Dizzee Rascal and Paxo - a bit surreal
Posted by Diz on 6 November 2008 - 2:20pm.
On the early edition of Newsnight last night there was the surreal experience of Jeremy Paxman interviewing Dizzee Rascal about the Obama win and whether a black person will ever be PM here.
If I knew what I was doing I suspect I could insert a clip from Youtube to illustrate. Anyway, I'm not sure either of them came out of it with enhanced reputations.
But the question I was left asking myself was "Why Dizzee Rascal?" on an issue such as this. Was Paxo trying to get "down with the kids"?
Also one to add to my personal list of artists whose music I have never heard - Dizzee that being!
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Guess Ms Dynamite wasn't available, then...
Can't say I was terribly impressed with 'Mr Rascal's' (as Paxo very properly called him) insight into the situation.
Ummm, Ms Dynamitee-hee hasn't been relevant to anyone for an age
whereas Dizzee R, four albums into his career, has just had a number one hit and is arguably the UK's only bona fide hip-hop STAR. I would say that it was, as our American cousins might say, a "no-brainer" to pick him.
I have interviewed him at length (for The Word, as it goes), including on political topics and found him to be lucid, articulate and switched-on, and actually I think he makes a lot of sense in the Paxman interview. His points - that Obama's victory is inspiring to British youth, that it gives a sense of possibility to young black men, that it mas made possible in part by the support of the hip-hop world, that politics is overwhelmingly not an idealist's game - were made with considerably more directness and concision than most interviewees on Newsnight manage, but the fact that he did this in a slightly jovial and vernacular-laden fashion may, I suppose, blind people to this fact. I don't think Paxo was blinded to it though; compare and contrast his brief interview with US soulster Usher shown on election night...
Stupid he isn't
which only made it all the more risible for him to be using that style of speech, when I assume he's quite capable of slipping out of character if the occasion - such as this one - so requires.
But, hey, a hip-hop star's street credibility must be maintained at all costs whenever cameras and microphones are involved, I suppose.
No that's how he speaks.
It's how people of his age in London speak. Putting on the Queen's English would have been a pretence, one that he chooses not to adopt. Again, most interviewees on Newsnight actively adopt a mode of speech they would not use with their friends or family, but he has not done this.
I'm assuming that you also think Mick Jagger is "risible" for talking in that funny voice when HE does interviews, yes?
Fair enough, but...
were the "I've got something stuck to my fingers" gestures really necessary? When Marc Bolan was interviewed on telly he didn't pout, shake out his hair and punch the air, did he? And even Iggy Pop generally keeps his shirt on.
There's actually a serious point underlying this interview, I've just realised. At a moment that's being generally viewed as when black people have finally gone mainstream (I read somewhere yesterday that Obama isn't so much the first black president as the first "post-ethnic" president), is it still in the interests of black culture, including hip-hop, to continue to make such an effort to be different from that mainstream, even in such seemingly insignificant trimmings as dress, speech and body language? Now more than ever the thorny old question of assimilation versus self-assertion somehow seems to be to the fore.
That said, what puzzled me most about this interview was why, if they wanted a black British yoof hero's views on What This Election Rilly Means, didn't they just get Idris Elba in - and get Paxo to call him "Mr String"?
Mr Risible
Doesn't everyone think Jagger is risible for talking in that funny voice and haven't they done so for years?
Joe - you clearly know him
and can say from experience that he has some reasoned opinions etc.
I have never seen him before and, on the basis of this interview, still think he did himself no favours. Just a view.
is this....
it?
It was all a bit Ali G!
That's the one
Thanks Humphrey.
All a bit incoherent
He was made to look worse...
...by the eloquent, considered and thoughtful comments offered by Baroness Amos in the same interview.
A classic case of having nothing to say, and no idea of how to say it.
a bit harsh...
He's a young kid, clearly pleased that a mixed-race man is now president. It may not be 'considered and thoughtful', but he get's his point across – he’s pleased about Obama’s victory, thinks race shouldn’t be an issue in politics as long as the politician in question ‘does right by the people’ and points out that Hip-hop had an affect on getting young (black) people out to vote. That all sounds fair enough to me.
There's been plenty of faux-insight around this election (does the BBC really need to send every other journalist over to the USA?), so isn't it a bit unfair single Dizzee out?
Race was a bigger issue than ever
It's all very well saying race shouldn't be an issue in politics, but it cuts both ways: people shouldn't reject candidates because of their colour but they shouldn't embrace them solely on those grounds either. And if all those African-Americans hadn't queued around blocks to vote for the guy precisely because he's black - even the ones who normally vote Republican - he'd have been Dukakis redux.
I think...
the boy done well - he had two things going against him - the delay in the sound feed and being intervewed by Paxman from a distance. In the studio he would've fared much better.
'If you believe you can achieve, innit' He was upbeat and positive, a great thing to see on Newnight.
Rather the Dizz than Bono or any other media hugger.
I thought he was great
I'd much rather hear what Dizzee has to say than Alex James
Or
the vacuum that is Pete cocking Doherty, who got a whole segment of Kirsty Wark fawning over him on Newsnight, let's not foget.
Like what he said
(Joe and Simon, that is). I thought Diz came across as humorous ("Do you believe in political parties?" "Yeah, they exist.") relaxed and eloquent.
The 'Ali G' reference above rather misses the gag behind Baron Cohen's character, doesn't it?
However, Paxman calling him "Mr Rascal" was ridiculous. Either intro him by his real name and stick to it, or just call him Dizee.
Paxo also referred to Usher as "Mr Usher"
on an election night thing about celebs on the Obama trail... I find it quite an amusing affectation tbh, but then again, Paxman could read out the proverbial phonebook and I'd probably find it incisive and droll.
Innit
That's all very well and good, with yer Mr Rascal an' all, but what I want to know is - what is Ariel Bender's view?