Review: Chipmunk – League of my Own (Alwayz)
Even with Skepta’s album finally coming out and Durrty Goodz coming back from the dead to make the scene’s best record since Boy In Da Corner, it’s Chipmunk who plenty of people will cite as 2007’s true grime success story. Early in the year the sixteen year old MC from North London was bubbling under the surface with four mixtapes to his name (two solo, and two as part of the Motivation Music series – still available to download from his myspace). But when Wiley recruited him to his Eskibeat collective and got him exposure on Tim Westwood and Logan Sama’s radio shows, it gave Chipmunk a ball that he’s yet to stop running with. After that mad weekend in September when Rinse FM suddenly became flooded with grime again (at least until they temporarily banned MCs from the station), it wasn’t Ghetto and Skepta’s clash that people were raving about, it was Chipmunk sparring with Nasty Crew’s Griminal earlier in the show and upstaging the veterans.
As a result of all the hype, League of My Own has become one of the year’s most anticipated mixtapes, and although it’s not as good as the year’s two biggest grime releases (the aforementioned Skepta and Goodz records – forget Dizzee), it’s still well worth getting. You get the impression Chipmunk’s trying to make a solid mixtape before he makes a blow-away album; he never sounds like he’s exerting himself to the extent he did on Ghetto’s recent birthday set, but there are no bad songs here. The production rarely gets heavy, and when it does (the Wiley-produced ‘Consistent’), Chipmunk can sound like he’s trying a bit too hard to stay composed and not get carried away with the beat. On the other hand, his collected flow sounds great over the Maniac-produced ‘How I Stay’, and when faced with the country-sampling ‘Versatile Style’- the sort of banana skin that plenty of more experienced MCs would sound gash over- he gets all drawly and moulds his style to fit the tune perfectly.
Whereas plenty of grime MCs in the last few years have made a name for themselves on radio and then blown the hype with an anti-climatic mixtape (or even worse, promised one for months and disappeared), Chipmunk’s made a consistent, very listenable record that’s both good in its own right, and should provide a great springboard for his next release. That’s one of the great things about Chip: he’s one of the few guys in grime that you know won’t leave you waiting too long.
