Treddin' on Thin Ice

Personnel: Wiley (rap vocals); Kano , J2K & Riko, Breeze (rap vocals).Dizzee Rascal, the apprentice, turned garage rap on its head with his unorthodox programming, drunken-master cadence, and near-hysterical delivery; Wiley, the master, may serve as the better introduction to what can be a difficult export to understand. Garage rap's aesthetic of less-is-more isn't immediately appealing to a worldwide audience, while the heavily accented rapping and stark, lo-fi digital production owe far more to West Indies dancehall than the blues and funk that anchor hip-hop. (So alien does it sound that grime even inspired an embarrassing campaign among music journalists and bloggers to poetically convey the sound with words, first place here given to Sasha Frere-Jones for a description appearing in The New Yorker: "like arguments between two implacable robot telemarketers.") While an intrinsic part of the grime scene, Wiley is hardly inaccessible. He writes monster hooks which he then drives h