Dizzee Rascal provided the soundtrack to the summer with his superhit Bonkers. Happy to take the benefits of floating in the mainstream, the former Mercury prize winner is bringing the underground overground. He tells Jim Carroll how he got on the right track
THE TICKET has some form when it comes to interviewing Dizzee Rascal. The first time we encountered him, he was truly something of a rascal. It was 2004 and the then 19-year-old was hawking his second album, Showtime.
After we had spent a couple of days trying to track him down, Dizzee finally picked up the phone. It quickly became obvious that he’d answered the call thinking it was someone else other than another bloody journalist.
The chat lasted all of seven-and-half excruciating minutes before both parties made their excuses. The most interesting take-away from that interview: Dizzee muttering about the need to get a second mobile phone.
Three years later, the action switched to the south London offices of XL Records, the label that released his first three albums. On this occasion, Dizzee was friendly, smart and funny. One moment, he was showing me videos on his phone of young lads rhyming in an east London park. The next, he was explaining how he picks up all the news on the streets in his local barbershop: “You can find out a lot sitting in a chair at the barbers”.
As the interview ended, he mentioned that his deal with XL was over and he was moving on to new pastures. “You ain’t heard the last of Dizzee Rascal,” he said defiantly, as he bounded down the stairs and out the door.
Dizzee turned out to be as good as his word. It's summer 2009 and pop music fans just can't get enough of the man born Dylan Mills. He's had three Number One singles in the last year, each one bigger and bolder and cheekier and brighter than the one which came before it. Those three monster hits — Dance Wiv Me, Bonkersand Holidays— are the trailers for his forthcoming fourth album, Tongue N Cheek. The Rascal is on a roll.
Today, our chart-topping superhero is chilling in a swanky room in Belfast’s Malmaison hotel. Later on, he’ll headline the Belsonic festival down the road and send a couple of thousand people bonkers.
Life for Dizzee Rascal version 2.0, then, must be brilliant. Dizzee grins.
“You can say that again. It’s hard to get used to, but in a really good way. My music seems to have definitely reached more people, especially say, people who might not have been into the underground stuff I was doing before. Before this, I was more underground than the underground and never had this kind of fuss. But it’s nice, man, real nice.”
There are some things, though, he’s finding hard to take in his stride.
“Sometimes you do want to be left alone, especially when I’m eating my dinner,” he frowns. “I was in an airport the other week and there was a queue of people waiting for me to finish eating so I could sign autographs for them. I don’t get much time to myself anymore so I like to be left alone when I’m eating. But then again, I wouldn’t be eating without those fans so it’s one of those things.”
The reason for this outpouring of mainstream love and affection and need to acquire his signature comes down to Dizzee's new tunes. While his first couple of records received much acclaim – debut album Boy In Da Cornerwon the Mercury Music Prize in 2003 – these were Dizzee's underground years when he was the kingpin of the grime scene.
As the years went by, though, the east Londoner began to turn out tunes which were not as dark or intense as his early work. By the time of the release of Maths & Englishin 2007, he was even beginning to let himself go and live a little.
Dizzee wanted to party and the bright lights were calling.
“Of course, I had aspirations to do the pop thing,” he says. “I was on tour with people like Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake and I’ve seen their set-ups and thought I wanted some of that. I’d go to festivals and see those acts playing up on the main stage or sit at home and watch the music channels and reckon to myself that I could do that, I could be as big as them.”
All he needed was some tunes and Dizzee thought he had that one sorted. In 2007, he played a new track called Dance Wiv Meto the folks at XL Records. It featured some fancy lyrical footwork from Dizzee, a bit of a r'n'b blush from Chrome and some dance grooves from Calvin Harris.
“So I played it to them and they were ‘whatever’ about it and didn’t seem that keen, which was surprising to me. Then, when it came to the actual deal, they weren’t saying what we wanted to hear so we left.”
Dizzee shrugs. It made no difference to him that he would have to go it alone. After all, he’d done that before. “When we had made up our mind to split from XL, my manager Cage said to me that we’ve done this before, we’ve released records ourselves. It’s not new to me to be making these decisions, but this time, it was going to be at a much higher level.”
There were other options. “The majors came at me, Sony, EMI, all them boys,” recalls Dizzee with a grimace. “But they were trying to treat me like it was 2001 and as if I hadn’t put in years of work and didn’t already have hits and big albums. They seemed to think that I wouldn’t put in the fucking work. Come on man! It was very disrespectful so I said fuck off.”
He pauses and grins. "Three Number Ones later, I wonder do they still think I won't put in the work. That's history what I have done. Name any other independent act who has had three Number One hits in a row. That's got to be Guinness Book of Recordsstuff. I'd better get Cage to call them and get a page ready for me."
Dizzee acknowledges that he had to change musical tack to get those hits. It wasn’t going to be happen if he kept to grime ways and grime laws. “I think I had to make the first three albums to get all that sound out of my system and get to this point,” he says.
"When I look back now on Boy In Da Corner, I'm happy that I did what I did because there still has been nothing like it. None of the other grime artists have done anything like that or have even come close to it. I didn't realise what I was doing back then because I was in the thick of it and just concentrating on getting on with it and getting by. I'm not 17 anymore, so I'm not making music in that way.
"With the second album, I still had a lot to prove, but by the third album, it was time to reach out to people who weren't in the underground. I was still a little worried about keeping that edge and that credibility so that's why there were tracks like Sirens. With this album, I just didn't give a shit about how edgy is was and just let myself go. There will always be edge because it's me and I'm edgy, but this is my party album."
Aside from the triple-whammy of number one singles, the album also has a few tunes which will raise eyebrows in some quarters. There's Dizzee discussing his fondness for the ladies on Freaky Freaky. "Some people might see it as sexist," he says, "but I just see it as me singing about how I like fucking around? Then, there's Road Rage, Dizzee's Jeremy Clarkson turn as he beeps his horn and encourages slow-coaches on the road ahead of him to get out of his way pretty sharpish. "Yeah, some parents won't be happy with that, but I don't think people will take it that seriously. Even the most serious parts on the album have humour because I wanted the album to be light-hearted.
“My kind of humour is people like Dave Chapelle or Katt Williams. No-one has ever made me laugh as much as Dave Chapelle. He takes it right to the edge and, yeah, it offends some people. But if you take yourself a little less seriously, you’ll find it very funny.” These days, Dizzee feels he’s moved to a different league and is going man to man with a new set of ball players. “My competition is the people at the top end of the charts like Akon and Black Eyed Peas and David Guetta and I’m cool with that.
“You have to progress. Sure, you can stay making records for the underground but a few years from now, you’re going to get pushed out by the kids coming up who are hungrier and harder than you. They’re still on the estate, they’re still on the streets, they’re still stepping to you. But I’m not competing with a bunch of kids any more.”
Dizzee knows that some of the people he’s left behind in his move to a new manor will be grousing and grumbling about Dizzee the pop star. “What can you do,” he shrugs. “You have to let it go because always trying to be credible to a certain bunch of people just holds you back. I was trying to create something I hadn’t done before and that was a massive mainstream album. I’ve done that whole edgy underground album. Fuck it, no-one else did albums as edgy or underground as me, hip-hop wise anyway.”
Taking up a new game meant doing some homework, and Dizzee chose some high-profile mentors to show him the way. “I looked at how people like Jay-Z and Bruce Lee mixed things up and made everything go together. I read a few Donald Trump books about how to be an entrepreneur and how to do business which boosted my self-esteem and confidence.
“I’ve always watched documentaries on the lives of pop stars and celebrities and how there’s tragedy and triumph and tragedy and triumph. I’d go to myself: ‘Yeah, that’s my life up there, I’m on the right track.’”
Dizzee Rascal, pop star, leans back in his chair and grins like he hasn’t a care in the world. The boy’s done good.
** Tongue 'N' Cheek?is released on September 18th on Dirtee Stank
