Everyday People

The Streets latest album, A Grand Don’t Come for Free, received accolades throughout the past year for his everyman sensibility and storytelling skills. His every bloke stories however are lauded just because of that; he’s a bloke on Her Majesty island, while many everyman tales that originate in the colonies are ignored.

J-Zone, on his five albums has maintained a steady belligerence throughout his career as a producer/artist, recounting common tales about piece of shit cars, shifty females, and the everyday annoyance that a low cash flow entails.

If that sounds as lot like The Streets first two albums, Original Pirate Material and A Grand…, it’s eerily scary to me to. So why does The Streets receive so much shine while J-Zone is unknown even among the underground and backpacker set.

It would be convenient to attribute the difference to race, the easy sociological explanation, but J-Zone racial background is cloudy at best; I’m willing to gamble that his roots have a lot more to do with some non-Wasp European group than the Motherland way south of Germany. He’s even went so far to point out that he doesn’t want people to ask his racial background, which points to it being a touchy subject.

So with the pseudo intellectual reason eradicated, what contributes to the difference; I think it simply comes down to rockist attitudes that slight what hip-hop is about and references hip hop to the same rules that rock albums are critiqued.

While the content is similar, The Streets approach is earnest and follows a story arc while J-Zone is undeserved machismo bordering on parody and scatological sequenced at best. Rock critics favor cohesion and search for the ‘truth’ above all else.

However, within hip hop circles, vocal delivery matters, with crisp and sharp beats also bearing notice, which J-Zone possesses in droves and The Streets hardly seems to worry himself about. It not as if the Streets hasn't produced work such as this before; Original Pirate Material didn't skimp on these elements while A Grand... gives the listeners slivers of this sort of visceral experience.

Now don’t get me wrong; I appreciate The Streets as an artist and I think it’s a bit unfair on my part to compare him to another artist. However, I think that rock critics need to observe that their bias or as J-Zone would say, eatadicup.

I'll post track from these two as soon as I get my hosting site up.