British Artists Translate Hip-Hop Into English

In the grittier corners of east and south London, British hip-hop heads bounce to the same beat that pounds in American clubs. But instead of sending shout-outs to Long Beach or Brooklyn, these days the MCs here send them to Lewisham and Brixton.

After 15 years of mimicking the American accents and gangsta bravado of U.S.-born rap, British hip-hoppers are making the art form their own. They’re rapping in their own accents, talking about their own streets, telling of life in their own country.

“We’ve finally found our feet. We’re no longer looking to America, because we’ve learned that we have to be true to ourselves,” says Skitz, a prominent British hip-hop DJ.

Rodney P., a London-born MC, says it’s simply about representing Britain’s reality: “We’re English. Our life is different.”

The borders of the hip-hop nation expanded long ago. Since the late 1980s, America’s popular urban art form has sprung up in cities across Europe, where DJs spin records and MCs rap in German, French and Italian. But, sharing a language with the United States, Britain has had a harder time making its musical mark in the hip-hop scene. Now British artists have realized the futility of aping American rap, and they are creating a distinct style--call it Brit-hop.

During June’s London Hip Hop Festival, clubs throughout the city were filled with British rappers, DJs, graffiti artists and break-dancers.

The fashionable sneakers, puffy vests and colorful head wraps in the London clubs looked a lot like hip-hop scenes in New York and California. But the lyrics are far from it. “From Buckingham Palace to Nottingham Castle, the crowd is speechless when I’m rapping,” sings Tempa, an MC from Nottingham. To an American ear, she just sounds English, but Londoners smile at her distinctive northern accent.

Such lyrics and the use of regional dialects breed a familiarity that has piqued an interest in hip-hop in a land more known for its rock and dance music. “When I hear people talking about living on 52 pounds 50 a week, that music becomes more relevant to me,” said Kentake Chinyelu, organizer of the London Hip Hop Festival, now in its second year. “My ears perk up when I hear people talking about our own experience.”

But though Brit-hop enjoys a devoted following among British youth, it has had little success in the commercial market. To the chagrin of its proponents, Brit-hop remains largely underground, a cottage industry of independent record labels and basement production houses.

That may be changing now that divisions of the Mercury and Virgin labels are starting to sign Brit-hop artists. Still, British hip-hoppers feel they’re getting the short end of the stick.

“In a lot of ways, it’s worked against us that we rap in the same language as Americans,” Skitz says. He believes the use of bogus American accents and stolen slang made early British hip-hop inauthentic. “That’s why French and German hip-hop blew up first.”

Capitalizing on their roots, both British and immigrant, many Brit-hop artists incorporate Afro-Caribbean beats in their music. Many young blacks in this scene are first-generation Britons, the children of immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean.

Rodney P. says his Jamaican heritage is reflected in his music--in the way he raps and the beats he sings over. He thinks Americans who sing in the ragga dub style sound “corny” and that British MCs combine reggae and hip-hop better than Americans ever have. “In England, that’s an authentic thing,” he says. “That’s what we’re bred on.”

In other cases, the subject rather than the sound is shaped by an artist’s background. Est’Elle, an English rapper, says her family’s involvement in the war in Sierra Leone makes her think more seriously about the messages she puts out. British MC Ty says that meeting relatives in Nigeria has had a profound influence on his life and his work as a musician.

For the most part Brit-hop eschews much of the materialism, violence and misogyny glamorized in American rap.

“Part of the problem over there,” says Wildflower, an English MC, “is that people have too much money.”

In England, Skitz says, “you still get people bragging and boasting, but for the most part, our music is grounded. We’re realistic.”

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Although British MCs don’t rap about diamonds and Benzes, the social ills they face are very similar to the problems of urban America. Poverty, racism and drug use are common in many British communities and therefore become frequent themes in British rap. Like public housing and welfare checks in America, council estates and social benefits are common references.

“I’m representing women that’s living in Britain/On council estates, raising their children, probably on the social/Trying to survive, working a nine to five/’Cause life is far from easy,” sings Tempa, the MC from England’s north.

For all the difficulty Brit-hoppers face, many feel they live in a more integrated society than their U.S. counterparts.

“The first time I went to America, I was there for a month before I saw any white people,” Rodney P. says. “I was in Brooklyn, and everywhere I looked there were blacks, a few Puerto Ricans, some Jews . . . . In England, even if you’re black, you still have white neighbors. Here, there’s less segregation, but not less racism.”

At the same time, Rodney P. says he believes that the hip-hop scene in London tends to divide itself along race lines. He says that clubs featuring turntablists--musicians who use their turntables as instruments, scratching records and cross-fading between decks--attract a white crowd, while those spinning East Coast rap and R&B; attract a black following.

Now that the popularity of Brit-hop is picking up, the next challenge, Rodney P. says, is to integrate the hip-hop scene. “As artists in England,” he says, “we’ve got to try to get everyone in one place.”

The London Hip Hop Festival is making efforts to unite the Brit-hop scene and raise its profile out of the underground and into the mainstream. It sponsored seminars on how to break into the music industry, how to put music online and how to evaluate a record contract.

It also hosted workshops on break-dancing and freestyle rapping, exhibiting graffiti art and photography depicting Brit-hop stars, and filling clubs with poetry slams and hip-hop jams.

This year, the opening-night act was Rahzel, the “human beatbox” of the Philadelphia-based group the Roots. But next year, festival organizers think they won’t need an American act to draw a crowd.