I love my Hip-Hop, Grime and R'n'B as much as the next man, but last week I went to see the Klaxons play as part of the Club NME tour with an Indie loving mate. It was a big eye opener for me compared to any Hip-Hop gigs I've been too, the two environments are worlds apart. To reflect this I've compared the two below with the following important catagories that define any night. So here goes...

Price

For the price of getting into your average club I had three bands all put in performances of great length. If I'm going to a Hip-Hop gig you're easily looking at £25 to £30 for an American act and some sub-standard UK acts you've never heard of outside Channel U. LL Cool J at Brixton recently was £30 plus but I guess it's an unfair comparison - someone whose career spans 20 years while the acts at the Club NME tour were less than 20 months. Average price for a UK gig I would put at the £6/7 mark which is alright. But if you include the American acts and average the price then I'd say indie wins this one.

Winner -Indie

Girls

Like I've said before you rarely get many girls at any UK Hip-Hop gigs, there is an abundance of sweaty blokes in hoodies but little in the way of gash. However since a local fashionable bar started putting on gigs there has been an upsurge in female attendance. The Club NME night seemed to have a great door policy and meant the whole night was spent watching what was happening on stage with one eye and what was around us with the other.

Winner - Indie

Atmosphere

Glowsticks should be taken out at every clubbing opportunity. The next Hip-Hop gig I'll be there with my b-boy moves and waving those flurescent sticks around like i'm in the Prodigy. Everyone was up for a good time and really apreciated the music. For people who love Hip-Hop so much when it comes to a gig there seems to be little emotion and people standing still. The fact that you can have people pushing and shoving around in excitement of a song without anyone getting rowdy at the indie night was a sight to be seen. So was being in my first mosh pit experience. My mate and more experienced man of the mosh said that it was a little on the tame side - despite the fact that he chipped his tooth and a girl got knocked onto the floor Friday style during one song. I thought it was going to be tears before bedtime but she jumped up, smiled and threw herself back in. Committment. Something quite sexy about that...erm...

Winner - Indie

People

There was no attitude or what you looking at I'll murk you at ten paces stares. If you bumped into anyone people were quick to apologise rather than start trouble. While at the bar people would just strike up random conversations with you and were all very friendly. When I saw Kano in Bournemouth a group of guys got over zealous and pushed a few of us, after pushing back they said they would all murk me outside. Still qued for my Subway though.

Winner - Indie

Performance

This one is difficult as apart from seeing The Ordinary Boys twice the Klaxons was the only other time I've been at an indie gig. All three groups were full of energy despite being the last night of the tour. On the other hand I've seen some great performances this year alone from Yungun, Sway, Kano, Klashnekoff and David Banner to name a few. This one's a tough call as I've seen plenty of US acts turn up and fart out a performance but as Indie seems to be trouncing Hip-Hop here I'm going to have to give them a helping hand and say Hip-Hop takes this one.

Winner - Hip-Hop

Bouncers

No ass grabbing/belt pulling/borderline raping from bouncers who make you feel like a criminal going on at the indie night. Although as threatening a weapon you could have found on anyone would have been a glowstick. All it took was a simple hello and name check on the guys clipboard (because of a mistake in sending out tickets, not cos we roll VIP) and we were in. Bouncers were clearly picked on at school and now they have size on their side they are determined to annoy everyone that passes through. At Hip-Hop gigs in London the treatment is disgusting, like being judged on entry. So many hoops to jump through.

Winner - Indie

Overall

Sad to say but my big indie night out just proved to me that Hip-Hop gigs on the whole are rubbish and a waste of money. It won't stop me from going but I'll be having a note of caution attached the next time I find out about a gig. The less big name American acts I see the better I feel about going to Hip-Hop gigs and if they could just incorporate a few things from what I experienced at the indie night then the nights would be a lot better on the whole. Still, De La Soul are playing in Southampton tomorrow and you know that will not disappoint. Review and pics to come.

Justin Timberlake - My Love



Jay-Z - Show Me What You Got



The second Dirty Canvas at ICA night was on saturday, Hyperfrank has words and pics.

Fabolous got shot in the thigh.

Channel U was named as one of the outlets in which is used to promote violence in a report by the Observer into the gang warfare that is getting out of control in London. The story comes from a police report obtained which doesn't name Channel U, but police are said to be concerned at how it is glamorising the culture. Last year Channel U was fined £18,000 by Ofcom for 'repeated and sustained' breaches of 'sexually explicit material'. The director of Channel U goes on to defend the station and reveals that they don't show a lot of the videos that get sent which glorify guns, but with the internet and other outlets they are easily available. Police recently obtained footage from the Streets Incarcerated DVD which featured arguments with local officers.

I've had this album for a while now and it's had plenty of words written about it so I'll only drop a few and leave it at that. I remember when Timberlake brought Justified out and he received all the plaudits with his move from boy band heart throb to a fully fledged urban star. Backed by the Neptunes some of those tracks got rinsed on the regular so any follow up had to be something special. There was this whole competition with Usher played up by the media which was got a bit carried away, although after working on the bulk of Justified any Neptunes beats on Confessions were left on the studio cutting floor rather than the album. This time around Future Sex/Love Sounds is absent from the inclusion of any Neptunes input and is instead mainly Timbaland produced work - perhaps the Virginia duo will now feature heavily on the next Usher album?

Although Timbaland is world renowned for his work he really takes it up a notch and from the outset you wouldn't straight away lace the beat to his name. With Timberlake on his best Bowie impression the duo have tried to take the music to another place. Highlights inlcude the already heard many times Sexyback and the future single My Love - which quirky beats and sound effects make this very similar to another Timbo classic Are You That Somebody by Aayliyah. Will.I.Am produces a slab of funk in the shape of Damn Girl witch rolls along in a similar way as Amerie's 1 Thing.

It would have been very easy to just come out with another Justified so full credit goes to Timberlake and Timbaland taking another direction. The big difference is that while the first album was very confessional and a lot of personal cleansing, Future Sex/Love Sounds is a man clearly confident in his role as a heart throb and willing to play up to this, while at the same time creating a feel good party album.

It's said that people spend more time on the internet now than they do watching television. People would now rather log on to You Tube to check out the latest funny videos, mc battles and video promos. In the past people would have to rely on MTV to bring them their favourite artists latest promo but now they can just search for it and watch it as many times as they want. In fact now you don't even need to rely on MTV to get your fix. Especially as they only play like half an hour of music these days. Or Channel U for that matter. Have you tried to watch that stuff for 30 minutes? I just can't anymore, and the people at MTV Base are surprised they are losing viewers?

When I first got digital way back when I was in school uniform I loved just leaving it on and watching videos which you would never get on regular MTV. Unless your r'n'b persuasion was Another Level you would rarely see much r'n'b or hip-hop on the station. This was in at the turn of the millenium when the music wasn't so in the mainstream but now that it is the station seems content on playing the same ten videos every hour. Holidaying in America a few years back it was was the same situation out there on radio. If you made that ten you were guaranteed a hit only on account of people having the song drilled into them. Every hour seems to be the same so people started turning their attentions to Channel U. They may have then started playing some homegrown videos after this but unless you count their minority hour of underground music once a week late at night, the channel is getting worse.

Speaking of getting worse, Channel U has been slipping of late. It was a great alternative to the more mainstream videos Base were playing, even if you did have a few laughably poor 'guys from the ends and a dv camera' videos that seemed to be on all the time. It turned your attention away from MTV Base and were generally appreciative that UK acts and a lot of the less mainstream material was being shown. But now you would have to sit through too much weakness before you got any sort of quality. Who handles the quality control here? When you look at the grime and uk hip-hop scene you just don't with a few exceptions see any videos from the top players. Yungun had a video for the 'Forget Me Not' track and Akal for 'Shakespear' but these hardly saw light. I know one argument is that there aren't enough videos being made from the top players in the first place. Where are the videos from JME, Wiley and Kyza to name a few? Instead we have videos from waste mc's that surely get played because there is hardly a lot to fill the time. No wonder people are reaching You Tube as their video channel of choice.

There's been so much going on since I last posted thanks to the dreaded man flu. Jay-Z was spitting on the Forward riddim while Dizzee is making Funky House. Just waiting on Wiley and The Arctic Monkeys any day now surely?

A new Hip-Hop magazine is going to be hitting the shelves soon, made up of fired staff members from The Source and Vibe.

Hip-Hop Weekly will be an enetertainment and celebrity lifestyle publication originally with input from ex Vibe editor Mimi Valdes and disgraced former Source owners Ray Benzino and Dave Mays. Now it appears Mimi has already jumped ship before the launch issue. Maybe she was sipping on too much Hypnotiq or whatever the fashionable Hip-Hop drink of choice is these days when she agreed to jump into bed with Interscopes enemies.

Whether a weekly Hip-Hop magazine will be able to stay fresh with content or whether they'll be recycling material in no time is a big question. There's no doubt the people behind it have experience but in recent times it's been experience of starting vendettas with people, how long until that starts again?

You may have already seen it on other sites but these guys take fancy dress to a whole new level.

This is how I often get to work, makes the commute interesting.

Akira The Don's latest mixtape sees him go over classic 90's Britpop.

JME is releasing editions 3 & 4 of his Boy Better Know series as a double pack.

LA based beat diggers People Under The Stairs dropped into Southampton last week in support of their latest acclaimed long player, Stepfather. Fellow Californians Giant Panda opend up the show with cuts from their warmly received debut Fly School Reunion. Although unknown to most in the crowd there were a few heads in attendence who knew them from their PUTS connection and were enjoying their 30 minute set. Those that didn't know were soon joining in with the spirit of Superfly and Diggin and were snapping up the album afterwards appreciate more of their uptempo and soulful LA sounds.

With just enough time to grab another brew Double K and Thes One popped up to join the party. Although by looking at Double K he looked like he'd just woken up, it didn't affect him though as the two reeled off new hits Pass The 40 and Tuxedo Rap alongside old favourites Jappy Jap and the last song of the night Hang Loose.

For £9 this was a bargain to hear more than an hours worth of intricate rhymes, laid back humour and a treasure chests worth of soulful samples and b-boy beats.

Sadly no pictures available for posting as one had a little too much to drink and the pictures were absolute waste.