Native Tongues:

Native Tongues: Accents in UK Hip-hop

Posted on February 4, 2016by benpedroche

It might be 2016, but take a trip around the message boards and comments sections and you will still find confused, angry UK rap fans screaming for authenticity in one breath, and then shooting down artists who rap in their native accents, with the next. With labels like Blah, Bad Taste, AssociatedMinds and EatGood coming to the fore in recent years and bringing their regional accents with them, you could be forgiven for thinking that this was never an issue, but the reality is far different. Writer Gingerslim looks back through his own memories of UK hip-hop, and also speaks to a couple of artists, about their own recollections of who paved the way outside London, and what personal struggles they have had to deal with.

I got into hip-hop back in 1994, when I was 14, but my first memory of UK hip-hop was hearingLondon Posse’s Money Mad in about 1996 (which had been released way back in 1988). At the time I couldn’t believe there were people in this country making the same style of music I had grown to love, and hearing these people rapping in a British accent was an enlightening experience fo

But that was still a London accent, albeit with a heavy Jamaican twang. It was also pre-internet, so I remained blissfully unaware of the acts up and down the country, who had been trying to make a break with their own accents for years. Crews like Krispy 3 in Chorley, Ruthless Rap Assassins in Manchester, Suspekt in Derby and II Tone Committee in Glasgow, were bringing out records as far back as the late 80s and early 90s, and helped give rise to the Britcore movement, as it became known. This movement was the first time since hip-hop arrived on our shores where we actually had our own identity, and although the critical success of releases like Ruthless’ Killer Album in 1990 and II Tone’s Beings from a Word Struck Surface in 1991, never generated the same response on a commercial scale, the scene was strong enough to have piqued the interest of up and coming MCs from all over the country.