McQuaid's Bruk Out Selections #11

Music

Davido – Skelewu

A guy from my design college put me onto this *shouts out to Ola* The beat has been made in such a way that the wild high pitch percussive sound cuts through, from even the tiniest, lamest speaker, which is probably a God send for any kids looking to terrorise the top deck of the 277 (*international readers. This is a bus Ive just been riding that goes from the old school grot of Holloway Road to the gentrified nu-grot of Hackney. Its full of nutters.)

Theres little chance of Skelewu breaking through and becoming a mainstream UK or US hit, and Im glad Davido hasnt tried to tone down the songs Naija-ness to do so (despite his having been born in the ATL) – Sarkodies recent track (and video) Bounce seemed to be shamelessly courting the US market and was much the worse for it- I really doubt that approach will ever work – I suspect the Americans have got enough people rapping to care about an outsider doing the same, as UK MCs have discovered to their disappointment time and again.

As ever Im finding it really hard to get a decent bitrate copy of Skelewu – whats the deal? These beats need to be heard big! The scenes being held back by bad distribution, and someone really needs to step into the big gap with consistently high quality downloads. still, Skelewu – and the dance – is killing the clubs right now, low quality or not

QQ – Pretty & Cute
Last time the rave was bothered by a hoarse voiced flow was back when perma-horny rappers Ying Yang Twins dropped the classic, 808 slaughtering Wait. Now a resurgent QQ has done a killer job of bringing back the whisper, getting right up to your ear on Pretty & Cute over a beat thats hard to describe but addictive- its fast, like 123 bpm, and it jerks manically along on some crazy hand claps and snaking Eastern melodies.