Wednesday, 21 September 2005
“have you heard this before / can you be sure / they all sound the same on the dance floor / I heard it playing in the taxi going home / like a sheep called Dolly / an identical clone / like the last one / and the one before that / the same crap song by another crap twat…”Have you heard the first Goldie Lookin’ Chain album? Then you’ve heard this. Just with different words. Some people are one trick pony’s. But to be fair, what a trick. If they’re not careful though it will wear thinner than Kate Moss on a Cocaine Diet.
So what is Safe As Fuck? First, big ups them not opting for calling it “Safe as Fcuk”, but also, it’s really nothing new. Whilst they’re surfing a tepid wave of determindedly retro and vapid beats, if you listen to it for the music, you really are a cause more lost than a bunch of cutout stereotypes stranded on a desert island. And nothing is taboo – they think the unthinkable, say the unsayable, and rap the unrappable. Especially on “Sister” : ‘if you leave me now, can I fuck your sister – and your best friend?’ which must be a thought that has passed the mind of everyone with a penis.
”Safe as Fuck” is without doubt, a joke album. But who is the joke on? For me, I’m laughing at and with them. Their particular brand of chav-stoner-pop is without doubt crass, juvenile, and utterly vicious : in the style of a burlesque rap group, who else has manged to produce a convincing, yet merciless pastiche of a genre? The Darkness, possibly. Born out of both a deep love for – and a deep loathing – of the original genre, “Safe As Fuck” lacks anything as immediate or as concise as “Guns Don’t Kill People, Rappers Do”, yet manages to steamroller that Difficult Second Album Syndrome like KITT on the warpath.
However when it does strike, and normally there’s a couple of killer songs on any album, it’s better than Alanis Morrisette’s entire career. And “Hit Song” is da Bomb. Like an Eminem song covered by the Binatone Orchestra, “Hit Song” utterly destroys entire genres of generic, characterless pop with a lyric that describes the brand of Pop Herpes that you can find in any fast food joint, taxi, disco, shop, and spewing forth everywhere. It’s the type of song that should be the National Friday Night Kebab Anthem.
Safe as Fuck isn’t a conventional pop album, but some kind of weird, bitter deconstruction of a barren and popular culture with beats. Think of less as a pop album, more as a bitter diatribe against the lowrent aspirations and achievements of a bankrupt culture that permates the Red Tops and the weekly gossip magazines. You knows it. Clart.
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