Can you imagine critics trying to attribute stylistic shifts in music to alcohol consumption? booze are so common, there is no alarm raised

even something like the purple syrup of DJ Screw in Houston, while tons of rappers and producers talk about that culture, the sound is *also* influenced by the hot humid heavy climate (the same climate of Kingston dub) and the urban sprawl freeway systems that puts folks in their cars, slow, driving slow or stuck in traffic, plus a ton of other stuff — so while focusing on drugs in that case is valid, even then they need to be considered alongside all sorts of other valid non-narcotic influences. so when folks just focus on the drugs, i call those folks ‘alarmist’

strangely enough, i wouldnt mind seeing the drug-centric criticism mode spread to government:: cocaine & booze the drugs of Capitol Hill (U.S.)!!, so obviously reflected in their violent, destructive, empty unsustainable confidence, etc etc.

do you mean “alarming” jace?

and yes, you agree with a lot of people who are quick to subsume bassline into garage, deriding any claims to its newness. the fact that it has a new genre name around which debates about its newness or innovative aspects exists is proof of said existence — in the process of arguing *against* ‘bassline’ as something new, you allocate it discursive space and help usher it further into existence as just that.

plus, just check the london shops… the bassline section which wasn’t there in years past is steadily growing…

I guess cultural amnesia is ever the hipster thing these days.

“For critcs to secure their formerly relevent area of specialization” is a wasteman thing to say. Scholarship this blog is decidedly not.

I think the funniest part of K-Punks article is that he thinks that there is any significant number of people suffering from ’serotonin depletion’ due to taking too much ecstacy in the current generation of his precious continuum.

Sorry dude, you’re old. No one I know takes ecstacy any more besides southern rappers and hyphy kids in the bay. The idea that grime is some response to MDMA induced serotonin lack is ridiculous. If we are making drug based analsyses I’d say you must have been smoking crack when you wrote your article.