SYM - Intellectual

In Britain, a popular and contentious form of music has emerged in UK Drill. The violence depicted in the lyrics has caused backlash from critics, and at one point involved videos being deleted by Youtube.

Many of UK Drill’s supporters argue that the music allows the artists a way of expressing themselves and the lives they live, and opens up opportunities to make money outside of gang related activities.

Fellow UK artists Krept and Konan released a short film on this same subject matter in June 2019, and even appeared in the UK Houses of Parliament to defend UK Drill.

Kano and others such as Jammer, Wiley, Big H, Skepta, and many others were the original Grime artists in the early 2000’s. Due to not being accepted in the radio/music industry and even the established Garage scene, they ran pirate radio stations in basements and abandoned flats.

Black ancestors were subject to the whips and chains associated with slavery. Kano’s generation have different whips (cars) and different chains (jewellery).

K-A is using the euphemism of keys to reference kilos of a drug. A landowner of their council estate has keys just as Kano is comparing it to being on road.

By estates, kano means Council flats, affordable housing or Housing commission, these places are common in East London and often are forgotten by the government and become derelict and violent areas. By “trapping” these people in estates Kano is showing that the government offers no assistance to the people who live in these areas, therefore metaphorically “trapping” them in these Council estates.

Clean your buttocks after you shit, people. Nasty motherfuckers.

“Paper”, as in “P’s”, as in “Gold” or “Cheese” or “C.R.E.A.M”, it tends to breed greed. Greed makes you fearful. Fearful of what you may lose. Fear breeds division. Division causes hate.

What is a system when the ones with power don’t even believe in in.

Times are changing, slowly, I suppose, but change has to be pushed forward, not waited for.

Each and every one of us has some responsibility on our shoulders.

So next time you see some next donny next to you, see him as a brother.

Immigrant culture is here. It’s been here and it’s staying here.

Whatchu gon do about it posh boi???

sips chai

Pardna is a popular saving partnership between a group of people. It is a very common practice in the Caribbean, especially among low-income earners and in other countries where Afro-Caribbean communities may be found.

One individual is entrusted with managing the money and is called “the banker”. The other members – “the partners” – contribute a stipulated amount (called a “hand”) either weekly, fortnightly or on a monthly basis. Every week or month, each member receives the total amount (called the “draw”) contributed by all the partners.

Mike Tyson famously had a ferocious hook, winning his first 19 matches by KO or stoppage, and beat Olympic boxer Michael Spinks in just 91 seconds to become the lineal champion in 1988. Spinks retired a month after this fight.

“Twisted fire starter” is from the chorus of Firestarter by British Electronic Dance group The Prodigy, perhaps one of their most famous songs. Certified Platinum in both the UK and New Zealand, it has generated millions of sales and would have secured a comfy retirement for the band.

Human history (the non white-washed, sugar-coated one) has a lot of disgusting things in it. A strong stomach is an absolute necessity if you are interested in the history of any “race” of peoples.

And everything leads onto the next. Past affects future.

If we don’t stop thinking of shit in terms of ‘I’ and ‘Me’, and start thinking in terms of ‘us’ and ‘we’, I don’t think there is an end to hatred and suffering.

A common theme of the album that Kano picks up again here, is the struggle of the black man against racial abuse despite their personal accolades, achievements and successes.

Plantain is a dish generally made from cooking banana, popular in the Caribbean and Africa. Kano ties this in with the racist comparison between black people and monkeys.

In 1988, Jamaican-born Liverpool player John Barnes famously back heeled a banana peel off the pitch in a derby match against rival club Everton.

This kind of abuse was rife in football at the time, and indeed still occurs today.

Thanks to shit like Youtube, and colors, we good, still.

I suppose your diet and lifestyle would affect the quality and feel of the shits that you defecate, but name somebody whose shit doesn’t smell…

More figuratively though, racism is racism. Hate is hate. No matter the “race” of the one who is dishing it out, or the one on the receiving end.

Cultures and creeds and “races” and breeds of people have been mixing up and separating since the dawn of man. “Races” get created and destroyed. Xenophobia, however, seems to be everlasting…

The Empire Windrush was the first ship to bring Caribbean immigrants over to the UK in the late 1940’s. Those that came over after this in the 50s and 60s are referred to as the Windrush Generation.
They were promised opportunity and better education for their children and, as citizens of the British Empire, answered the call from the mother country to help with the postwar reconstruction. What they experienced was endemic racism, limited opportunities, substandard and hostile education for their children. It was common to see the sign at shops and places to rent: ‘No blacks, no Irish, no dogs’.

How did the Empire Windrush change London? | Museum of London — Museum of London

22 June 2018 is the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the ship Empire Windrush at Tilbury Dock, Essex, the beginning of a new chapter in the story of London. The 802 Caribbean citizens onboard were the first of 500,000 Commonwealth citizens who settled in Britain between 1948 and 1971.

Even though people who grew up in the hood or the endz like Kano become more successful in their professional life (wearing clerk shoes and collared shirts) the darkness of discrimination still follows them.

“Like prophet Muhammad said, the ink from a scholar is worth more than the blood of a martyr”

-Nasir Olu Dara Jones

Listen, boys and girls, if anyone tells you to “go back to your own country”, tell them we are here to colonise these great lands.

We learnt that from them man.

“Do you fools LISTEN to music or do you skim through it?”

-Shawn Carter

Well I guess you’re here, so you must care…

Kano is experiencing a crarsey situation, with people on his shoulder all the time. It’s as if they don’t realise he is a soldier and has been dealing with crarses from day.

A Sharpie is a brand of permanent marker pen, well used by graffiti artists and by production staff in the music industry – to label flight cases and mark stages, for example. Stripes on shoulder denote rank in the armed forces – this is a nod to the permanence of his high rank and status in the Grime scene.

After “making G’s ere” in London, Kano goes back to the country of his parents or grandparents to spend it. “First-world” countries such as England(where Kano is from) tout nations such as Jamaica, Ghana, or any majority-black countries as dangerous. He explains how England has a queen but the African nations where he is descended from has kings as well