Tony loves that Dizzee's now so comfortable with himself as
multi-level'd concept that he can talk about "Dylan" in the third
person, turning himself into the abstract self on a second set that
finds Dizzee diz handling his biz, navigating the stormy waters of the
rock biz, and daring to pretend like he's gone showbiz. He's talking
about Dylan, and Diz, at a distance, mostly on a tune titled "Hype
Talk," in which hearsay and myth-making mingle in a song largely about
what 19-year-old Dylan Mills has been doing since he b'came famous, setting ruminations thereon to aggressive ersatz-sounding rhythmic stabs that go light on the grime and heavy on the thunk. On "Flyin'" he runs through another list of popular preconceptions and accusations leveled at him since he "broke" out of East London ("You can say I'm arrogant/ You should probably say I'm vain/ You can say my head swoll/ Since I seen a little fame"), even using and abusing the word "sellout," a term long rendered meaningless by its vapid hip-hop parroting. But what's made Rascy such a compelling figure since he stormed the overground with his prestigious-award-winning Boy in da Corner album in the ought-three is the way he's looked at the same old clichés with an individual personality. His tales from rundown tenements are hardly new topical turf on which a lyricist can tread, but Dizzee dares look at them differently by daring to look within himself. Whilst he'll occasionally make a mild boast — and pressure girls to take their tops off at his shows, and get stabbed at a nightclub — Mills tends to avoid all the regular hip-hop shit of myth-making, nostalgia, and faceless, nameless, bodily-part-specific women. Numerous salivating critics who fawned over Boy in da Corner (including Tony) picked up on the fact that Dizzee Rascal didn't make blanket statements, but asked probing questions, leaving them lingering, begging for an answer that he never delivers.
He does something similar here, and it's most obvious when he talks
about those notions of selling out/ leaving the ghetto/ fame —
subject matter that's often the central concern of rappers following up
a success, and, of course, the central concern of Showtime, an album
that finds Dizzee's off-the-wall production and frenetic beatmaking
sounding more alien and digital than ever before. With even fewer
nominal pop-songs than last time — save for the awful single "Stand Up
Tall," which is very out of place here — it's a disc in which Dizzee
diz, lyrical wiz, is more forthright as lyricist, using the blank canvas
of an "album" to sketch together a thoughtful, carefully-sequenced set
in which his voice, and its elastic accent, ring clear. Here, in
doing so, he talks of his newfound fame with a real sense of
contemplation. Rather than tiresomely boasting about nouveau-riche
wealth or trying to re-establish his "street" credentials, Mills is more
interested in looking at the social repercussions of his changing life,
going from deep in his E3 history to critiquing his current
upward mobility. He shows how adept he is at exploring this on a
soft-touch song — all twee keytone melodies, glowing synth drone, and
Morr-ish elecktro twitters — called "Imagine" (which has naught to do
with the John Lennon song), which addresses such
sentiments in a surprisingly artful way, looking at the human beneath
the socio-political stereotype, honing in on the humanity inherent in
constituents of both council estates and country estates. No line in
here is more meaningful and significant than when he says "try and put it
in perspective." And the best thing about Showtime is that it shows
Dizzee Rascal hasn't yet lost his.
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