Shystie

I would like to begin with a brief history lesson;

In 2001, a sizeable group of predominantly black youths clubbed together and began recording music under the name So Solid Crew. A thirtysomething-strong gaggle of singers, MCs and producers, the Crew achieved moderate commercial success despite their aggressive lyrical content and unfamiliar combination of UK Garage, US hip-hop and a few other bits and pieces thrown in as well. While a sizeable portion of the record-buying public met the Crew with a mixture of condemnation and confusion, there were also a fair few teenagers, particularly in London, who viewed the emergence of the So Solid Crew as an inspiration to write and record their own music. These youngsters would define what became known as grime. In the years following So Solid's emergence, Ms Dynamite and Dizzee Rascal would both win the Mercury Music Prize in consecutive years, Sway would beat 50 Cent's massively popular Get Rich or Die Tryin' to win best album at the MOBO Awards, and Lethal Bizzle would provide the grime scene it's very own rallying cry, the incendiary anthem Pow! Even today, grime's trajectory remains firmly upward in direction, with the likes of Wiley (along with his own crew, Roll Deep), N-Dubz, Example, Skepta, Wretch 32 and the aforementioned Dizzee Rascal all reaching the top of the UK charts over the past 2 years. While it must be said that all of these artists are making what is a watered-down, pop-friendly version of grime music, they all started on the grime scene and have influenced many underground artists just as So Solid Crew did for them a decade ago.

History lesson over. One thing runs common in all of the names listed above, and that thing is that they are all male. Indeed, of all the success stories of the past decade, the closest thing to a successful female in grime music are So Solid's Lisa Maffia, who had a couple of top 20 singles in '03, now a reality show rent-a-contestant, N-Dubz singer Tulisa, who doesn't really count considering she moonlights as a judge on the most successful show on British TV and Lady Sovereign, who seemed to be too poppy for the urban market, too urban for the pop market, which led to her eventually slipping away to join Maffia on the reality TV circuit. Sov was a real shame in my opinion, I personally think she was a case of wrong place, wrong time. In 2004, no-one knew how to market her but I think the music landscape of 2011 could easily find a place for her. Look at Robyn, Jessie J or Cher Lloyd for proof.

But, the female MC who has perhaps come closer than any to achieving mainstream success is Hackney's very own Shystie. In 2004, her single "One Wish" scraped in at number 40 on the charts, which isn't as weak as it seems considering the single had zero radio airplay, instead gaining attention on legendary low-budget music station Channel U. Her debut album "Diamond In The Dirt" was released shortly afterwards, which was probably expected to have a little more of an impact than it actually did. My personal highlight is when Shystie spends an entire track complaining about how life is so hard now she is a star, which I found funny because at no point was Shystie ever even close to being a star. Around the album's release, Shystie was immortalized in pixel form, "starring" as a character in Juiced, a computer game about fast obnoxious cars which had a TV ad condoning sexual assault toward women. Well done everyone.

"Crime and Tube - Shy's got the London look"

Shystie's music career meant that she had a lot of free time, time she filled by doing some acting work in an innovative TV show called Dubplate Drama. Shystie seemingly plays herself with a different name, a struggling female MC whose life is controlled by the show's viewers, who vote between two different scenarios, the winner being used in the following episode. The show also employed a second gimmick, roping in various guest stars from the grime scene in cameo appearances. Three seasons of Dubplate Drama were made, the most recent in 2009, and Shystie also made an appearance in gritty urban drama Adulthood. Since then, she has used the internet to released a few tracks, mixtapes et cetera, including a freestyle rap over Tinie Tempah's hit Pass Out which was reasonably impressive.

Any mention of Shystie would not be complete without taking a minute to celebrate what is, in my opinion, her greatest achievement to date, the absolutely brutal diss track she released a couple of years ago. A rival MC, Lady Fury, had dropped a diss about Shystie, which led to Shystie recording a truly astonishing riposte, a six-minute burst of relentless put-downs, accusations and downright insults over the beat to 50 Cent's Candy Shop. Fury is dismissed as "a transvestite fat dyke", her parents referred to as child molesters and racists, her very conception called "one date rape which made a mixed-race ape" and to top it all off, an actual recording of Fury getting booed off stage during a gig is played in full (she deserved it, she sounds fucking awful). These examples really are the tip of the iceberg, I'd urge anyone who is into this kind of thing and with a few minutes to spare to give this a proper listen, it's well worth it. My words can't even do justice to how hard Shystie goes.

Atomic Kitten

Bouncing onto the music scene in the late 1990s like a caucasian reimagining of The Supremes via Primark and a council block, the original incarnation of Atomic Kitten dealt exclusively in eye-wateringly colourful, catchy bubblegum pop aimed at impressionable young children or simpleton adults. Their first single was called 'Right Now' the video of which switches between hand-held camera footage of the Kittens being let loose on the streets of London, excitedly drinking coffee and leapfrogging over bollards like hyperactive children, and some sort of video shoot in which they are encased in a sort rotating blimp and made to flail their arms around and mime into a camera, also looking like hyperactive children.

There is a point in this video, starting at around the minute and half mark, where I literally thought I was about to have a seizure. Scenes blur and fade out, scenes blur and fade back in, the screen shakes, flips 180 degrees, zooms in and out about 47 times in a half second, blurs and fades again, cuts between shots of the video shoot and an open top bus, zooms in and out again, whilst at the same time the Kittens bounce around like toddlers on steroids. It all combines to make for a disorientating few minutes of viewing. In between bouts of massive epileptic fits, I managed to notice;

* The big kitten/bomb logo in the background which is clever because the name Atomic Kitten might have been lost on people if not for a great big graphic of a cat's head with a fuse on it.

* The dark haired one, who I believe to be called Liz, has a massive fucking mouth, and is a huge fan of doing a lot of weird shit with her hands when miming into camera.

* Kerry Katona looks so... healthy. A far cry from the podgy, drug-addled psychopath we now know and love.

Atomic Kitten released a couple more forgettable songs and a poorly-selling album before vanishing, presumably never to be seen again. BUT WAIT! In 2001, the Kittens returned and were now fully grown pussycats with less make up and a more mature sound. Most shocking of all was the video for 'Whole Again' in which the Kittens had developed the astonishing ability to both multiply and change their entire physical appearance!

As you can see, during the band's hiatus they perfected full body morphing, turning Kerry Katona into a taller, skinnier woman called Jenny Frost. To further confuse matters, a video was also filmed featuring Katona in her pre-morphed state which was shadily replaced with this one in the hope that no one would catch on to what was going on. For services to science alone, the Kittens deserved some sort of success with this effort, and by golly, they succeeded in getting success. This was one of the best selling songs of the decade, staying at number 1 for over a month and reviving the fortunes of the Kittens by briefly turning them into the biggest girl group in the country. Such a reversal in fortunes for the group sadly meant that their scientific endeavours had to be put to one side as they focused all their efforts on miming lyrics other people wrote in videos other people made them star in. Another hit single followed, a cover of 1980s classic 'Eternal Flame' which also hit the top spot in the UK. The success of these two singles led to the hasty re-release of their first album, with the new tracks tacked onto it somewhere.

A little while later, Atomic Kitten made a drastic failure of an attempt to crack America and released a new album and recorded a song with Kool & The Gang. After Natasha got herself pregnant and decided she wanted to spend more time with her child, the group all but ended, reuniting for the occasional charity event. They even released another single as recently as 2008, but no one gave a shit and it went pretty much unnoticed.

Since the break up of the group, Liz has been busy making a name for herself as a TV personality, appearing on Love Island, winning Celebrity Masterchef and presenting the extremely morally-questionable 'Hotter Than My Daughter', a charming concept in which a mother and daughter compete to be 'hotter' than each other. Natasha has mostly been busy popping out kids, but found the time to compete on 'Come Dine With Me' and appear in the musical 'Blood Brothers' in London.

Most famous of all ex-Kittens remains Kerry Katona. Contrary to what I said earlier, she was not morphed into Jenny Frost. She left the group in 2001 due to pregnancy, before embarking on the most tragicomic existence imaginable. After marrying and divorcing Westlife's Bryan McFadden (who left her for Australian warbler Delta Goodrem) she won a series of 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here', before seemingly going utterly bonkers, starring in a series of reality TV shows for MTV which documented her marriage to some odious money-grabbing prick.

So, what attracted you to this wealthy, big-tittied lady?

Other highlights included becoming the face of supermarket chain Iceland (until they dropped her after she was filmed snorting cocaine in her bathroom), appearing on TV at 10.30am clearly off her face and unable to string 2 words together, being denied the chance to be on Celebrity Big Brother because the producers thought/knew she was batshit crazy, getting robbed at knifepoint in her own home, drinking and smoking while pregnant and attacking her accountant after he told her she was bankrupt. Recently, Kerry has been all over those awful celebrity gossip magazines, wearing some ridiculously skimpy swimsuit whilst claiming for the 14th time that her problems are behind her and how much she loves her new slim figure, because y'know, being thin is the key to all eternal bliss.

"Come on baby, give me vodka right now/Give it to me quickly..."

Natasha Bedingfield

Easily the less irritating of the famous Bedingfield dynasty (which isn't really a contest when your opposition is as ball-bustingly annoying as Daniel Bedingfield), Natasha Bedingfield had a smattering of top 10 hits in the mid - 2000s, the most famous of which being 'These Words', a strangely paradoxical track which is basically a catchy pop song about her inability to write a catchy pop single. And let's make no mistake, These Words is a catchy pop single. The video for the track sees Natasha hack away at some flowers with a pair of scissors, sit on a massive pile of books and torture a poor young man by launching massive yellow rocks at his head from a rooftop. Quite how this helps her to write her song is unclear, but she certainly seems to be enjoying herself. Does the plate of one slice of cucumber carry some sort of subliminal message about female pop stars being unable to eat so they stay thin? Probably not.

A second video for These Words was also made, presumably for American audiences, and is shot in a way to make it seem very organic and real, starting as it does with grainy footage of Natasha brushing her teeth and sneezing, with the sneeze even rendered important enough to stop the music for a few seconds and let the gravity of what we just saw (which was a 4 second clip of A WOMAN SNEEZING AND THEN GRABBING A TISSUE) sink in..... Real deep. Natasha, who seems to be living in a Rio favela, gets on a bus and hollers away like a lunatic on valium, which sharply contrasts with the utter dejection written on the faces of her fellow passengers. Natasha then stands on the sidewalk and hollers away while everyone in the immediate vicinity stubbornly ignores her. Frustrated, Natasha kicks her hi-fi, causing it to sprout legs and a hat and seemingly become sentient, as seen below;



Unhinged mania ensues! A passer-by is overcome by the desire to spin on his head as another walking hi-fi appears, to the delight of the gathering audience. Natasha smugly departs, her hat now heavy with scarcely-earned cash, pursued by some angry looking street punk. Quite what he is pissed at is unclear, but his bad-ass demeanour suggests he is about to open a can of whoop-ass. Before said can is opened, another sentient hi-fi appears and takes him out, much to the amusement of some fellow street punks. Natasha continues her stroll around town and picks up a few more hi-fi stragglers. An old man throws a broom at her. And that is that.

A couple of nondescript ballads followed, then Natasha dissapeared for a while, before returning in 2007 with the downright sinister 'I Wanna Have Your Babies' in which a broody/demented Natasha sends a countless number of men running away in terror by announcing her intention to have a shitload of babies, like, right fucking now. It's likely that the idea behind this track was to play on the idea that most women, Natasha included, want to have babies and the pressures involved with finding a suitable partner and starting a family, but it backfires massively. Rather than coming across as a woman who wants to settle down with her prince and live happily ever after, it seems just as likely that Natasha would sneak into a hospital nursery ward at night and just take whichever baby took her fancy. Don't believe me? Here is a line from the song which confirms beyond all reasonable doubt that Natasha Bedingfield is a nutcase;

"Trust me it would scare you if you knew what was goin' on in my brain
Trust me it would scare you that I've picked out the church all the schools all the names
If you knew it was all about you, every wish, every candle, every coin in a fountain
Trust me it would scare you"

That is some sinister shit right there. Natasha has been pretty quiet since this track. She collaborated with Sean Kingston on some forgettable single or another, and has admirably thrown herself into charity commitments and the occasional acting role. A recent single, 'Touch', was released in the USA and Canada, and a new album is in the pipeline also.

Natasha Bedingfield on Last FM

Avril Lavigne

LOVING the Nikes. The rest of it, not so much.

A
Very
Repulsive
Imbecilic
Little
Lesbian
And
Very
Idiotic
Guys
Nimble
Engine


A hastily arranged, but fittingly apt acrostic I just made up using the name Avril Lavigne. Admittedly, I gave up on the last two letters, but I feel that letters A, V, R, I, L, L, A, V, I and G pretty much sum up the video to Avril's debut single 'Complicated', in which a far-too-pretty-to-be-a-tomboy Avril and her gang of doofus wastoid bozo stoner pals (28 year olds playing 16 year olds) go and like, totally crash the mall!



Avril clearly isn't an expert at mall-crashing, since the most rebellious thing she seems to do in this whole crazy video is apply a roll-on to her armpit. The way she pronounces 'clothes' and 'pose' in the second verse makes me want to strangle every person in a 50 yard radius whenever I hear it.

Next up was Avril's biggest hit to date, "Sk8er Boi", which demonstrates yet more evidence of her carefree badass teenage dirtbag ways, this time totally trashing the city with an impromptu gig in the middle of the road. Avril stomps around the video walking all over cars and generally being a bloody big nuicance, while wailing about some little shitbag who she wasn't interested in at school, but now that he is "Rocking on MTV" he is suddenly Mr Irresistible. Great life lesson for the younger listeners there, record company executive.




After a short hiatus in which she married, and divorced, some bonehead from Sum 41, Avril was back with a song titled 'Girlfriend' a glorified cheerleader routine which somehow managed to irritate all five of the human senses. In this one, Avril is lusting after another girl's man, insisting that she should be his girlfriend (hence the title) despite offering zero evidence to back this claim up. Avril again shows herself as a beacon of morality in the accompanying music video, in which she plays two different women, namely a frigid goody goody with sand in her vagina and herself, an evil she-bitch intent on clamping her claws into the knuckle-dragging bonehead whose girlfriend she is so desperate to be. And be his girlfriend she shall be. AT ANY COST.

I'm unable to embed the video so I'll quickly explain it via the written word;

Good Avril and her boyfriend are at the fair, as is Evil Avril along with a cackle of couldron-stirring whores. Whilst Good Avril seems like a lovely wholesome girl with a moral compass and a cardigan, Evil Avril is dressed in EVIL black clothing and has EVIL HAIR and comes across as a genuinely contemptible bitch, stalking Good Avril around the fairground and smashing her in the face with golf balls and running her off the road in a go-kart. The climax of the video sees Good Avril chasing after the boy, tripping and rolling down a hill and catching the side of her head on an ornamental flamingo. To top off her humilation, she does a roly-poly into a portaloo just as some fat dude vacates it, the suggestion been that he has just had a fat steaming shit which she is now covered in. This heartless bastard of a boy declines to help her, instead sloping off with Evil Avril to recieve a cheeky blozzer in a toilet stall. Evil Avril pumps her fist triumphantly in a gesture that implies her behaviour is that of one of life's winners, does a sort of weird wink/smile thing and closes the toilet door, informing her young, impressionable demographic watching on TV/Youtube* that being a nasty, conniving slag wins the day and that it's OK to be a promiscuous skank.

Avril Lavigne on Last FM



*This, by the way, is the most watched Youtube video ever. Or it was, I'm not sure if it's been overtaken by some amazing Lady Gaga effort or a phone recording of a baby shitting on the family cat.

Fatman Scoop

"If ya got a XXXXXL Shirt I can borrow, put ya hands up!"

The appropriately-titled Fatman Scoop waddled into the UK charts in 2003, shouting his way through sample-ridden dance track 'Be Faithful', a song built around a sample taken from Faith Evan's 'Love Like This' which sees Mr Scoop do little more than shout nonsense at his listeners. "SINGLE LADIES, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" grunts Scoop, which isn't all that suprising considering a jumbo jet would struggle to make itself heard over the fucking racket Mr Scoop is making. "WHO'S FUCKING TONIGHT?" demands Scoop in a manner which would suggest the idea of a casual fumble is filling him with rage and anger. I can tell you who isn't fucking tonight, and that is Fatman Scoop, since any human being unfortunate enough to find themselves within a 30 metre radius of this oafish foghorn would be rendered completely deaf. 'Be Faithful' was a number 1 success for Scoop, wedged between Sugababes' 'Hole in the Head' and Kylie Minogue's 'Slow'.


"If ya got a cheap-ass video, put ya hands up!"

Scoop's next release followed a similar theme of incoherent shouting, big bass and heavy use of samples, this time borrowing from Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock's classic 'It Takes Two' which became the imaginatively titled 'It Takes Scoop'. This is basically Scoop bellowing random shit (again) whilst It Takes Two playing in the background, interspersed with a brief Grandmaster Flash homage and synchronised handclapping. The video sees Scoop leaping up and down in a club full of easily pleased imbeclies and stomping around a cityscape in which he is the same size as most of the buildings, a scene in which special effects to were perhaps unnecessary considering the sheer size of Scoop. It wouldn't surprise me if he used lamp posts as toothpicks after picking up an entire field of cattle and popping them into his big mouth like meatballs. Anyway, It Takes Scoop was unquantifiably shit and I feel violated at having heard it again.

The only other thing I recall Scoop yelling over is Missy Elliott's rather fantastic 'Lose Control', in which he helpfully informed us that Missy and Ciara were in the house and repeatadly exclaims that "I'm on Fire!" at the end of the song. I can only assume that someone involved in the making of Lose Control had grown tired of his endless bleating and torched him alive. I like to think that Missy herself lit the fateful match as punishment for having the temerity to whoop and holler all over the really quite amazing Cybotron sample which provides the spine of the song. Not even Fatman Scoop can totally ruin a song as triumphant as Lose Control, try though he does, the fat bastard.



Man I literally fucking adore Missy Elliott in every way. I'm almost glad Fatman Scoop was awful because it gives me a reason to remember how amazing Missy is.

Fatman Scoop on Last.FM

t.A.T.u

t.A.T.u, roughly translated as 'this girl love that girl' were a pair of big old lesbians.

Actually, they weren't. The whole lesbian angle was the brainchild of a few Russians in the music biz, who had obviously been watching MTV in the 80s, when Madonna was proving how effective the use of erotica and sexual imagery could be in the sale of records. With this in mind, said bigwigs put together a duo of pretty young ladies and made them tongue each other at every available opportunity. And just as it worked for Madonna, it worked for t.A.T.u, with the furore and publicity surrounding their faux-lezza antics propelling debut UK release 'All The Things She Said' to number one for 4 whole weeks.



As you can see, the video pulls no metaphorical punches, with the girls stuck behind a fence, which seemingly represents their separation from the rest of society due to their fanny-tickling antics. BUT OH LOOK! At the end of the video, it becomes clear that the voyeuristic mob of judgemental bigots are the ones trapped behind the fence. Or to put it another way, let me quote the genius who wrote this on the song's Wikipedia page:

"It is meant to seem like the crowd is watching these two lesbian girls who feel they are trapped within their emotions. The video ends when the girls go around the corner of the building, and off into the distance as the rain clears, revealing that the on-lookers are the real captives — of ignorance."

I can only assume the wearing of school uniforms and the monsoon-like downpour are supposed to add to the video's overall message. If the message of the video is that it is OK to perve over two girls who look like they could actually be of school age if there are profits to be made.

After the mega-success of All The Things She Said, the girls swapped their school uniforms for an enormous petrol tanker in the video for follow-up 'Not Gonna Get Us", which again refers to society's response to their relationship. Nothing much to speak of takes place in the video. They run a man over, poissibly because they hate men, or possibly not. Who knows?



At least if the songs and videos are shit, they can just start making out. Speaking of making out, most showings of the duo's videos and live performances were by now getting cut short every time it got to "the good stuff", the ironic thing being that a lot of the time the cameras would cut to the audience who were also kissing one another. Richard & Judy waded into the debate, voicing their disapproval of the All The Things... video, suggesting it "pandered to paedophiles" an accusation I kind of agree with.

t.A.T.u never troubled the UK much again after those two singles. In 2003 they represented mother Russia at Eurovision with a song I remember to be shockingly dull. They had one more top 10 single here, a song called 'All About Us' which I completely do not recall. It was around this time that they confirmed what everyone already knew, that they were infact not lesbians and it was, unbelievably, all a great big publicity stunt. I heard ages ago that one of them is married with a child. They are still fairly active in their homeland and around Europe, maintaining a strong fanbase but are currently on hiatus, and working on solo projects.


GRANGE HILL - THE SODOMY YEARS.

Would t.A.T.u have been as successful as they have been without the gay angle? Perhaps. All The Things She Said is a fantastic piece of pop music, but the caveat to that is wether the song would have been heard at all without the publicity gained from the kissing and borderline-child porn video. You could argue this was very clever marketing by their management, but I find it all slightly tacky and grubby. But hey, good luck to them in all their gay/straight or bisexual endeavours.

t.A.T.u on Last FM

Javine

Javine Hylton is famous (well, slightly less of a nobody than before) for two reasons. Firstly, she was a finalist on TV talent show Popstars; The Rivals, where she missed out on a place in what would become Girls Aloud. Secondly, she is a great big slapper. Javine is the devil woman who ruined Alesha Dixon's life by waving her titties in the direction of Alesha's husband, part-time MC, part-time footballer MC Harvey. Harvey promtly gave Alesha the heave-ho and shacked up with this modern-day Whore of Babylon.

Before she took up a career as a marriage-wrecking harlot, Javine had enjoyed some moderate success as a solo artist, with debut single 'Real Things' reaching the top 5 in the UK.



As you can see, Javine isn't interested in all that flash shit, Javine wants 'real things'hence the title. I noticed a fantastic comment on Youtube regarding Javine. It read "This tune is good but the gal duttty,teething peoples man."

Javine released one or two more singles which dented the top 20, and then vanished for a few months, reappearing to represent the UK in the 2005 Eurovision Song Contest, her effort 'Touch my Fire' winning the vote over Eurovision veteran Gina G, fellow talent show reject Andy Scott-Lee and blimp-tittied hussy Jordan, who insisted on performing her song dressed as a giant vibrator. Javine, presumably not wanting to break with British tradition, performed poorly, finishing somewhere near the bottom of the pile, probably between Lithuania and Kosovo.





Touch my Fire was another middling success for Javine, troubling the latter end of the top 20. It was now that Javine's career in pop music came to an end, reinventing herself as a rent-a-celeb, appearing on such reality TV shows as The Games (which she won), Come Dine With Me (which she did not win) and The Underdog Show (which I have never ever heard of). As well as this, she won herself the award for Rear of the Year. It is worth noting that by this time (the year 2006 I think) Girls Aloud had become one of the most successful pop groups of the 21st century and had racked up over 15 consecutive top 10 hits. How Javine must hate that ginger one, or the one who doesn't talk.


THE BEST ARSE OF 2006

It was during this period of Javine's career that she went and got herself in truoble with the law for drink-driving, and the shit hit the fan regarding her snaring of MC Harvey, the subject of the above "teething peoples man" comment. Two people who took particular exception to Javine and Harvey's shoddy treatment of Alesha Dixon were Simon Amstell and Jamelia, the latter appearing on the former's show Never Mind The Buzzcocks and displaying a rather large amount of contempt for Javine, referring to her as a "two-faced home wrecker" and "a relationship-ruining slag".

Javine and Harvey have now ended their fairytale romance, their time together neatly book-ended by Harvey's inability to keep it in his pants. Their relationship bore one child and one threat of murder when Javine took exception to Harvey's partying antics. In an interview, she stated that she had "done Alesha a favour" by taking Harvey away from her as he was always cheating on her with other women, Javine included. So really, Javine was doing Alesha a favour. If only more victims of aldulterers would see their partner's infidelity this way.

Javine on Last FM