A new era...

When I was growing up and first started seriously getting into my music, it was all about R’n’B. This was around about 99/2000 when I would start to put my pocket money towards buying singles and any magazines that would feature the beats I stepped to. As R’n’B relied more and more on Hip-Hop to add a little something extra to the music in way of more Hip-Hop sounding production and the addition of a guest verse here and there, I too started to seek out these artists. At first it was those rappers who leant towards the more commercial sounding and MTV played Hip-Hop. At the time this was all Base was exposing me too! But I developed a wider taste and soon fell to the words of a Mos Def and a Common, rather than the barking tones of DMX and Ja Rule. While those commercially sounding and skillfully lacking rappers provided an early introduction to Hip-Hop for me, I wasn’t some souped-up Nova driving billy boy and as such these weren’t an essential soundtrack to my life and were listened to less and less. I wouldn’t say I had turned into some backpacker as the term goes, but I was soaking myself up in the sounds of those Okayplayer namesakes. I would still nod my head to a 50 Cent song, in fact in my circle of Hip-Hop fans I was the only one who could see the point of a 50 Cent song when in a club full of girls on some Saturday. I’m not going to say the guy is a genius, but there is a time and a place to hear a Fiddy record and a time and a place to listen to Illmatic. This open-minded approach has never ringed truer than in the last two years when I’ve been listening to and going to gigs where the speakers don’t bang to the urban beat. Whether this is down to age or the fact that a lot of urban music has hardly been hitting the great heights of late I’m not sure. But it has meant I’ve listened to a lot of different music for the better. I could drive to work listening to the Arctic Monkeys but be rushing home reminiscing with some New Jack Swing, playing Black Milk while on my laptop but getting ready for a night out to some Soulful House mix by Wookie. Expect this to be reflected in the music I’ll be writing about from now on. There will still be plenty of helpings of urban music, but I’ll also be writing about other music too. Basically the philosophy is if it’s good music, it’s good and I’ll more than likely write about it. Never has there been a better time to be into music with so many ways for an artist to be heard. You don’t have to wait for Top Of The Pops or rely on daytime Radio 1 to hear who is big at the moment, you can log on to myspace and find out who is going to be big. Now all you need just a few songs and a myspace page to be known. This directness with music listeners may mean some of the mystery is lost, but the benefits are there for all to see. For me it means there will be plenty of updates to this blog for starters and hopefully I’ll have even designed a new layout by then. Stay tuned, it’s about to get real interesting…