BEATS OF LOVE 

128 Step to the Rear by Brand Nubian

I'M OFF social media sites and it feels great. Facebook was accidental. (A long story.) 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 still remember the Monday in Musicworld, my town’s only record store, when this track on the turntable completely blew me away. Walking up to shop counters in Mancunia was second nature to me, but not here. Yet, breaking my usual reserve in that shop, I stepped forward to ask.

I admit it was my kid sister playing De La Soul that first got me into Hip-hop. I think I swiped it before realising that the U.S. press was far superior. I love lyrics, sages, and wordplay, so this 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 revisit this gem to make some noise of my own. Until the neighbour returns home from work. 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.  

Music, memory, and escape are my armour. They anchor me against the dread of these dark days; through the noise of a social media detox and the sting of rampant racism. Right now, I can blast this out loud. But in an hour, reality will come crashing back with the heavy slam of my neighbour’s front door.

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 galvanising 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 (Oldham's firm, the Fine Young Casuals) 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 the footy of late. Concepts put into his head by fake online memes and coercive, radicalising posts, but legitimised 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 mistake secularism for progress while falsely labelling immigrants as backward. True backwardness is an emotional and aggressive reaction to everything; stuck in a perpetual state of teenage angst and amplified by immature public figures. That inability to mature is the real regression.

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.