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Dizzee Rascal tackles the financial crisis in new single
By Alastair McKay, Evening Standard 12.10.09
Banging his drum: Dizzee Rascal on the set of the video for Dirtee Cash
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Dizzee Rascal's new video certainly looks like a political statement. The east London rapper, dressed in top hat and tails, rubs velvet shoulders with black-and-white minstrels, a character in a Thatcher mask, and cartoon glamour girls, while delivering a lyric about the credit crunch and the crass side of celebrity culture.
The song is Dirtee Cash, a subject Dizzee (real name: Dylan Mills) has recent experience of. His last three singles topped the charts, and his song Bonkers — a reflection on his disquiet with fame, disguised as a novelty dance tune — made a bona fide pop star of the 24-year-old from Bow who shot to glory when his first album, Boy in Da Corner, won the 2003 Mercury Music Prize.
His journey to the heart of the mainstream continues with a prestigious show at the Roundhouse on 21 October, as part of the Electric Proms, when he will perform with a live band and orchestra.
He has also announced a date at the 02 Arena (7 March) with Lily Allen. “She says some taboo shit,” he says. “She's almost like the female version of me.”
He backs Allen's controversial stand against illegal music downloading. “She's right. “I can't go on a market stall and take someone's apples. It's the same thing.”
If Boy In Da Corner was a bleakly-autobiographical record of a tough upbringing on the fringes of petty crime, the new video is a response to the recession.
“It's portraying modern-day society as a grotesque parade. It's showing all the ugly truths.
“Thatcher's in there, page three girls, all the celebrity bullshit that's all to do with money.”
“The recession,” says Dizzee, “has made me understand society a bit more.
“There wasn't as much reason to care about economics before — now it's in your face.
“If you weren't into politics, it's being rammed down your throat now.”
Dizzee's sudden ubiquity was underlined by a recent front-page headline in The Mirror (over a picture of David Cameron drinking champagne).
“Yeah, Fizzy Rascal',” he says. “When I saw that, I thought: What have I done now?'”
He also achieved an odd sort of notoriety when Jeremy Paxman asked him on Newsnight whether he felt British, addressing him primly as “Mr Rascal”.
“Everyone's trying to push me into politics. What I'm trying to do is be observational.
“I'm allowed to have a point of view without having the responsibility of changing the country.
“What is politics anyway? It's a bunch of dudes making decisions in some old building; but it's all about decisions that are affecting people's lives.
“Rap music is the outcome — it's the people that those decisions have affected, rapping about their surroundings.”
It's understandable that Dizzee should resist attempts to pigeonhole him as a spokesman for deprived youth, but it's also true that his early songs betray a knowledge of city life beyond the imagination of most politicians.
He was raised in a single parent family by an African mother, was expelled from several schools, and dabbled in crime — including street robbery — before his talent offered a way out.
Defying the rap stereotype, his songs don't glamorise knives or guns. “I remember a time when it wasn't glamorous. It was just rough and horrible.
“Where I come from, we were still quite cockney, still a bit old school, really English.
“I can still remember when a one-on-one was cool. I remember getting into fights, and it was like, Come on, let's have it one on one.' As I got older it got more mobbish. And if you travelled around London you were more likely to get stabbed. Rarely guns. They came later.
“The whole bling thing, I find laughable.
“Some of the dudes that you see doing it, they're idiots. Those that tried to dress up like American rapper guys, they were all idiots.
“There was even times I'd hear guys talking in American accents — it was a joke to me.
“But I'd always understood that London was a rough place. Very naughty people had always been there, in front of me.”
Having now visited some truly awful urban environments (he mentions the Ninth Ward in New Orleans), Dizzee has put his childhood deprivation into perspective.
“I don't think I ever saw it that bad, growing up. I moaned about it, because I felt like I was stuck in it but, looking back, I don't think we've got it as bad in Britain.
“There are still some things we should be thankful for — we can go to school, you can be out of work and get benefits, you've still got options.
“In America you've got hospital bills: you can get shot, go to hospital and get rejected. It's madness.”
Sitting back in the lounge area of his plush tour bus, with one eye on a DVD of Pineapple Express, Dizzee offers a final thought about politics.
“I've never voted. I've never known who to vote for. It just looks like a bit of circus, man. And to the politicians' credit, almost, you're just never going to please everyone, are you?
“I don't know if there is a political party out there fo
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