BEATS OF LOVE 

128 Step to the Rear by Brand Nubian

I'M OFF social media sites and it feels great. Facebook was accidental. Twitter; well you'd be mad to stay on there, right? Now I really am just talking to myself without all that toxic noise deafening me.

I recall the Monday in Musicworld, my town's only record store, when, for the one and only time, the record playing on the turntable blew me away. I was used to approaching shop counters in Mancunia, but not there. But sheepishly approach, I did. 

Again, I have to admit it was my kid sister playing De La Soul that first got me into hip-hop. I think I nabbed it before realizing that the US press was far superior. I love lyrics, sages, and wordplay, so this trio was tailor made for me. Their LP sounded so perfect on that Monday. And it sounded even better when I cranked it up later on the home hi-fi.

With all the toxic noise that deafened us out of nowhere, I revisited this gem to make some noise of my own. It sounds perfect and still blows me clean away. Puba just flowing vibrant rhymes effortlessly and elastically on top of some of the dopest, laid back funky hooks committed to vinyl. I doubt you can eclipse the breezy lines 'But I'm long, I'm like Stretch Armstrong, I go on and on and on and on'. The Mar-Keys’ Plantation Inn was the springboard for them and their extended crew, the SD50s, to get deeply creative. Giving Puba the ideal platform to be brilliant whilst still disarming me with his swaggering elegance.  

Keeping me strong for the missus and in control of my fear during these dark days. And I can now play it louder than ever. At least, until the neighbour arrives home from work.

BEATS OF LOVE 

127. Drifting in the Moonlight by Richenel

BLAIR'S TIMING couldn't have been worse. UK's second generation Muslim population was integrating at pace when he waged his illegal war. Both the police and media then scapegoated them whilst shielding the footy firms who caused carnage in their neighbourhoods. Inciting riots and galvanizing far-right hate groups.

The footy firm was alluring in the mid 80s for a school dropout like myself. The gang; shouting obscenities at the police in decent clobber, smelt like freedom. Luckily, after a couple of outings, one of the main heads of the FYC found his way into the family home and went on a minor wrecking spree. After picking up a broken seven inch single, I instantly fell out of love with his plotted acts of violence. Finding record shopping was a better way to spend my Saturdays. 

He goaded my pal's young brother into throwing a petrol bomb a few years later that epitomised his cowardice. Scarpering whilst my pal's young brother faced serious charges. Sadly, my pal, like many, has got more obsessed with the frightening concepts surrounding Islam and immigration than football of late. Concepts put into his head by fake online memes and coercive, radicalizing posts, but legitimized by the divisive and cowardly rhetoric of a few politicians and journalists who don't let the truth they obscure impede their inflammatory arguments. Goading arguments that have given way to a scarpering silence in the past few days. 

They mis-recognize secularization as forward thinking and modern, whilst wrongly assuming our immigrant population is backward. What's backward is evolving into nothing more than somebody who over-empathizes with problem teenagers. Responding emotively and aggressively to fucking everything. Amplified by these fully formed looking turbo-aggressive adults on our telly screens who haven't left puberty. Their kids are presumably there to get them back home. That's backward. 

It's as pathetic as it is cowardly to encourage in any way a protest borne of beak and strong lager that will inevitably turn violent, which targets entirely innocent people. A riot then, in everything but name.