So I found this song

Baby Cham, "Ghetto Story" - I know I tend to be somewhat notorious for blabbing away about stuff, but every so often I run into a song that leaves me absolutely dumb-stricken in both the best and most literal sense of the word. Truth be told, I've been trying and failing to write about "Ghetto Story" since about four seconds into my first trip through it last week; I just kept catching myself staking my own claim to the song, which is just about the worst thing a writer can do to a song this self-justifying. Sometimes one must deal with the facts of the matter, and as relates to "Ghetto Story", the facts of the matter are simply that it would be just as stunningly awesome even if I'd never heard it once.

This is, of course, something of a tidy conclusion to come to in light of how stripped-down the track sounds; I always love it when dancehall goes all bleepy-bloopy and starts giving the big ol' reach-around to techno, and "Ghetto Story" is about as bleepy and reachy as I've heard from the scene since Ce'cile teamed up with Jacques Lu Cont and came up with the song that made seriously me go "OH FUCK, DANCEHALL". Obviously, this is a dangerous comparison to make; anyone expecting anything as ruthlessly involving as "Na Na Na Na"'s bangin'-retarded pitch-up breakdown is obviously going to be in for a disappointment, although anyone expecting that level of sonic HEY YOU-ness from anyone other than Who Know You is probably only consciously rebelling against their gigantic collection of Wilco records anyway. More to the point, however, there's the fact that "Na Na Na Na" is something of a bete noir of for-real dancehall aficionados - to a very vocal subset of listeners (including the all-seeing eye Dave Stelfox himself), "Na Na Na Na" is to dancehall what Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me" was to metal. This is, as you can imagine, dangerous ideological ground for a song to tread upon, especially when you're talking about a song with as much crossover appeal as "Ghetto Story" - I mean, I'm sure we all remember how much everyone needed to shut up about dancehall in the wake of Sean Paul. (Don't even get me started on MC Don't Eat Pork/Not Even With A Fork.)

The difference between "Ghetto Story" and "Na Na Na Na", however, is simple: "Ghetto Story" is inalienably authentic dancehall, right down to the riddim it rides. It's just that, unlike most dancehall that I tend to run across, "Ghetto Story" is all about Baby Cham, and in a genre of music that moves itself forward by way of albums of seventeen-plus artists rocking the exact same beat, that sense of ownership is flat-out thrilling. And "ownership" really is the right word; Cham's got the kind of ear for prosaic details that led to Ghostface getting dapped off the planet for, at best, his third-most compelling album (which is, I should add, still pretty goddamn good), although my favorite example's actually right there in the song's first line - "I remember those days when hell was my home/And me and mama bed was a big piece of foam". And then of course there's the little matter of the hook, so incandescent as to be unmissable even beneath Cham's patois; there's a little bit of fair warning by virtue of that tintinnabulating synth that shows up right during the chorus, but really, if you can't pick the hook out even after Cham's thrilling little hiccup, you might as well just give up and attempt to fuck the center-hole of your Wolf Parade CD again. I've taken honest-to-goodness drugs that failed to wring as much serotonin out of my brain as that one syllable.

Of course, living in Plato's cultural cave as I do, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that "Ghetto Story"'s already been all over the radio and MTV since who-laid-the-chunk; it sure as shit sounds like a massive hit waiting to happen, and in a post-"Stay Fly" world, I'm willing to believe that there may actually be some limited crossover between my ridiculous taste and the world's ridiculous taste. God knows it sounds like a song that should only sound great coming out of passing car stereos; I can't imagine Kingston being anything other than the rockin'est place on the planet right now. Of course, with my luck, it'll only show up over here after Busta Rhymes inevitably shows up for a guest verse (possibly even to proclaim Flipmode's status as da skwad and to cast grievous aspersions onto the sexual orientation of those who might disagree, although we should probably scale back our collective dreams to avoid crushing disappointment), but OH WELL; it's sick enough that I'll make do.

Anyway. Good thing I didn't go with a song that I actually wanted to write about or anything.

(Click here to buy the Eighty-Five riddim featuring "Ghetto Story" from Audiomaxxx)

The Suffrajets, "Going Nowhere" - And, at the risk of being insufferably glib, let us now move from Baby Cham to Babyshambles, or more precisely to ex-Babyshambles drummer Gemma Hayes' new band The Suffrajets, whose mission statement must have included "Will completely free James Cobo of any obligation to ever listen to anything that comes out of Courtney Love's gaping maw in perpetuity within five seconds of the song starting" (and not a moment too soon, either!). Obviously I am something of a Hole hater, but I'd have to think that Courtney herself would have a hard time describing "Going Nowhere" as anything other than a whole album's worth of Hole hooks crammed into one three-minute blast and topped off with a super-fun double-tracked singalong chorus, and that's all I need to make up for the absent pleasures of reading the song through the prism of Courtney Love's blimp-crash-as-public-persona. Well, okay, that or three minutes of blissful, Love-free silence. Still, this song is top-shelf stuff. (Click here to buy the "Going Nowhere" single from HMV)