which has got quite a reputation and oftentimes people romanticise things and imagine it would be great to be on this particular label or work with this artist or that producer... Previously you were a small, independent underground artist putting out little mixtapes, or 'missiles' as we call them. How is it being on a major label like Axis Of Evil? Is it overrated, underrated or is it kind of in between? Talk about a little bit about your experience so far.

Kim Jong Un: It's all about perception. It's just how other people see you, ya get me? My experience being part of the Axis Of Evil… Our bangers, hits and missiles give us the space to do what we do and people either dig it or they don't. I mean, look at what happened to DJ Gaddafi. You need some back up. You can't walk out there alone. I’m on some independent sh*t, just doing me and the rest is all politics. The sh*t is crazy, I know that.

FreshlyChoppedBasil: (laughs)

Kim Jong Un: Stressful, mane. It’ll drive a brother crazy. Drive a brother insane. But it’s like, whatever…I know that once my record starts poppin’ and getting big I know the game will have to come to the table and we'll talk about what needs to happen. The position that I am in right now with the Axis Of Evil is still kinda cool and there's a new playa in the game, Barack. I'm gonna be asking him some tough questions, so I hope he knows what he’s doing.

FreshlyChoppedBasil: We've touched on club bangers and I wanted to ask you about that. Obviously we know the success you had with the Don't Mess With The DPPK song but do you find that the label pressures you to create, not necessarily another Don't Mess With The DPPK, but another song that is going to be that popular? Do you feel that you have to force it? For example, I was listening to the The Time Has Come To Settle Accounts With The U.S. Imperialists In View Of The Prevailing Situation mixtape and the song Droppin' Bombs On Ya is a really good song. It could be huge. But when you think of hits you kind of have to get more accessible. Do you ever struggle with that?

Kim Jong Un: Yeah…I mean if I tried to be a little more accessible then we could go worldwide, but I really don’t feel like I gotta…I just make a song about what I want to talk about off of the real. So the Droppin' Bombs On Ya song is hardcore because I’m from the DPPK and it’s grimy and the song is grimy and as a people we are grimy. Ya feel me? So…I was just doing exactly what I wanted on that mixtape. Making bangers and then putting them out and whatever happens off of the missiles happens. Whatever crosses over is going to crossover.

FreshlyChoppedBasil: Sorry. I've just noticed that the picture of Mickey Mouse on your wall is actually a cross-stitch.

Kim Jong Un: Hell yeah! I love my cross-stitch.

FreshlyChoppedBasil: That's amazing. How did you get into that?

Kim Jong Un: It's crazy, right? That's down to the ILL Poppa. He was big on cross-stitch. Over in the West you guys are all about buying things and "Me, me, me." We like our quiet nights in over here. I never thought I'd get on that particular bus, but I hit a brick wall with my knitting, I was getting bored. I needed more of a challenge so I switched up. I love doing cross-stitch while I'm watching television, just like my Dad used to. Have you seen Bluestone 42? Whoo, Man. Awesome! It's by the team who wrote Miranda, only it's funnier and it's got the added angle of illegal war. Sure, some stupid people will miss the subtlety and won't appreciate the moments of light and shade, but it is what it is… Genius. Hardcore laughs and giggles, ya get me?

FreshlyChoppedBasil: Gotcha. So I know you have the mixtape that came out recently and you are working on the album. So how can people stay in touch with what Kim Jong Un is doing? With shows or just different things that you have going on. So any last words for FreshlyChoppedBasil? Let ‘em know how to stay in touch with Kim Jong Un.

Kim Jong Un: Follow me on Twitter and Instagram, Facebook or YouTube or whatever. Everything is everything. It's all love, ya get me?

FreshlyChoppedBasil: Yeah, sweet. I appreciate you sharing your time, my brother. We gotta hook up again when Armageddon gets closer. 

Kim Jong Un: Good lookin’ for having me, big fella.

FreshlyChoppedBasil: Stay cool. Peace.

Kim Jong Un: I hope so, son. I really hope so...

Bloodshed, Banter and Bluestone 42

Gadzooks and Odds-bodkins! Excuse my rather fruity language, but rather than issuing a screed of "F" and "C" words I thought I'd go back a few centuries and use minced oaths instead. You see, I've been severely provoked, boys and girls. BBC3 has dumped a fair amount of egesta doubling as comedy on our television screens over the years - I'm thinking specifically about the execrable White Van Man, the horrific Two Pints Of Lager… and the tragic Horne and Corden - it would appear that now they're reloading their Haddron Collider-sized slingshot with diseased horse faecal matter.  

Unless you're a sea-dwelling invertebrate you'll be aware that YouGov recently published the results of a poll reflecting the British public's attitude to the Iraq war 10 years on. It revealed that a significant majority felt the war was wrong and half of those polled believe Tony Blair deliberately set out to mislead the British public about the threat posed by alleged weapons of mass destruction. A quarter thought that Mr Blair should be tried as a war criminal, what with the war being just a little bit illegal and everything.

The other war with a slight tinge of illegality is, of course, the ongoing campaign being waged in Afghanistan. There are those far cleverer than me who argue that the invasion of Afghanistan was not legitimate self-defence under article 51 of the UN Charter. Anyway, 12 years later and British, American and Afghan officials admit that the country is unstable and the civilians continue to pay an inordinately high price. 

It is against this backdrop that we are presented with the latest "comedic" offering from BBC3, namely Bluestone 42. The series was written by the chaps who brought us Miranda (who knew that slapstick and buffoonery actually needed writing?), whilst the production team has also helmed the aforementioned Two Pints Of Lager… and Mrs Brown's Boys: hallmarks of the singularly unfunny if ever there were such a thing. The distinguished cast includes actors who have featured in programmes I really like: Oliver Chris (The Office, Green Wing, Nathan Barley), Kelly Adams (Hustle) and Tony Gardner (Lead Balloon, The Thick Of It).

The blurb on the BBC3 website says that the series "is packed with the lively workmate banter and relationship minefields.": an ironic choice of words given that the series follows a British bomb disposal detachment in Afghanistan. Essentially the programme is constructed as a workplace sitcom with the "sit" being an illegal war overseas. All the archetypes are in place for a by-the-numbers half-hour of pleasant entertainment: the try-hard everyman, the attractive, but unattainable object of affection, the detached, entirely task-oriented boss and a motley collection of comfortable stereotypes with familiar ticks and quirks masquerading as additional characters. 

As there is no contextual exposition Afghanistan and Afghans are reduced to mere background noise as we exclusively explore the tedium and futility of war through the eyes of the British Crusader. The only pain is that experienced by our brave soldiers delivering democracy to the unwashed via the end of a bazooka whilst having to endure what they perceive to be substandard catering.

An example of the shockingly callous lack of empathy that permeates this work can be seen early in episode one. There's a running gag which features a CIA operative's tiresomely bragging about his exploits in Fallujah. The place name is pronounced here "FA - LOOOOO - JER" for maximum comic effect. Did the writers not know that this was the site of a US military siege which bombed a city flat, subsequently mired in allegations of massacre, the specific targeting of civilians, the use of chemical weapons and a nuclear fallout from Depleted Uranium munitions worse than that of Hiroshima? I would contend that they knew, but didn't care. After all, the fetishisation of our military means that the benign intentions of the West's foreign policy remain presupposed and there is no suggestion that the unquestioning soldiers are merely serving the strategic, economic and regional interests of the British Government. As David Cameron summed up so eloquently when slapping down the top brass who dared to complain about their workload: "You do the fighting and I’ll do the talking".

The reviews of the show thus far have concentrated on the quality of this gentle comedy and trite observations about ribaldry, squaddie banter and camaraderie in difficult circumstances. None of the critics have questioned whether a programme making light of an illegal war should exist in the first place, but then that's the mainstream media playing to type. Perhaps next BBC3 should do a comedy about school shootings. We could follow the perpetrator as he downloads kiddie porn and shouts at passersby in his local Aldi whilst purchasing condoms. We could empathise with his daily struggles prior to watching him stroll into a primary school and delivering acerbic one-liners to camera before shooting smiling children in the face. He could mow down a new school every week.

There is a poignant irony to be found in the utterances of the British and American governments who claim to be exporting democracy, whilst pointedly ignoring public opinion in their own countries. The real military comedy set in Afghanistan has so far cost the UK taxpayer over £17 billion. Instead of turning out this jaw-droppingly offensive toss, the BBC could have spent our money making a series of programmes about how such a catastrophic waste of lives and resources was allowed to happen, why it is still going on and holding to account those responsible.

In the end, if I can bastardise a quote from Thomas Jefferson, we get the military comedy we deserve, not the one we need. My sense of outrage won't allow me to watch another episode, not without gnawing off my own left kneecap first. I predict that this series will precisely follow the template set by the war in Afghanistan: everyone thinks it's a bad idea from the outset, the endeavour flounders as people realise it's worse than a crime, it's a colossal blunder. It soon becomes apparent that the core resources aren't fit for purpose leading to massive public disaffection and a quiet withdrawal from theatre without having achieved the main objective.

The only criticism thus far has been from the Conservative MP Patrick Mercer, who said: "I wonder if a comedy based in Afghanistan, considering the war is ongoing, is in the best of taste." If a Tory, by definition an entity incapable of any feeling, thinks it's a bit dubious then you can bet it's both vile and loathsome. Only it's worse. It's an affront to the decency the West claims as its own preserve. If war is hell then Bluestone 42 is Satan's heated, unwashed, crusty sphincter. Zounds!

10 Years After...

I'm not too well at the moment - my left foot is now the size of a mid-budget B&Q kitchen with fake mahogany wine rack - and so I have trouble sleeping. Last night I watched the recently restored cut of Heaven's Gate, and the unexpurgated version of John Woo's Red Cliff. My pretentious 7 hour movie marathon was inspired, in part, by my physical affliction, but the main motivation was to catch the early editions of our nation's newspapers and assess how they marked the 10th anniversary of Tony Blair's impassioned House Of Commons speech which greenlit the invasion Iraq. 

You won't be surprised that he isn't mentioned much at all. There's just an awful lot of guff about poor planning and benign intentions, both of which are lies. In order to siphon off resources the country needed to be broken. 

The Independent had a piece on the politics of pubic hair (I tease mine into a defiantly militant afro), whilst The Sun was all about Rio and his fitness programme. The Guardian, has an article on dozens having been killed injured as Sunni extremists targeted Shia civilians in a series of blasts across Baghdad, a violent consequence of the West's plan to divide and rule in this part of the world. 

The Mirror, however, had a retrospective of their war coverage, whilst Richard Sanders in The Maily Telegraph dismantled the myth of shock and awe.

A couple of weeks ago Nick Cohen wrote an article in The Guardian with the headline "Ten years on, the case for invading Iraq is still valid". It wasn't even the mindlessly callous headline which raised my hackles. It was the smug, self-satisfied expression of Nick Cohen in his postage stamp sized photograph accompanying the piece: his body oddly twisted toward the camera as if he has been caught mid-defecation. He suggests that ridding the world of the very evil Saddam Hussein was worth the bloodshed and infers that those who oppose the invasion are apologists for totalitarianism and terrorism. 

However, his selective cherry picking of historic events and their frames of reference means he doesn't address the fact that Saddam, like most of the despots across the middle east, was installed and supported by the CIA and MI6: his murderous offensives against the Kurds were supported by British and American governments, who also supplied the chemical and biological weapons.

Nick Cohen makes no mention of the 1.2 million dead. What do they matter, right? Presumably any display of empathy comes as the exclusive result of being a closeted Islamofascist.

"…spilling blood and spending treasure in other people's conflicts," was begun as a concerted effort to stabilise global energy resources by taking them out of the hands of an individual who used to be "our bastard" in the middle east.

So we've established that Mr Cohen is a dead-hearted vampire, but what did the papers have to say 10 years ago?

In January of 2003 Iraq's envoy to the UN protested that his country had no weapons of mass destruction.

"We remain ready to actively cooperate, as we have done in the past, to respond to any doubts," Mr Douri added. "We open all doors to Mr Blix and his team. If there is something, he will find it. We have no hidden reports. Iraq is clear of weapons of mass destruction."

In Baghdad, Iraq's foreign minister, Naji Sabri called the Bush administration "warmongers".

"This evil administration and its ally, Mr Blair in Britain, have continued in their threats and aggression against Iraq," he said. "Their aim is not the weapons of mass destruction. These two governments know very well there are no weapons of mass destruction or related activities in Iraq. By controlling this region, they are dreaming of dominating the whole world."

But Our Tone had already made up his mind, cheered on by the mainstream media and Rupert Murdoch who Rupert Murdoch gave the proposed war his full backing to war, saying George Bush was acting "morally" and "correctly" and describing Tony Blair as "full of guts" for going out on a limb in his support for an attack on Iraq;

Daily Mirror Editorial, March 19, 2003
"Even though the Mirror disagrees strongly with Tony Blair over his determination to wage war on Iraq, we do not question his belief in the rightness of what he is doing. It is one thing to have principles others disagree with, another altogether to have no principles.

The Times, March 19, 2003
"This was a dogged attempt to change the minds of dissenting backbenchers, an attempt made against the headwind of the popular mood. It was a speech to admire for its willpower and its moral conviction rather than the elegance of its prose…"

Daily Telegraph Editorial, March 19, 2003
"In the Commons, as in every debating chamber, the side that wins the argument all too often loses the vote ... But any fair-minded person who listened to [Tuesday's] debate, having been genuinely unable to make up his mind about military action against Saddam Hussein, must surely have concluded that Mr Blair was right, and his opponents were wrong.

Independent Editorial, March 19, 2003
"[Tuesday's speech] was the most persuasive case yet made by the man who has emerged as the most formidable persuader for war on either side of the Atlantic.

"The case against President Saddam's 12-year history of obstructing the UN attempts at disarmament has never been better made ... Mr Blair made a coherent case ... that while disarmament and not regime change is the legal basis for the war, the prospect of the latter makes it possible to pursue the former with a 'clear conscience and a strong heart' 

The Sun Editorial, March 19, 2003
"With passion in his voice and fire in his belly, Tony Blair won his place in history alongside Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. In the most momentous speech of his political life he set out the pressing reasons why there must now be war on President Saddam.

"The ringing tones were from Churchill, the cold logic that of Lady Thatcher ... It was a stirring call to arms that was backed with precise, detailed and persuasive arguments ... [that] kept a possible Labour revolt in check [and] will have convinced the nation that war is just ...

It may well be that I'm a little tetchy at the moment, but it truly angers me that no-one has been taken to task for the destruction of a country and the theft of its resources. No-one. Indeed Tony Blair has been rewarded for his actions by being made Middle East Peace Envoy (!) and Dick Cheney’s Halliburton stock value doubled over the eight years he was Vice President, from approximately $5 million to over $10 million. Which means is about $5 per Iraqi death. Who says they didn't value the lives of the Iraqi citizens? The whole episode beautifully reveals both the West's foreign policy and the workings of our mainstream media: if you have resources they belong to us and our journalists will amplify the prevailing orthodoxy.

10 years on and what has been learned? 

1. The Irish are a righteous people, more engaged social commentators, and hold public officials to a higher standard than our own "free" press. They hurled shoes and eggs at Tony Blair at the first public signing for his memoirs in Dublin back in 2010. They also shouted: "Hey, hey Tony, hey! How many kids have you killed today?" Our Tone had to cancel the rest of his book-signing tour.

2. International courts work at the behest of Western Powers, thus the best way to get away with horrific crimes against humanity is to be a western politician.

3. The wealthy still send the sons and daughters of the poor to steal the wealth of people in foreign lands and then we make a limp half-hour BBC3 comedy about it. Written by the team who wrote Miranda. FACT.*

*See next blog

Concerning P-Funk and Satan

I'm kinda beginning to dig Twitter. As I was finishing my previous blog someone posted a link to a song via YouTube. I needed a break so I pressed play and was transported back to a Sunday afternoon when I was younger and music was genuinely magical, rather than this aural pigswill we're forced to endure. The song, by The Charlie Daniels Band entitled The Devil Went Down To Georgia, reached out to me through the transistor radio.

The story the song tells is of Satan is weaving his way through Georgia looking to harvest souls when he encounters a young chap named Johnny and engages him in a musical face-off. Satan offers to give Johnny a golden fiddle if he plays better than he does; otherwise, Satan takes Johnny's eternal soul. Satan goes first and employs a legion of demonic minions to conjure a deliciously discordant riff which would do Megadeth proud whilst he fiddle-shreds wildly like Vinnie Vincent on a raw caffeine bender. When the Devil's performance ends, Johnny compliments him and responds by playing excerpts of four traditional American southern folk songs. The Devil, suitably impressed, concedes the contest and lays a golden fiddle at Johnny's feet.

The tweeter had signed off by saying "And I still say the Devil won." It's hard to disagree with this assertion. Having been transported back to the very first time I'd listened to this song I cast around to find a tune which would have a similar effect. I alighted upon "All That Future" by Lori Carlson and keyboard wizard Bernie Worrell and dove back into a warm pool of reverie.

It was 2001 and I was in the shower listening to Material's (Bill Laswell's avant garde noise ensemble) alternative Hip Hop album Intonarumori. As the rivulets of warm water cascaded down my naked torso, I slowly moved the bar of Imperial Leather soap across my chest and then up and down my chiselled abdomen. I was standing with my back to the spray to avoid washing off the rich lather when the insistent, dissonant clank halted and track 9 came on. Out of nowhere a languidly erotic, delicious shimmer of keyboards and a hauntingly delicate, breathy female voice weaved its way toward me through the steam. It was beautiful, like a glittering rainbow slicing your skull in two. A 5 minutes and 35 second interlude of exquisite enchantment. The rest of the album went back to the wilfully odd and angular Hip Hop of the first 8 songs. That's typical of Bill Laswell: always pulling a sharp left turn when you least expect it.

My first proper encounter with Mr Laswell was via Bootsy Collins' Jungle Bass EP. Bootsy was one of the original JBs - James Brown's backing band - and it is he who plays bass on Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine, Super Bad, Soul Power and Talkin' Loud and Sayin' Nothing. The EP had all the familiar elements of a P-Funk release (popping bass, chicken grease guitar, the assured slap of an authoritative snare sound and sleazy horns), but it sounded just a little off-centre. Tweaked. The 70s transplanted to some unspecified point in the future. It was superb.

Being a P-Funk completist I have precisely 103 Parliament/Funkadelic, or P-Funk, albums in my music library - I've just counted - and none of them are in that awful MP3 format. Unlike Hip Hop, P-Funk was/is genuinely uplifting. It casts Black people as Gods who are waiting for the Mothership to descend from the skies to return us to our proper realm and release us from this earthly bondage. This was symbolic of a spiritual awakening and an acknowledgement of our history and lineage. In the meantime, whilst we wait, our role is to re-educate the rigid materialists and reveal to them the true rhythms of Mother Earth through the Funk. Deep, huh? And more life-affirming than Niggas In Paris, for fuck's sake....

I kept coming across Mr Laswell as I expanded the P-Funk section of my immense music collection. He produced Bootsy Collins' What's Bootsy Doing? album. Bootsy played with Bill Laswell, Bernie Worrell, guitarist Buckethead and drummer Brain (the latter two went on to play with Axl Rose in his new version of Guns N' Roses, replacing Slash and Matt Sorum respectively) on the album Transmutation (Mutatis Mutandis) by Praxis in 1992. He produced the only non-official P-Funk album (it only features 3 songs written by the Godfather of Funk, George Clinton, and he only sings background vocals on 1 song) that is considered an official P-Funk album (1995's Funkcronimicon).

Most importantly, for my collection anyway, Bill Laswell set up the Black Arc label as a home for "Black Rock, Cyberfunk and Future Blues". During what many consider to be the peak years of Hip Hop George Clinton and P-Funk were sampled mercilessly. The Black Arc label was a means to highlight the craft and the magic of the musicians who had created hits for De La Soul, Cypress Hill, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, LL Cool J, 2 Pac, Dr Dre, MC Hammer, Run DMC, Adina Howard and Beastie Boys amongst countless others.

Mr Laswell assembled an impressive cast of P-Funk alumni and across 9 albums of righteous indignation - featuring an abstract, yet inclusive beatscape melding disparate and differing textures: gothic rock, Hip Hop, ambient, jazz, hardcore, techno and tribal African beats - the sweeping arc of black experience is declared as a musical memoir. A reminder that our musical culture is richer than that which Hip Hop has chosen to represent.

Only 9 albums were released:


  O.G. Funk - Out of the Dark
  Zillatron - Lord of the Harvest
  Slave Master - Under the Six
  Hardware - Third Eye Open
  Buddy Miles Express - Hell and Back
  Abiodun Oyewole - 25 Years
  The Last Poets - Holy Terror
  Bernie Worrell - Free Agent: A Spaced Odyssey
  Aftershock - 2005

I started writing this just before the Brit Awards 2013 kicked off. After the first couple of paragraphs I turned on the television and accidentally caught sight of the utterly pointless Paloma Faith stumbling through a justification for her vacuity. I threw up in my mouth.

The Black Arc catalogue is the perfect palate cleanser. None of these albums are formulaic. The Bootsy albums (Lord of the Harvest and Third Eye Open) are genuinely fascinating in that one gets to hear the low-slung funk of his legendary space bass grinding against ambient and rock gears.

The Lost Poets are a collective of poets and musicians who came out of the 1960s American civil rights movement and laid the foundation for Hip Hop. Their album gives you a glimpse of a time before corporate rap, when what was lovingly placed over beats was carefully constructed polemical poetry.

Bernie Worrell's disc is rather ethereal, atmospheric and awesome to chill to. The rest are patchy at best, but there are moments on each that will make you catch your breath, the perfect antidote to the empty vessels who have sold their souls. Proving, perhaps, that the Devil doesn't always win.

*The foto features selected highlights from my P-Funk collection.

Jay-Z, Kanye West, The Grammys and the N word

My brother and I are soooooo different. At the conclusion of the first 5am screening of The Dark Knight Rises, on the day of its release, I'm not ashamed to say I welled up. Perhaps it was the context in which I viewed the movie - I've never been to a 5am screening before - but it seemed the perfect end to a very impressive trilogy. My brother's verdict? Not so much. His was a decidedly unimpressed "Meh..."

'Twas ever thus. Back when we were youngsters the family cat, Rivelino (we named him after the World Cup winning, combative Brazillian midfielder. Later I had a pet Hamster whom I named Reggie The Bastard, but that's a different story for a different time), somehow managed to trap himself in the back of the piano and was mewing desperately for help. I was distraught. I was crying hysterically. Poor Rivelino. My brother, as rational as always, huffed, "What's wrong with you? All we need to do is pull the piano out. Jeez..."

I could give you loads of examples of where I'm the one shrieking with outrage like a raped goat, whilst my brother gives an insouciant shrug of his shoulders. Our roles have probably been reversed lots of times over the years, but at present I can only bring to mind two examples. A few years ago I was leafing through the NME (yeah, I know). In the ad section I came across a music emporium which announced proudly that it sold lots of different genres of music, but specialised mainly in Indie, Electronica, Heavy Metal and Nigger.

Being permanently drenched in cynicism it was pretty easy to make my voice sound light and breezy when I rang my brother to casually suggest he go to a newsagents and just have a quick flick through the ads section of this week's NME. "You'll know what it is when you see it," I teased. He rang me back an hour later in a frothing rage, which as I've already stated, is most unlike my brother. He had rung both the shop involved AND the publication to ask what they were playing at and to find out exactly what they planned to do about this gross transgression.

On the second occasion, we had just soundchecked for a show as Damaged Gods and strolled into the town centre for some deep-fried, potato based sustenance. Sitting down to eat at a grubby formica-topped table our senses were assaulted by a dishevelled man who announced "He's a nigger. A big, black fookin' nigger."

"What the-? Okay, Brother B," hissed my brother in a harsh whisper. Putting down his fork he curled his fingers into a fist as he used one of my many rap aliases (Big Brozilla, Triple XL, B.B. Mon£y and Daddy Long Stroke are amongst the others), "What are we going to do about this?"

"Leave it, G-Influence," I replied - plucking that particular nomenclature from a very long list of my brother's AKAs which includes Doc Connors, Wachowski and Chachi - "He's clearly disturbed."

Anyone notice the common thread between both incidents? That's right! The N-word.

Words exert influence. You can calm, scare, call to arms or induce sleep with words. Noam Chomsky posited that words and language are an integral part of our psychological being; they give shape and meaning to the things around us, and, in a very real and literal sense, the person and people that use them.

In magickal terms - I've been reading a lot of Aleister Crowley recently - invocations and spells are referred to as "Grimoire", literally "grammar" in French. One can harness power and create magick for one's own ends simply through the use of words.

The history of the word nigger is often traced to the Latin word niger, meaning black. This word became the noun negro (black person) in English, and the colour black in Spanish and Portuguese. derogatory nigger and earlier English substitutes such as negar, neegar, neger, and niggor that developed into its lexico-semantic true version in English. It is probable that nigger is a phonetic spelling of the white Southern mispronunciation of Negro.

By the early 1800s it was firmly established as a pejorative term. In 1837 Hosea Easton wrote that nigger:

"is an opprobrious term, employed to impose contempt upon [blacks] as an inferior race. . . . The term in itself would be perfectly harmless were it used only to distinguish one class of society from another; but it is not used with that intent. . . . [I]t flows from the fountain of purpose to injure."  

The word "nigger" is imbued with so much hatred and prejudice that its mere utterance evokes centuries of discrimination and ignorance: conjuring an image of abused, enslaved forebears who were considered lazy, stupid, dirty, subhuman and unworthy of the dignity afforded any other human being. The use of the word was a form of ritual humiliation employed by slave masters.

Fast forward a couple of hundred years and Jay-Z and Kanye West are picking up Grammys for Niggas In Paris. I feel like crying. Trust Americans (a people whose country was founded by genocide and built on the backs of slaves) to trivialise the word, ignore its history, use it as a matey salutation and subscribe to the notion that its meaning changes depending on the complexion of the person saying it.

Slavery has caused severe emotional and psychological trauma, resulting in a self-hatred which manifests itself as Black people disrespecting themselves with the same words which were once used to denigrate them. No other culture does that. You never hear, "What up, my *insert racist epithet here*?!?!" as a greeting in any other culture. It would be quite horrific, but indicates that slavery and its attendant racism have succeeded.

The Godfather of the Black use of the N-word is Richard Pryor. In his rather slight autobiography Pryor Convictions, he said, "Nigger... I decided to make it my own. Nigger. I decided to take the sting out of it. Nigger. As if saying it over and over again would numb me and everybody else to its wretchedness. Nigger. Said it over and over like a preacher singing hallelujah."

In 1979, Pryor went to Kenya. He sat in a hotel lobby and saw, "gorgeous black people... The only people you saw were black. At the hotel, on television, in stores, on the street, in the newspapers, at restaurants, running the government, on advertisements. Everywhere."

Pryor said to his wife, "You know what? There are no niggers here. The people here, they still have their self-respect, their pride."

He left Africa regretting ever having uttered the word "nigger". "To this day I wish I'd never said the word. I felt its lameness. It was misunderstood by people. They didn't get what I was talking about. Neither did I. ... So I vowed never to say it again."

Of course, by then the damage had been done and the floodgates opened for an abundance of Hip Hop Proto-Pryors who considered the word mere slang and paved the way for the negative stereotype to become profitable and impose itself as a shorthand for Black culture. Professor Griff calls it the niggerfication of rap music. Wynton Marsalis calls it "ghetto minstrelsy." He says,

"Old school minstrels used to say they were 'real darkies from the real plantation'. Hip-hop substitutes the plantation for the streets. Now you have to say that you're from the streets, you shot some brothers, you went to jail. Rappers have to display the correct pathology. Rap has become a safari for people who get their thrills from watching [Black] people debase themselves, men dressing in gold, spending money on expensive fluff, using language like 'bitch' and 'ho' and 'nigger'."

Witnessing the rise of an "artist" like Chief Keef is depressing, but, as a teenager, he doesn't know any better. He's young, impressionable and plainly has no idea that he is perpetuating negative (Niggertive) images of black people, or that he could be a focus for the laser beam of racism.

I hold the rap elder statesmen and veterans to a higher standard. Jay-Z and Kanye West should know better, but the lure of filthy lucre means they'll shit yards of reinforced negative stereotypes to keep the shareholders happy and consolidate their personal brands. Music executives want to cash in on gangsta rap and its essentially disparaging narrative: the media complies, ignoring all other expressions of the music. The big money involved means that the corporations care nothing for the soul of hip-hop or the people who create it; their only concern is with profit.

Jay-Z's lyrics are a far more eloquent treatise on why he would rather rap about nothing and perpetuate the notion that, as a rapper, one has to be steeped in criminality and wallow in juvenilia for one's music to have any validity. It all comes down to the money...

"I dumbed down for my audience to double my dollars / They criticise me for it yet they all yell holla / If skills sold truth be told I’d probably be lyrically Talib Kweli / Truthfully I wanna rhyme like Common Sense / But I sold five mill, and I haven't rhymed like Common since." - Jay-Z, "Moment of Clarity"

The resulting dumbassification* sees rap artists all trying to sound the same: chasing the same coin in the consumer's pocket in an effort to justify the major label coddling of their record contracts. They sound so similar that they cancel each other out and create a cacophony of nihilism.

We also have a real-life CB4 movie plot in progress in the form of Rick Ross. In CB4 Chris Rock appropriates the identity of an incarcerated criminal, MC Gusto, in order to sell records, only for the real Gusto to turn up and claim a little violent restitution. All of which is precisely what Rick Ross has done. He's presently living out the rest of the movie as the Chicago Gangster Disciples issue death threats via YouTube(!), passing acerbic comment on his sales strategy. Mr Ross was the target of a drive-by shooting in late January as he sat in his Bentley: great for sales and it bolsters his street credibility.

From Melle Mel's hard-hitting and innovative The Message in 1982 to Niggas In Paris in 2013, the Grammys represent the celebration of Hip Hop's regression. It's ironic that Public Enemy's Chuck D was on hand to close the Grammy awards ceremony with an incendiary performance which was ably supported by LL Cool J, Tom Morello, Travis Barker and Z-Trip; reminding us of the true power of Hip Hop. Historically Public Enemy's call to Fight The Power and their highlighting of the Fear Of A Black Planet were ignored by the Grammys' voting panel in favour of less incendiary, less difficult and less challenging works. He brought a poignantly dignified presence which acted as a peerless counterpoint to the preceeding buffoonery.

* as coined by Mr Chuck

Cheryl Cole: Livin' me dream, like

These are, indeed, the worst of times: I'm shuttling backwards forwards between the Doctor's office and hospital; Gideon Osborne officially doesn't know what he's doing; Tesco and Sainsbury's are predicting a Christmas shortage in potatoes, parsnips, carrots, sprouts, broccoli, cabbages, cauliflower and swedes; and party balloons will be far less floaty this festive season as the worldwide shortage of helium kicks in. Thank Santa then that two staples remain in place to keep us smiling during the long cold evenings, namely Stand Up Comedy DVDs and the celebrity autobiography.

Stewart Lee's Carpet Remnant World is by far the best of the comedy DVDs on offer, whilst the celebrity autobiography category is dominated by the colossus that is my mate Cheryl Cole's My Story. Not to be confused with Jessie J's autobiography with practically the same title, or Tulisa's Contostavlos' My Story So Far in which she tells us that Dappy has a penis which could conceivably belong to King Kong. Cheryl stopped by my hospital bed recently to share a bunch of designer Ruby Roman grapes and a chat.

It's so nice to see you again, Chezza. 

You too, pet. Hoo ye gannin'? Y'areet, hinny?

I'm not great, obviously, but thanks for visiting me and these grapes are amazing.

They're fooking champion! They're the most expensive fruit ever, like. They cost me an absolute fooking SHITE load, but I respect you, Basil and I like you too, so, y'know... No bother, like.

Thanks again, Cheryl. You've had an incredible 2012. You've hooked up with Tre Holloway, released a third solo album (A Million Lights), aired the Access All Areas documentary on ITV2, Girls Aloud have regrouped and your autobiography has just hit the shelves.

2012 has been so fooking crazy, man. Will.I.Am, he's, like, managing me (?), says it's going to get even crazier. Tre is my rock. My soulmate. We connect on every level and it definitely helps that he's hung like a Shetland Pony. This solo album was a real personal statement, the documentary was a chance to show ordinary people the real stresses of being Cheryl, Girls Aloud is just me getting back with me mates, and the autobiography is a chance to show ordinary people the real stresses of being Cheryl. Again. Revealing the real me, like. The Cheryl Cole who stays in of an evening reading Noam Chomsky in a tiger onesie, eating a meat feast Domino Pizza and farting like a good 'un. Lol.

You say that your album was a personal statement.

Aye.

Nothing exemplifies this more than Call My Name. Can you tell me a little bit about what you were trying to say with this song?

Well, first of all I didn't write it, Calvin Harris did, but what I had in mind when I was singing it was, like, me hitting back at the infantile, fundamentalist logic which is subservient to acquisition for its own ends and is impervious to compassion definining the world in a postmodern prescriptivism of black and white: they're evil and we're good.

Having been a solo artist for quite a while, how easy has it been for you to readjust to a group dynamic?

It's been great seeing the girls again... Well... Most of them. Nadine just keeps whining on about her failed restaurant. I wish she'd just bore off, like. Nicola Roberts is so pale sometimes, against certain backdrops she's literally transparent. At the moment we're rebuilding the set for our tour next year because there were points of the show where she disappeared completely and it looked like there was a microphone just suspended in mid-air defying the known laws of physics. Lol. No, but seriously, someone's got to drive the car and, given my phenomenal solo success and being the nation's sweetheart, the girls are willing to have me in charge.

You're as massive a fan as me, have you noticed the similarity between Chen Pacino's H-H-Humpin' Ya and PSY's Gangnam Style?

I know! Fooking mental, right? (Cheryl proceeds to sing H-H-Humpin' Ya to the tune of Gangnam Style) Chen was way ahead of his time. I reckon Will.I. Am is our modern day equivalent. Did you see him on The Voice?

Yes, I did.

What did you think?

When he talks he sounds like a malfunctioning R2D2 unit.

Lol. He's a musical genius though, just like Chen. When we win my case against Simon Cowell for sacking me off of X-Factor USA I'm gonna buy Chen's publishing rights and re-release his whole back catalogue as a 52 CD box set. I'm thinking of calling it Ay No Pacino. There'll be at least a couple of his protest albums in there.

How do you feel about PSY rowing back on his earlier position in criticising American foreign policy. Some of his earlier lyrics were a little incendiary. 

And he's apologised, yeah?

Yes, he has.


I see it like this, right. Americans have a President who is a mass-murdering psychopath and they apologise to absolutely fooking nobody for his behaviour. Nobody. Oh, sorry, Afghanistan. Those drones weren't meant to kill everyone at the wedding reception, only the terrorists, but the rest of the guests got in the way. And actually we're not going to apologise, because if anyone is of fighting age in the vicinity of a drone attack we've rewritten our constitution so that we're allowed to kill you just in case. Yet they expect, nay, demand, that a pop singer apologise for some lyrics in a song he recorded years ago? PSY has no blood on his hands, whereas Barack Obama could bathe in the blood of his victims, and for all I know, he probably uses it as shower gel.

If I want to hear to an apology from any pop singer, I'll take one from the gaggle of twat artists who endorsed Obama and conveniently turn a blind eye to the murders he commits daily. Snoop Dogg, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Michael Stipe, 50 Cent, Chris Martin, Nicki Minaj... I could go on, but I won't. These fooking assholes are the ones who should apologize, not PSY. Although, it's pretty piss poor that PSY is so desperate to get on Letterman that he'll say anything. Sell out. At least he brought MC Hammer out of retirement though.

People don't get to see this side of you. The politicised Cheryl Cole.

They don't want to see it.

Why not?

They're happy to see me as a piece of fluff. Trivia. A clothes horse with no discernible talent and absolutely nothing to say with dubious views on race, although I'm always gaggin' for the dark meat, if you get my drift?

And that isn't you?

Hadaway, man. Is it fook, like.

I see.

At the moment the way our government voted on that UN vote on Palestine is really pissing me off, like. The UN voted overwhelmingly to recognise Palestine as the world's 194th state. It’s a massive victory for the Palestinian people, for justice and for peace. Do you know why the UK abstained? Because we sell shed loads of arms to Israel - £2.4m between April and June this year - and we can't afford to cut off a gushing revenue stream irrespective of the unrelenting oppression and its illegality. Talking of gushing streams, I'm gonna have to go before I piss meself. Lol. No, no, no. You keep the grapes. Think of them as a Christmas present. Like I said to that black toilet attendant before I kicked her head in for looking at me funny, Season's Beatings. Laters.

* Girls aloud tour the UK next year between February and March

My muscley thighs and 3 days in church

I'm so disorganised. Maybe because my mind's constantly flitting from one thing to another and I get a little lost on where I am and what I'm doing. On one occasion I searched my room looking frantically for my glasses, riffling through cupboards, throwing clothes hither and thither, cursing myself and my appalling short-term memory only to realise that they were perched on the end of my nose the whole time. I was 11 years old when I did that. This is reassuring because when something similar happens these days I know it isn't dementia. I've always been like this.

This trip to Canada is both poignant and significant, so I felt a little pressured. My best course of action, I surmised, was not going to sleep to make sure that I had enough time to go through my list again and again and again so I didn't forget anything when we left. I handwashed my Evisu jeans at about three in the afternoon, but didn't want to put them in the tumble dryer, so I was checking on them intermittently as they hung on the maiden in the kitchen whilst ironing and watching the outstanding French cop drama Braquo (thanks again, Gordon). It makes The Shield look like Cagney and Lacey. Amazing.

Anyway, I still managed to get to my Mother's house late and then when we got to the airport I left her laptop on the backseat of the taxi and didn't realise until after it had left. I had to ring the taxi firm to send the driver back.

It's been a while since I last got on a plane, so these new security protocols were a bit of a shock. If you know me, you know my muscley thighs are never going to fit inside a pair of skinny jeans. I was instructed to remove my belt and I was thankful that I was wearing underwear when I raised my arms to be frisked. They're a bit zealous these security guards, aren't they? This fella had a good grab at my firm buttocks and a bit of a rummage down the front of my trousers (I wore Diesel jeans to travel in addition to the 3 pairs of Evisu jeans I had packed. Is that too many for a week?). He brushed roughly against El Monstruo (my nickname for Basil Junior Junior) and I briefly wondered if he wanted to induct me into the Mile High club right there in Terminal 3.

The flight was pretty much crash-free, thank fuck, but the diversion to Maine for refuelling meant our arrival in Winnipeg was delayed by 3 hours. A 22 and a half hour journey, door-to-door. Hardcore. We were staying with my Auntie Donna: the rebel of the family, which also means she's the most fun. Oh, and Auntie Donna is the one who called me a bow-legged bitch.

Winnipeg has a large Carribean community which has the church at its centre. Bright and early on Sunday morning, washed out and bleary-eyed, we all went to the Life and Truth Centre for a service, the first hour of which was comprised of a God-themed R&B concert. No kidding. There was a full band, four female singers and a saxophonist laying down hot lead lines which recalled Eric Leeds in Prince's Sign O'The Times/Lovesexy period. Everyone in the building was dancing, and not that nervous shuffling foot-to-foot type thing either. The congregation was going for it! One fella performed a slow robot stomp around the perimeter of the church, pausing dramatically to mop his brow with a sharply pressed hanky. I'm a cynic, boys and girls, but this was awesome.

The following evening was a viewing service, where everyone gets a chance to see the body and pay their last respects. The Life and Truth Centre was packed. Standing room only as family and friends took to the microphone to reminisce about their times with a man referred to by Auntie Donna's husband as "The Martin Luther King of Winnipeg". This is the second funeral I've attended with my Mother this year and on each occasion I've been floored by the vast number of family members I never even knew I had.

The Faith Temple in downtown Winnipeg was chosen for the funeral service proper on Tuesday. As a man whose death had made the evening news a much bigger venue was required for everyone to say "Goodbye". It was pretty harrowing. Myself, Wade's four sons and my cousin Andrew were the pallbearers. There were rivers of tears spilled and much heart-rending wailing and the Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines sent a letter of condolence in which Uncle Wade was described as a "fearless warrior on behalf of the poor and the disadvantaged."

His youngest son, Maurice delivered a moving eulogy in which he intimated that being part of a family in which the Father was consumed by the bigger picture resulted in a very strained relationship, but that as Wade 2.0 he would ensure his Father's legacy was carried forward. It was a pretty emotional day. It's been an emotional stay. Pushing my Mother in a wheelchair makes her frailty a jarring reality which I don't ordinarily have to confront and yet another funeral puts me right back in the hospital 8 years ago when my Father died.

Now, I'm not necessarily a fan of church or Christianity. Even back in the days of the Roman Games they would use burning Christians as torches at night, because their inventions were perceived as being dangerously crazy. Throughout history armies have marched behind a crucifix to subjugate, commit genocide and dehumanise billions of people. Billions. I shift a little uneasily in my seat whenever I see Luis Fabiano, Kaka or any Brazillian footballer score a goal, cross themselves and then look skyward. It's like they're completely ignorant of Christopher Columbus and his murder of their forebears on an industrial scale to make their gesture a reflex. If you go to the island of St Vincent there's a church practically every 500 yards giving the definite message that if only Black people worshipped our God they'd be a little more human.

There has been a lot of talk over the past three days about justice. Dogma, whether Capitalist in nature or Religious, has no capacity for empathy except on its own terms as part of its own agenda. When Capitalism required the toil of Black people to make plain old Britain, Great Britain, the Church was the cheerleader yelling "God's will" from the sidelines.

As a champion of the disaffected and the disenfranchised, Uncle Wade's mantra was "Injustice anywhere means injustice everywhere," and the Pastor of the Life and Truth Centre recalled a time when Uncle Wade called him and said, "The Haitians are in trouble. Who's going to pray for them?" Behind the pulpit of the Faith Temple two flags are solemnly draped: the Canadian flag and Israel's flag. Given the life he led and the causes he fought for, it was an ironic backdrop. Today Hamas' military chief Ahmed al-Jaabari was assassinated in Gaza, which is essentially an open air prison: a symbol of one of the last injustices of Empire. Could you imagine the British Air Force sending fighter planes over to Belfast to eliminate Gerry Adams as the head of Sinn Fein? Of course not. It's unconscionable. Once again the alien "other" are getting the short end of a very sharp stick. They plainly deserve it though, don't they?

The Pastor of the Faith Temple made reference to the congregation being "Friends of Israel" and it was met with nary a flinch nor a solitary sound. It was chilling. The Palestinians are in trouble. Who's going to pray for them? Injustice anywhere means injustice everywhere.

* Mother's laptop went missing again. This time somewhere between the airport and Auntie Donna's house...