The Oxford English Dictionary … of ROCK

I love the English language. Even when I’m not speaking it, I use it for thinking or for writing a blog. But I’m not sure I love it as much as Sir James Murray, who constructed the Oxford English Dictionary in his garden shed at 78 Banbury Road.

Murray took historical usage, rather than any arbitrary notion of what counts as English, as the basis for choosing entries. As a result, the dictionary, currently about five times as fat as its French counterpart, is still updating, adding neologisms every three months. This is why, quarterly, following a “light-hearted think-piece” in the broadsheet press, we can arm ourselves with the fact that “Ghetto-fabulous is a real word now,” a comment which is sure to light up any dinner-party or private funeral.

My favourite words tend to be the rude ones. Used judiciously, they can spice up polite conversation. What’s new for fall? Cock-blocker:

cock-blocker n. coarse slang (orig. and chiefly U.S.) a person who cock-blocks

2004 R. BYRNES Trust Fund Boys 272 You're compounding things by being a cock-blocker.

Back to the point: OED is also my preferred tool for keeping up with the latest pop trends. NME and Pitchfork are constantly inventing new musical genres, but how am I to know what it all means, especially when Barrington Ennui, the bassist out of Burning Wednesday’s Veil, keeps saying his band isn’t really math-emo at all?

In a new series, maybe starting tomorrow, GMS casts a critical eye over the cutting-edge types of pop that youngsters are playing these days with their key-tars. Will ringtone rap get the OED seal of approval? Can glitch-tronica be defined? Any takers for Morrissey-esque? Can words describe the sheer um-ness of In Rainbows? You’ll have to wait and see.

Magnetic Fields – ‘All My Little Words’ (from 69 Love Songs)

Black Star – ‘Definition’ (from Mos Def and Talib Kweli are … Black Star)

Buy 69 Love Songs

Buy Black Star

'97 mentality

1997>2007

Exhibits D, E & F

Backpacker time, people ...

After a particularly fertile few years for mainstream and hardcore in the mid-90s, by 1997 I found the beats were getting a bit stale, and the suits a little shiny. Life After Death and Wu-Tang Forever were classics, but they weren’t Ready to Die or Enter the Wu-Tang. CNN and Big Pun kept it grimy, but they weren’t Nas, Jay or Mobb Deep. Along comes a lot of hipster-friendly indie-rap, much of it released on Rawkus Records, who put out the first Soundbombing comp in ’97.

I remember a lot of arguments back then weighing up the relative merits of Jurassic 5, Company Flow, and Black Star. Here are three classics to reignite that debate (not necessarily all from ’97, mind):

Company Flow – ‘End to End Burners’

Black Star – ‘What’s Beef?’ (live on the Dave Chappelle show)

Jurassic 5 – ‘Jurass Finish First’ (from Quality Control)

Come 2007, I think Co Flow won. J5 went off the boil and just split up (Passion of the Weiss has a nice tribute here). Mos Def continues to put out stinkers and feature in SUV ads. Kweli occasionally hits the mark. El-P’s about to release the album of the year, and is beefing with New Rawkus. But in 2007, I don’t know who, if anyone, would be the equivalents. The underground’s alive, thanks to the internets, but does anybody have the clout of these three, or of Rawkus? Little Brother? Lupe Fiasco? Only Jibbs, I think. Only Jibbs.