July 25, 2005
Cell-Phone Rappers Spit Grime
The success of a U.K. music genre known as grime, championed by the likes of Dizzee Rascal, has made rapping to mobile phones a popular pastime for a lot of British young people.
On the street, cell phones enable impromptu rapping, or "spitting," over music played through speaker phones.
If MCs or rappers want to try out their "bars," or rhymes, they can "flow" over beats played over the speaker phone.
Instrumental music is downloaded from sites like Rewind and transferred to the phone via Bluetooth or infrared.
... 'Hype' or 'hyping it' means over-excitement, said producer Joelle Reefer. "This is when a group of guys 'jam' around a phone." The music can be shared via Bluetooth "very quickly" and for free, music producer Joelle Reefer said.
Friends hang out outside, "spitting in groups around the streets".
[via Wired]
U.K. mobile-phone operators have been falling over themselves to sell music services on mobile phones, sponsoring numerous music festivals and selling services like track downloads, streaming music or videos.
But people in this scene use their phones in ways the industry can't cash in on.
... these days, pirate radio MCs tell listeners to rack up "missed calls" if they like a song, by calling the station's cell phone and letting it ring just once.
It's a good way to see if the listeners like the tune," said Purple, a pirate radio MC. "Text messages sometimes take a long time to get to us. Sometimes a message asking for a rewind will arrive six or seven tracks down the line. A missed call is quickest."
And nobody pays for the call."
In photo aboe, Sparx (left) and Lady Toxic (right) spit their bars over music coming from Sparx's Nokia 6230. Lady Toxic says she sometimes plays music quietly via her Nokia's speaker phone to practice her rhymes late at night when the rest of the house is sleeping. Photo: Elizabeth Biddlecombe - Wired.
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/ringtonia/archives/2005/07/009222.htm