A record so good it'll make you Dizzee

When listening to Dizzee Rascal's first album, Boy In Da Corner, I have the distinct feeling that I am dancing in a seedy UK club smelling of beer, cigarettes and the sweat of 100 moving bodies. It is impossible to stop dancing. There is a frenzied air to the dancing, as if the song's subjects -- among them love (the unrequited teenage kind) and the threat of missed opportunities (the frighteningly real kind) -- are the reason we are all there, in that seedy club moving to the beat.\nOf Dizzee Rascal, it has been said that he is the future of UK Garage. The man to compliment Dizzee so lavishly? Mike Skinner, aka The Streets, whose album, Original Pirate Material, helped change the face of UK Garage with an innovative look at the dismal urban landscape of video games, marijuana and fast food. The endorsement is significant, and with Boy In Da Corner, Rascal, at only age eighteen, has garnered the attention to merit it. \nRascal uses his age and his quivering voice to make rhymes like "ain't no friendship here/it's just one big cycle here/round we go/if you love me let me know" particularly powerful. Rascal rhymes with conviction, whether he is wishing for more opportunities, "I plan to make my pay/put some away for an off-key day," or boasting, "definitely I hustle bad/definitely I graft/so you can chat anything you won't/cause I definitely will just laugh." \nThe best dance cut on the album, "Jus' a Rascal," features more straightforward production than other tracks and an operatic hook screaming, "he's jus' a rascal, Dizzee Rascal," while Dizzee rhymes with impressive speed. The album's production is eclectic and layered. The last track, "Do It!," simply features Oriental instrumentation, and "Fix Up, Look Sharp" boasts a looped bass drum upon which Dizzee's rhymes speed up, slow down and trample. It takes a mature artist to understand when simplicity is best; at the same time, Rascal has songs that are layered with bass-heavy dance beats and quirky computerized samples. \nRascal's combination of dance music and hip-hop is at once sentimental and dirty; slower tracks are transformed by his engagingly frenetic voice and his dance numbers are confounded with tales of pregnant teens and street fights.