IHM LYRIC WATCH: P BROTHERS Ft SCOR-ZAY-ZEE – “Great Britain”
Who says political hip-hop is dead? You just might if by some astonishing stroke of bad luck you hear “Great Britain” by the P Brothers, who have come out, both barrels blazing to give your complacent arse an injection of TRUTH. Starting with their name.
The song is a catalogue of Great Britain’s ills. The Queen “lives in a house just like Saddam Hussein / They’re both rich so I guess they must be the same” – even they don’t sound too sure of their logic there. Actually there is much to agree with in the song – house prices are shocking, gin prices more so, Britain is the pawn of the US (the only possible explanation for Eamon) and the fact that these guys “learned to rap … in Great Britain” is as big an indictment as you could ask for.
Even so the lyrics bear signs of not having been completely thought through. “Your prisons full of crooks, Great Britain!” cry the P Brothers and/or Scor-Zay-Zee. They sound very angry about it. You might think though that being full of crooks is rather the point of prisons: it’s what makes them, well, ‘prisons’ rather than ‘streets’ or ‘hospitals’. Maybe the P Brothers would prefer to see the prisons full of chancers instead. I certainly might.