UK Hip Hop superstar Dizzee Rascal arrived on New Zealand’s shores in February for Splore festial in Tapapakane Park, Orere Point. Jamie Green caught up with him before the show.
What are your greatest memories of NZ?
Just really positive people that really know the music and get in depth. And obviously a beautiful looking place with serious hip hop DJs.
Grime has become huge. Now it’s truly worldwide, did you ever think it would get to this point?
I don’t know. I think grime has just become the new word for urban or black music in this country. What we would have considered grime in like 2003, right now they’re just lumping everything in, anyone who’s rapping or even singing on the urban or R&B type tunes, they just call it ‘grime’ now.
What do you think about that? How do you think about everyone lumping in to the same box?
I don’t know. For me I just keep making music; this happens in music in general. It happened with trap music, it happened with rock and roll – how many styles are there of that, like rock and heavy metal; every week there’s a different style of music, so yeah you can’t get caught up on that. As an artist I don’t set out to say “I’m going to make this style of music” – I can’t really say that; that’s not honest to say. But in general, I just want to make a good song; that’s my main objective
Which you achieve; you’ve been making good songs for a long time. On your last record there were big sounds, back to your roots. Intentional?
It was just a move back to my comfort zone. When I was making those big attempts at dancy pop records, that’s not my comfort zone, but that’s what makes me want to do it. It’s hard to make big pop songs. People think that just because those song come across as simple that they’re easy to make, but you’re playing with the big boys, because those big pop acts have teams of people working on their songs. When I’m just making albums like “Boy in da Corner” or “Raskit,” that’s just what I do; I rap over hard beats and I say what I want.
So yeah, it was just wanting to kind of go back to the start, and be taken seriously as a serious artist, because I do care about that.
I’m surprised that you wouldn’t have been taken seriously anyway, even with those big pop hits. No matter what the background beat was, your lyricism was still tight and hot
Exactly, and some people overlook that, but then other people like yourself understand that, because you kiwis are quite in depth with music in general, especially hip hop.
What can we expect from Dizzee Rascal’s 2018 concert setlist?
Bangers, man. Bangers. I know for a fact that the new stuff works because I’ve toured in the UK around October, so I just know that stuff bangs. Just putting it together should make a hype set, man.