I really can’t stand hip hop. Firstly, I really don’t like the music. But most importantly I cannot stand the ‘scene’. The posturing, the egomania, the desperate money-grubbing, the sort of pathetic terror of women that gets distorted into the bitches and hos aggression. The kind of machismo that is so infantile you actually pity them. The vitriolic homophobia. It’s just a music scene I want nothing to do with whatsoever.

That said, the original rap movement that (I believe) gave birth to hip hop was pretty ground breaking at the time, and no matter how much any music scene might alienate me, even I can’t pretend that I think there’s nothing of musical merit in an entire genre. All the baby-oiled pecs and vainglorious celebrity onanism in the world can’t have driven all the genuine artists away from the scene entirely. Hip hop clearly can’t all be the shit you see on telly, but it really feels like it at times.

But, setting aside personal prejudice, how do you go about starting with a genre of which you have absolutely no understanding whatsoever? It’s like classical – such a massive umbrella, and all I know of it is the odd two-minute snippet I hear in car adverts. If I was to try and find some hip hop I liked I wouldn’t have the faintest idea where to start. How do you go about exploring a genre with no real handle on how to even approach the music?

I received an email a little while back about a new album by a Brooklyn duo called Iller Than Theirs. I listened and had another one of those moments – a slight chink in the clouds. I rather liked the first of the preview tracks, and had another of those slightly uncomfortable moments where ‘you know there’s something happening but you don’t know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones.’

I liked the song, I don’t know if I’ll buy the album, but it was another reminder to me of whole music scenes out there I just don’t even begin to understand. The thing is, I have no intention whatsoever of wading through piles of 50 Cent or Puff Diddy Whatthefuckever CDs to find the gems in the morass of shit that is the commercial hip hop movement.

But when I hear songs like this I do get frustrated with myself for my inability to get any sort of a handle on a genre to the extent that it prevents me finding the good bits that are undeniably there. It’s less frantic than a lot of hip hop – more laid back and actually more confident sounding.  Imagine if all you knew of indie was Coldplay, Keane and the excruciating antics of Pete Doherty? Fuck me, you’d run a mile away.

Iller Than Theirs – To be Ill[audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/sbt/IllerThanTheirs-ToBeIll.mp3]
Roots Manuva – Dreamy Days[audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/sbt/RootsManuva-DreamyDays.mp3]
Classified – The Maritimes This is genuinely odd – a hip hop song from The Maritimes in Canada, with all their Scottish history and their pipes and ceilidhs. Oddly fascinating though, but don’t ask me why.[audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/sbt/Classified-TheMaritimes.mp3]