The Big Daddy
Leader line: The Skinny lowdown on Big Dada records<br/>Pull Quote: ""Are you ready to head into the future?""
| 11 Apr 2007
Dada was a philosophical movement that flourished during WWI and sought to declare war on art, by making more art. They would do such wacky things as "exhibit" a coat rack by a gallery door and laugh at the foolish so-called art lovers who actually used it as a coat rack. The idea of found garbage as art and sonic montages can be traced back to these thinkers. So it's no huge leap of the imagination to draw a lineage down to hip-hop with its palette that spans all genres and sounds, an ability to draw upon the mundane and everyday to make art, and the desire to go against and advance tradition by acting within it.
As a more MC-centric imprint of the more tripped-out-hop Ninja Tunes, Big Dada was launched in 1997 by hip-hop writer Will Ashon with a 12" collaboration between Luke Vibert and Juice Aleem, soon followed by an equally defining compilation, Black Whole Styles. Perhaps best known for Roots Manuva and Ty, Big Dada is, for many, a stable of the best hip-hop being produced in the UK right now: loud, brash, poetic, moving, and thoroughly and without contrivance, British. But Big Dada also releases some of the best music on the outer limits of hip-hop as well, regardless of country of origin.
After Company Flow, Big Jus teamed up with Plague Language's Orko the Cycotic Alien to form Nephelim Modulation Systems, a dense, claustrophobic political barrage whose two albums on Big Dada are utterly essential for any thinking being. Likewise, on loan from Anticon, cLOUDEAD's time-stretched and obtuse trip-hop goes far beyond anything that preceded it, and creates a genuinely new music that is psychedelic, surreal, lyrical and sublime. Parisian vegetable-headed lunatics TTC are another groundbreaking group on the imprint, who are one of the few French hip-hop groups worth a listen (true fact!). And you can't get a better shout out to dada ideals than calling an album Ceci n'est pas un Disque. In a day when genuine, intelligent hip-hop is becoming increasingly eclipsed by the money making homoeroticisms of non-entities such as 50 cent, hip-hop is in dire need of spaces in which to deconstruct, rebuild and heal itself, and Big Dada is a perfectly purpose built playground. Or as Big Jus asks on Woe to Thee O Land Whose King is a Child, "Are you ready to head into the future?"
As a more MC-centric imprint of the more tripped-out-hop Ninja Tunes, Big Dada was launched in 1997 by hip-hop writer Will Ashon with a 12" collaboration between Luke Vibert and Juice Aleem, soon followed by an equally defining compilation, Black Whole Styles. Perhaps best known for Roots Manuva and Ty, Big Dada is, for many, a stable of the best hip-hop being produced in the UK right now: loud, brash, poetic, moving, and thoroughly and without contrivance, British. But Big Dada also releases some of the best music on the outer limits of hip-hop as well, regardless of country of origin.
After Company Flow, Big Jus teamed up with Plague Language's Orko the Cycotic Alien to form Nephelim Modulation Systems, a dense, claustrophobic political barrage whose two albums on Big Dada are utterly essential for any thinking being. Likewise, on loan from Anticon, cLOUDEAD's time-stretched and obtuse trip-hop goes far beyond anything that preceded it, and creates a genuinely new music that is psychedelic, surreal, lyrical and sublime. Parisian vegetable-headed lunatics TTC are another groundbreaking group on the imprint, who are one of the few French hip-hop groups worth a listen (true fact!). And you can't get a better shout out to dada ideals than calling an album Ceci n'est pas un Disque. In a day when genuine, intelligent hip-hop is becoming increasingly eclipsed by the money making homoeroticisms of non-entities such as 50 cent, hip-hop is in dire need of spaces in which to deconstruct, rebuild and heal itself, and Big Dada is a perfectly purpose built playground. Or as Big Jus asks on Woe to Thee O Land Whose King is a Child, "Are you ready to head into the future?"