The Sample: Symphony No. 7 In C Major, Op. 60 'Leningrad' Allegro Non Tropo - Dmitri 'Shosty-K' Shostakovich
In The Red Corner: Alles Neu - Peter Fox
In The Blue Corner: Ill Manors - Plan B
SO! What do we think? Shostakovich sampled by Peter Fox who in turn is sampled by Plan B sampling Shostakovich. An ouroborian (it's a word now, I've decided) trio of songs.
Alles Neu
Peter Fox is a German born rapper/dancehall artist. He's in the band Seeed (Germany's most popular reggae group). And half his face is paralysed.
In 2008 he put out his primate-centric album Stadtaffe (City Ape) lead by the Bundesvision 2009 winning and explosively Shosty-k sampling single Alles Neu.
HOW'S THE SAMPLE: It's intensely awesome. A thunderously electronic circus military march. Spiking violins having a tarantella fist fight with the Cold Steel Drumline. The strings underpin Fox's delivery in the verses perfectly. The sample works a little less well in the auto-tune-sung sections of the chorus, but then that's the weakest section of the song generally.
The lyrics. As a non German speaker I had no idea what was going on in this song. This wasn't helped (or perhaps made massively better) by a video involving millions of monkey musicians, violent omelette making, groove busting washer women and clothing catapult trash cans. Even having looked up a translation it still doesn't make an enormous amount of sense, but it works as a string of self aggrandising non-sequiturs. For example the first two lines of the song: 'I burn my studio, snort ash like coke. I slay my goldfish, bury him in the courtyard.'
Yes. Just- Yes.
iLL Manors
Acousti-grime rapper and soul singer Plan B has sampled Alles Neu for his latest single iLL Manors.
iLL Manors is the song sharpened tip of the socially conscious spear Plan B is aiming to bring down upon Britain. The…shaft? Let's go with shaft. The shaft of said spear being his film also titled iLL Manors.
HOW'S THE SAMPLE: It's intensely awesome. A thunderously electronic circus military march. Spiking violins… Wait. Sorry, forgot which song I was listening to for a moment. The Shosty-K sample sounds great, but I can't help but feel that's because Alles Neu sounds great. The drum beats have been swapped out for slightly dubbier models, but in the scheme of things you'd be forgiven for thinking this was the English speaking remake of Alles Neu.
The one portion of the track which has really changed is the chorus, but it hasn't been handled gracefully. A dragging drum roll leads into the new section to cover the transition but it still sounds like two songs have been sello-taped together. That being said the sample sounds fucking excellent, it just doesn't do enough to differentiate itself from the song which came before it.
iLL Manors is being hailed as one of the all time great protest songs (which must in part be due to the fact that mainstream acts rarely, if ever, sing protest songs anymore). I'm not sure it's one for the history books, but I don't dislike it either. The song works, has an excellent swagger, and (though I think a few too many layers need to be peeled back to get to it) an important social message. Where I run into trouble is the video.
Plan B is critical of the media portrayal of the London riots and more broadly the portrayal of working class youth culture. This is fine. Hell, this is right. I agree with him. We are in agreement. He does this by satirising and critiquing the image which has been created by the media in the lyrics of iLL Manors.
The video however is gorging itself on it's own cake. It fetishizes the images it's supposed to be satirising. I don't feel a sense of grim horror and didactic edification (which sounds so endlessly lame in this context but stay with me), I just think damn that's a snappy and cool video. Imeanohmygawd did you see that bit where the molotov blows up the car and they all dance around its flaming husk? Who the hell DOESN'T want to do that? It muddies the waters for me as to what Plan B is trying to say. I get his intent, but the execution is all wrong.
So who's the winner? I'm going to give the nod to Alles Neu largely because it used the sample brilliantly the first time round and iLL Manors hasn't built upon it. Both songs sound great, and in the scheme of things iLL Manors will likely prove to be the more Important-with-a-capital-I-song. But only one of them contains rhymes about killing goldfish over a classical music sample. In my heart of hearts, I know which one I need to hear again right now.
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