Now I’ve not heard the full album yet but from the tracks I have scavenged it sounds like ‘I Luv You’ (1) (fissionable bass blurts, demented rhythms, talent breaching its own barely-sketched limits) was a bit of a red herring. It’s ‘I Luv You’ (2) – the remix with Sharkey – that seems more the template, the heartbreaking sound of spirits crushed as soon as they start to rise. ‘Sittin’ Here’, like that track, like ‘Vexed’, magics a fog of horrid oppression out of the simplest of synth loops and Dizzee Rascal’s extraordinary, breaking, gulping voice.
Dizzee Rascal, quoted in Simon Reynolds’ blog: ‘Youths don’t care anymore; the music shows it as well. It’s sad, my generation saw the change and are coming to grips with it, but for the generation underneath its just standard. They’re never gonna know. You can try and explain to them, but they’ve grown up in a time guns are just about. They hear shots; see murder signs around on a regular ting. That’s the sad thing’ If you give a shit, you’ll go nuts. How much can you possibly?’. It’s a survival thing, in other words: like the guy who got his arm trapped under the boulder, and had to cut it off, Dizzee sounds like he’s had to sever something to stay alive. You can hear it in every word he utters; partly regretful, partly righteous, partly angry, partly confused, partly glorying in his blazing abilities, all moods bubbling together in one crazy voice.
A standard vocal trope for characters who’ve had to harden themselves, cut off emotions, pare down their morality is a flattening or mechanizing of speech. Dizzee Rascal flips this — cut free of the ability to care, his voice seems barely restrained, semi-hysterical. He’s so urgent and despairing I feel guilty for listening.