No more larking about, Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip mean bizniz. The beats are fatter and the raps deliver a fiery sermon urging listeners to take charge and turn their lifes around.
Knife crime, binge drinking and teenage pregnancies are just the tip of the iceberg of social issues that UK rapper Scroobius Pip rhymes about on ‘The Logic Of Chance’, the duo’s second album after their 2008 surprise hit album ‘Angles’. Where ‘Angles’ presented an ironic, hard-partying version of Hip Hop its successor appears almost speechless faced with everyday violence.
It is as if Pip can only address the issues straight on, as if he no longer sees a point in talking in metaphors. Simultaneously, Dan Le Sac’s beats have become heavier and more abrasive as if he, too, feels that the party is over and the music needs to pick up the aggression of the street.
The lightheartedness of ‘Angles’ is definitely gone. Instead, Dan and Pip are fed up with having to dodge all sorts of aggro every day, worry about ending up as stabbing victims and despair of the general apathy around them. The song ‘Get Better’ traces the causes for much of the behaviour that frustrates Pip and Dan. Pip calls it the ‘Smalltown Syndrome’, where drug abuse, binge drinking and random violence are borne out of boredom. ‘It’s all just because life ain’t too exciting and it’s easier than trying to do the right thing,’ he raps.
Watch The Video Of ‘Get Better’
It is a brave undertaking to comment on social issues in the UK (or anywhere else, really) while avoiding to sound like a ranting MAG or a finger wagging liberal. Pips lyrics often give both sides of the story a voice, like in ‘Snob’ or ‘Five Minutes’. He realises when he gets too caught up in a subject and often moderates with a hint of self-depreciation. On ‘Last Train’, surveying the carnage on the last train home after a night out in town, Pip concedes ‘Maybe I’m a miserable guy, but everywhere I look I see things I despise.’
Dan and Pip skillfully prevent ‘The Logic Of Chance’ from turning into a whinge fest. Their aim is to encourage listeners to do something about improving their lives. Get passionate about something, suggests Pip on ‘Get Better’, use the internet and other free services to broaden your horizon and break out of the grip of mindless boredom. The notion is a bit idealistic and certainly easier to subscribe to if you had the pleasure and privilege of a good education. But Pip is no fool and realises the difficulty of breaking the inertia of a formed habit. ‘It’s one thing to see a path but it’s another to choose it,’ he raps in the domestic violence drama ‘Five Minutes’.
‘The Logic Of Chance’ is an album that might alienate some of their more party-oriented fans due to the overt preaching, pending your point of view. But then again, Dan and Pip didn’t set out to preach to the converted.
The duo’s music has become more varied since ‘Angles’, working through an eclectic mix of contemporary pop styles. At times, Dan’s beats are very meaty, reflecting the tense lyrical subjects in shards of Grime, mainstream Dance and Hip Hop (’Great Britain’, ‘I’m Sick Tonight’, ‘Last Train Home’). At other times, the music masks the content with cheerful bopping beats (’Get Better’) or zany humour (’Cowboi’).
Whatever your current taste in music may be, you should listen to ‘The Logic Of Chance’ at least once, in full and ideally with the lyrics sheet within reach. Whether you warm to the album or not, Dan and Pip have something important to say about the times we live in.
If you haven’t got it yet, check out Dan and Pip’s debut album ‘Angles’!
