Scouse Rap February 19, 2009

Anyone who didn’t happen to be John Aldridge in 1988 is going to have a pretty hollow feeling in
the pit of his stomach when he hears the following two words put together: Scouse Rap.
Yes, those jaws will be clattering onto the pavement when I go on to reveal, coyly, with one cheek
embedded in my shoulder, that this isn’t Liverpool F.C. bending their knees to-and-fro in front of a graffitied wall. Nor is it your many-throated Pavarottis warbling their support at the Kop stadium. Or the Beatles on a hallucinogenic mishap. Or Tin’Ed caught up in a drive-by shooting. Really, Scouse Rap isn’t quite what we’re used to at all - and yet if a sector of Myspace is to be believed then this improbable genre stands aloft as an art form in its own right.

We’ll start with Riuven. Perhaps you’ll be disparaged to hear that the big cheese and glittering
medallion of this particular scene just happens to be a parody. Riuven is your prime scall, a Toxteth youth whose hobbies include smoking weed, robbing cars and jeering at moshers. Heaven, for him, is “chillin’ in the cemetery with all me kiddas round”. He probably conjures up some ill- conceived comparison to dumbwitted “chav” pantomime by the likes of MC Devvo and Catherine Tate, but there’s more to him than that. This is not some self-satisfied humourless charade, but more of a personal joke that’s expanded into an empire. Head over to Youtube (groan) and watch him jeering at jackdaws, rhapsodizing over jam roly poly, and reciting his lyrics to clusters of children frozen as still as the Gormley statues. His song ‘Tha L.I.V.’ is an anthemic overture to all those paying Liverpool a visit. Young lads affix themselves firmly to the front of the barrier at his gigs. Grammar school girls titter and wish their ready-salted bleach-blonde gym-membership boyfriends would just choke on a WKD somewhere so they could set up with Riuven, this fine little bard who won’t settle for Ascots, it’s got to be three stripes tucked in his socks. In town, gleaming yellow stickers mark his presence on many a bus shelter.

Whilst plenty of the public have taken him to their bosom, however, certain superannuated dour old scrooges have attempted a firm wallop to Riuven’s behind. Radio Merseyside, certainly, has received no end of wounded phone calls. Riuven swears too much, they rasp; he’s a shock to the system, he perpetuates an unflattering stereotype of Liverpool. Undeterred, Riuven hit back right away with the fiery invective, ‘I’m Not Crazy’, in which a blustering grandfather challenges him to an MC battle, only to be rejected by Riuven’s kindly offer to fetch him his slippers instead. Robert Morris, the twenty-four year old behind the caricature, has no time for people who can’t take a
joke, whom he routinely dismisses with the words “You ARE Riuven”. That is, in dramatising the more preposterous elements of Riuven, they appear every bit as narrow-minded as they proclaim the rapper to be. Or, more succinctly: “Whatever you say makes whatever I do seem more controversial, I should just say thank you.”

For all the naysayers, Riuven has found a pretty surprising ally in the city council, which
enlisted his talents for the grand old opening of its Echo Arena earlier this year. Since the divine
intervention that saw Liverpool attain its ‘Capital of Culture’ tag, its inhabitants have been subjected to nothing but bombast and braggadocio and dearer drinks and space-age office blocks. Riuven, who deprecates his city in the most enchanting manner, supplies a welcome antidote. And besides, he’s preferable to a California-encrusted Ringo Starr falling asleep on the jet over to Liverpool. No, you know, let’s not even dwell on that old carthorse while there’s Riuven to watch kicking his pint about the stage. Performing, he is a skinny sliver of a boy, and unexpectedly slippery to the touch. He is a minnow. You try to grasp that long-adulated hand and shake it but he glides right out of reach. Probably if you had a cigarette going spare you could fry him up in batter with a pound of chips and he’d be fine about it, but other than that he’s something of an elusive one. Except that he’s online a lot, as people who check his profile too often will tell you. But there’s so much to check for! every day the docket of songs seems to alter, and he can boast a dazzling manipulation of samples - in Riuven’s hands Prince’s ‘When Doves Cry’ is remoulded into the sublime ‘When Birds Cry’, whilst To My Boy experience their finest moment as the backing music for ‘Prank Call’. “If you really are about music your life should be a constant search for new styles”, says Riuven, which is good news for those of us who can’t help but pursue him.

There’s more to be unearthed. Kev’s ‘Stop Killin Each Other’, for example, carries a heavy-weighted disillusionment quite startling from a lad of seventeen. Another track, ‘Remember Us As Kids’ recalls a fractured friendship with a boy who has since been imprisoned for dealing: it exhibits a yearning after those halcyon days when smashing school windows was adventure enough. ‘Am Sick Of Being Me’ continues this theme of aggrieved adolescence, the anxiety that should he end up in a fight, “it’s defo I’d be doing life”. Much of Kev’s material is bleak, expressing a profound dissatisfaction in himself and his surroundings. Daily Mail writers chortle that “On Merseyside, innocent children might be well advised to ask for bullet- proof jackets for Christmas, to go with their new bicycles.” These same writers might be well advised to ask for cast-iron muzzles this Christmas, to go with their glistening foreheads and pork-pie chins, but the negative response they advocate comes as no surprise to Kev. Perceiving a stigma attached to Merseyside’s accent and culture, he comments grimly that “If you’re scouse, then you know never to open your mouth”. In ‘Stop Killin Each Other’ he gives a stern yet fraternal upbraiding to the young lads who fall in with militant gangs, and cautions them about the inevitable stigmatization. These boys have no choice, he says, but to expect apathy from a mistrustful public who turn a blind eye to teenage unrest, comfortable in the belief that “their own kids are brought up in a better way” - and it is consequently the boys themselves who must resist stereotype and make something better of their lives. There’s romance too, though, don’t worry. ‘So Wa If Ya On’ is a far from anaemic tirade against menstrual females who taunt and tease: “Girls are gonna hate me for this one /But come near me and I swear you’ll get pissed on”.

And then there’s the plain old drunken night out in Liverpool. In a pithy little number called ‘Ya Gettin It’, rapper DyNamic offers up a paean to every bare-legged Venus, to every quadvod, to every lad who stares that bit too hard, and to the final golden catharsis of a public piss. It won’t do much for drawing the rich bohéme into the city but you can tell they laughed plenty making it. And let’s not forget ‘This Is How We Do It On The Merseyside’, its author as yet unidentified, which promises some rival or other that his “head’s getting danced on” if he doesn’t stop telling lies. I wouldn’t take him too seriously though, he also harps on about wanting “respect to the Wirral boys that robbed your shed”. Well boys, you’re welcome to my shed and that’s perfectly alright, there was nothing in there but a pair of rusted pruning shears and some woodlice anyhow, but the rest of this business I don’t care for one bit. And perhaps that’s the dilemma with Scouse Rap - the supposed “message”. For every Kev or Riuven there’s a misguided little boy somewhere settling his schoolyard spats with a little visceral fantasy for his mates. Over Myspace, at that.

But let’s liberate Scouse Rap from this silly didactic element. You didn’t run off and grow a moustache when you saw the Liverpool team do it, now don’t tell me you’re going to go and crash your teacher’s car because some thirteen year old said it was cool. You don’t need Scouse Rap for that. While Riuven is a sketch (if a full-bodied one at that) whose rap thrives on the outlandish, those less capable young rappers whose talents spread no further than the glorification of violence are easily exposed as pretenders. Or, as with Dru-T, they end up in prison, having espoused their own message too literally.

For the most part, Scouse Rap is flourishing. It might never stretch its boughs further than a smattering of Merseyside bedrooms, and perhaps only the humorists, such as Riuven, will ever reel the crowds into Barfly. For all that, it’s a bona fide genre; the Liverpool slang making for creative rhyme schemes which amount to far more than a derivation of standard American fare. Liverpool is the epicentre for these rappers, and they are quite aware of its location in the north-west of England. Their rap is spirited, personal and vernacular, without a trace of the twee anti-folk ingredient so laboured in current music. As one rapper, Renegade, points out, that would be absurd: “Picture me with a guitar singing gay songs/ About how lesbians and chickens just don’t get along”. Right enough. Forget guitars for the minute, and get on these wordsmiths with their computer software and their coarse oaths. Yer ma won’t care for it but it makes a change from all that post-rock you’ve been tootling down my ear. And save me last swigs on the Lambrini.