The grime cats from Red Hot want you to know: if it’s London’s best fried chicken you want, you can skip the other 128 joints around the LDN and head straight for East London’s Southern Fried Chicken… The guys have even penned an homage to the spot’s £1.50 Junior Special Meal to prove it.

Yes, it’s a joke… but no, they’re not joking.

It might be like five months old, but this shit is fire all over London pirate radio right now.  Seriously…. Check out this Boy Better Know show on RinseFM if you want proof. 

Vice Magazine also caught lead MC Jaxor for a quick fried chicken interview, and thoughtfully asked if this wasn’t maybe reinforcing racial stereotypes… but considering how jokes their video is, we’re thinking a question like that might be taking ”Junior Spesh” a little too seriously. 

Now, who’s got the Crave Case single coming up for us?

Dope new dancehall, it’s the perfect beat coming just in time for the sunny weather…

Gabriel over at the UK’s Heatwave just passed us their new single, “Things Change”, featuring the one and only Warrior Queen.  You can download it here.

The track was also featured on their compilation, An England Story (which we previously covered here… and here too.)

She’s amazing.  If you haven’t heard “Poison Dart” yet… play the video below immediatey.

OK, it’s like a month old now, but it’s kind of great. And UK public service announcements are way better than US public service announcements (unless you’re in it for the irony).

In case you’ve never used YouTube, we’ll explain.  An anime music video (AMV) is a fan-made (unofficial) music video, created by chopping and pasting clips from Japanese animes (and some video games) so that the animated action matches the audio track.  

The style began in Japan (obviously), but has since become a worldwide phenomenon, to the point that a website — Animemusicvideos.org – has been founded to provide a unique home for the clips.  They even have annual awards, top ten lists and discussion boards where users can share tips on editing techniques and such.

Of course, the RIAA is outraged over the AMVs, and has been fighting to have them removed from circulation, but what’s new?  It’s worth noting that next to none of the animation studios who produced the sampled cartoons have complained. 

Below, find two our recent AMV favorites.  The first is a Pokemon battle set to a seriously tough battle riddim by Tempa T (AMV by Tenchuassassin).

The second, by a team called IdiotWork, isn’t quite so traditional an AMV… ’cause it’s not actually a music video, see?  Instead, it uses clips from  He-Man, set to dialogue from what might still be the Coen Brothers’ best flick, The Big Lebowski.  Sheer genius. 

(Thanks, Danny Boy)

From the BBC…

“Residents living in a graffiti-plagued village on Merseyside are being asked to consider changing its name to tackle vandals who alter signs in the village.

Lunt, which dates back to Medieval times, has been repeatedly targeted by vandals who change the L to a C.”

No doubt if we were living in Lunt, we’d do the same thing.  The community’s been around since 1251; people have probably been making that joke since 1252. 

It’s almost as excellent as the Austrian town called Fucking. Just like Fucking, though, the Lunt community is up in arms about proposed changes to their name. Fucking and Lunt are signs of tradition.

Apparently, Lunt treats the integrity of their name with extra gravity; the town’s official website (”Lunt: A Place With A Name, A Name With A History”) goes out of its way to slam other English “townships whose names have been bastardized over the years.” 

Burn. We can’t decide if that sounds more like pride or envy.

So, after we posted our interview with Dizzee Rascal, where we briefly discussed his Dirtee Stank imprint, people have been asking us a lot of questions about the label… most often, “Where does that name come from?” 

Well, we’ve got the answer for you.  On the label’s Myspace, Dizzee explains: “I had Dirtee Stank before I had my record deal… The name came from one of the first lyrics I had: ‘going on dirty/going on stank’ … so I thought, ‘Yeah, fuck it, Dirtee Stank.’ The logo was some shit with flies around it, because it was the dirtiest, gulliest thing I could think of.”  

Those lyrics are from “Bounce,” one of Dizzee’s early tracks with Roll Deep Crew.   

Check the lyrics in context:

“That Dizzee boy, lyrical tank
Box an MC like my name was Frank
Going on dirty
Going on stank
Rob an MC like Barclays bank”

After Dizzee left, Wiley & friends kept the crew alive and kickin’ — in case you don’t know, they’re responsible for some of the past few years’ best grime tracks. 

Still, the days when the full crew was Rolling Deep together are hard to beat… if you want proof, give a listen to this session with Dizzee, Wiley, God’s Gift and DJ Slimzee on RinseFM (back when Rinse was still a pirate station).  Or try Dizzee & Wiley’s legendary slaughter of So Solid Crew’s Asher D on ChoiceFM, after So Solid claimed they invented grime (which is about as accurate as Diddy claiming he invented the remix).  This shit’s all circa 2003.  Note the lyrics Dizzee hits Asher with – most of those popped up later in Boy in da Corner… just like he said.

Time for another edition of our CUT by CUT feature — a conversation with the notorious Chop Shop barbers about the tunes they’ve been clippin’ to lately.  Always unique, always insightful.  [Click here to read the last edition.] 

FRANK151: What have you guys been playing the last couple weeks?

MR. BEE: Well, everybody loves Santogold right now.  We’ve been playing a lot of Santogold.  We got this really new compilation, An England Story — it’s 25 years of the history of MC’s in England.

FRANK151: Is it the one from Heatwave?  We posted that mixtape, plus videos for a lot of the tracks, like a month ago.

MR. BEE: Oh, no way!  That got by me.  I just saw the cover in a record store, and I thought, “That’s me.”

FRANK151: It’s from The Heatwave, this amazing dancehall, dub and grime site in the UK.  They do podcasts and stuff too.  It’s a great site.

MR. BEE: My favorite track on there is London Posse’s “Money Mad”.  Basically, Big Audio Dynamite — you know, Mick Jones [of the Clash] and Don Letts — were hanging out in some club in London and saw these kids rapping [including UK legend Rodney P].  So they’re like, “Yo, come on tour with us.  We’re Big Audio Dynamite.”  And these kids didn’t even have a group.  They were just kids, just kind of spitting, doing their reggae/hip hop thing.  So they called it a group, real quick.  Next thing you know, they were on tour with Big Audio Dynamite.  They were about 14 years old, and they got this track, “Money Mad“…  You know, Mad Lion was known in  New York City as the Jamaican hip-hop guy, but these guys were doing it way before him.  They’re sort of the foundation to that reggae/hip hop fusion.  So that’s my track, man.  I love that one.

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In East London’s Stratford Rex this Sunday – the last night of his supershort 3-date UK tour – Lil Wayne was dragged offstage by security after only 23 minutes onstage. 

Apparently, there was concern for the Nawlins native’s safety, once the audience in the Stratford Rex began shouting death threats, spitting and throwing full glasses of beer and champaign (!) at him.  

Wasn’t that the exact same thing American audiences did to the Sex Pistols the first time they crossed the Atlantic?

Considering tickets cost £25 advance — about $50 US — The Guardian’s Alex Marshall is suggesting that this was the most expensive hip-hop show, per minute, in history.   Which leaves us to wonder — exactly who paid £25 to throw stuff at Lil Wayne?  How is that worth the money? 

Between the Statford Rex and Heather Mills, we’re beginning to wonder about British sanity…

Frank151 was lucky enough to be a part of UK grime icon Dizzee Rascal’s return visit to NYC.  Here he is at the Chop Shop, enjoying a trim from New York barber icon Mr Bee…

New York heads had been eagerly anticipating Dizzee’s return for what’s seemed like ages – and his performances did not disappoint.  Well, OK, the first one did sort of, but that wasn’t his fault.

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Mikey Dread with UB40 in 1983… Throwbacks got soul.

Shout out to Pato.