Dizzee Rascal: Boy In Da Corner : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Nineteen-year-old Londoner Dizzee Rascal rhymes like a gangsta from another planet, with a high, wound-up and desperate voice that sometimes sounds like Eazy-E, Shabba Ranks and Gary Numan, all stuck inside the same body. He thinks of hip-hop as a medium instead of a formula, backing his lyrics with jungle and techno drones, and his flow is sharp, harsh and very British. It's tough to say which part of "Stop Dat" is more brutal to your ears: the bleak, growling bass-and-bleeps or Dizzee's yelping rhymes about housing-estate life, which slice like box cutters. The signature tracks on Boy in Da Corner are "I Luv U" and "Wot U On": Dizzee used a PlayStation 2 to make some of the martial beats in the former, and the slutbot vocals, 2D melodies and hardcore techno pound of "Wot" sound like nothing so much as the inside of a bloody video game. Just as N.W.A once captured the realities of the hood, Dizzee evokes twenty-first-century street life -- the real, the virtual and the violent. If you want to hear where hip-hop is at, step up and be the 9 millionth satisfied Eminem customer. But if you want a vision of the future of hip-hop and techno, get this record.