Since his show-stopping, Mercury Music Prize-winning début album earlier this year, the bling-bling life hasn't let up for Dizzee Rascal. The self-styled 'problem for Anthony Blair' may have another album out, but, he tells Jim Carroll, he's still the same boy in da corner
Dizzee Rascal reckons he's already done about a dozen interviews today. With a new album about to pop, this is a normal day's work for the young east London rapper and producer. The phone rings, he answers it with a bit of a squeaky yelp, and another journalist is ready with a list of questions, which Dizzee answers as fast as he can. Dizzee talks fast, so you can imagine how some of these exchanges go.
The reason why Dizzee's mobile is so busy this week is because everyone wants to talk about Showtime. Some, of course, may still want to talk about that stabbing on Ayia Napa last summer, which took him into the tabloids. Some are still mulling over the Mercury Music Prize award from last year, which had the broadsheets scratching their chins. But most have heard Showtime and want to know how Dizzee makes it look so easy.
Showtime is a showstopper, an album which takes the inventive bent of his Boy in Da Corner début and proves it was no fluke. While most second albums struggle to regain the momentum of their predecessor and leave you a little disappointed, Dizzee gets back in the saddle, loads up his magic box of production tricks, clears his throat and heads for the bright lights.
Well, the kind of bright lights you'll find on the council estates that provide Dizzee with his lyrical springboard. He may get to hang out with Jay-Z and Pharrell Williams, but he's still the boy in the corner on the 18th floor looking out the window at the grime below.
The most surprising aspect of Showtime is how fast it has appeared on the heels of his début. No one expected a second album so soon. But then, what was Dizzee supposed to do? Watch the début sell like hot buns on a cold day and count his cash? Spend a week celebrating his 19th birthday? Drink champagne and go to film premières? Sit around and get bored?
"I couldn't do that, man", says Dizzee. "I'd go stir crazy. The first album was just adding up what's gone so far. When I was younger and I was doing stuff on the radio, I was still in school and I was coming on the radio at the same time that people were sleeping! I was writing all that time and a lot of it was on the first album. This album is just the next stage in my life and I want to move on again."
When it comes to making those beats, Dizzee doesn't hang about. When he was in school, he'd work in the music room with Cubase and get his tracks down as fast as possible. You could say that nothing has changed.
"Yeah, I learned how to make beats quick. Do it, get it out the way, next, you know. Other people would spend three days on one tune, but they're wasting their time. It's not a big thing; I just build the beat and write, no big deal. I build a beat in 20 minutes. I try not to spend too much time on it, just bang it out."
Such an approach has produced a sound which defies any sort of categorisation. Rough and ready, inventive and futuristic, occasionally sweet but often sour, a Dizzee track pins your ears right back. "I've always made my own music and it's always been different. I know there's a whole different, new sound on the underground. It's evolved from the underground but it's not really garage.
"It's a lot more street-based than what it ever was. It's more of a hip-hop culture, people from the streets spitting very uncensored, just saying what they feel. It's almost second nature to anyone who's from the street to pick up a pen and write because they're immediately going to start writing about what's around them."
What's clear from Showtime is that Dizzee still finds inspiration from those same streets. The best songwriters can mine new seams in the same environment time and time again, and this Rascal is still finding plenty to inspire him. You may have thought you've had your fill of urban rascals and ragamuffin street poets, but there will always be room for Dizzee if he produces rhymes as vivid as Graftin' or Get By.
Dizzee noted on the first album that "I'm a problem for Anthony Blair", and many would still view his worldview as nihilistic and brutal. He thinks people often read far too much into his raps.
"Yeah, it sounds vivid. But a lot of people can't differentiate between reality and someone just writing something, especially if they're not familiar with rap culture.After the first album, I thought a lot of people were talking bullshit about me. What I'm trying to do is tell people that if they want to get somewhere, they have to start saying something that means something.
"What I write about is what I know a lot of people my age feel about what's on their doorsteps. I just keep watching. I'm the boy on the street corner, you know what I mean? I watch all the detail and you can see kids hanging out and you wonder why. Some people are focusing more on the bling and the champagne side and all the glitzy stuff more than the real side of things, but that's not me. I always try to have humour in there because if you tackle a serious issue with humour, it makes it more digestible."
Despite his wish to stay low-key and remain one of those street kids, Dizzee has had his share of glitzy moments. He remembers going to see the London première of 2 Fast 2 Furious and having flashbulbs going off in his face as he went in. It was the same when he supported Jay-Z at Wembley Arena. All Dizzee wanted to do, he says, was go home to his Playstation. After all, he wasn't go to start rapping about Cristal champagne and some shortie he met in Stringfellows.
"It's all a big contrast, man. I could go to these places where you have every star in your face whoever they are. Or I go home where everything's normal. I don't give a fuck about all the glitz and glamour. I really don't care, I'm just a person and I'm just staying here."
Dizzee knows he's one of the fortunate ones. "It was a blessing that I pursued music," he says at one point. If he hadn't opened the door to that school music room a couple of years ago, he believes a life of crime rather than grime would have been his lot.
"Where I'm from, there's not a lot of other options. It's music or football or crime. When I was growing up I saw things first-hand. Shootings, robbings, the lot. My music reflects council estates through England.
"It's the same thing, the sense you've got to get out. Some people don't realise they need to get out till it's too late."
