Sabresonic
Justified & Ancient
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2020
- Messages
- 1,232
Excellent post and Tim was a bit of a name back in the 80's to mid 90s even through he was fake with his accent but maybe no different to Joe Strummer with Punk BUT once he started doing that Cribs bollocks he can F.O. also he seemed about to be totally just Hip Hop and not other music genres.Not an easy question to answer.
My opinion would be that from 1984 - 1994 he had the best Hip Hop radio show in the world.
From LWR to Kiss FM to Capital Radio he had the pick of American premieres, debuting some American tracks before the USA, plus the pick of the UK secene
He interviewed many major artists and label owners, promoted some brilliant concerts, and even dabbled at his own record label.
His unusual persona was very much muted at first, and he paid homage to the history of the music by playing the Funk and Soul tunes that hip Hop derived from.
He rightly played some Soul and Go Go too, and demo tapes that were sent in to him.
From about 1995 onward she went for a more populist approach, playing more commercial Hip Hip and dabbling in Reggae, then heavily promoting some Grime and Drill as these came along.
A big knock against him was that he overlooked too much UK music from the late 1980's until the late 1990's, something that could not be said of him after 2000.
Also that he was a "Culture vulture", a white East Anglian who had moved to London and tried to be the head of it's Hip Hop scene.
But to me that has some racism in both ways....some of it jealousy, but who knows if Capital selected him as a "safe white" option to host their Hip Hop show?
I'd hope that he was chosen because he was adept at what he did.
The more genuine criticism of him can be that he has acted a bit of a fool on stage, doing some sexually suggestive dancing with women far younger than him.
And that he has played too much British music associated with gang violence and murder.
He also bizarrely criticised Rodney P's rhyming ability, which was daft as Westwood had Rodney on his show as a frequent guest and at his concerts too.
Its funny but Hip Hop in the UK seemed quite lame as it was people like Haircut 100 with "Favourite Girl's", Modern Romance with "Queen of The Rapping Scene" in 1981 and Wham's "Wham Rap" (all great songs to me) and then you had Mick Allen on Capitol Radio who was like the Aland Partridge of UK Rap LOL.
https://images.app.goo.gl/PBR8SpzTzbGTEZfH7