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UK Twee & The American Gaze

This script was originally performed and published as an audio essay via the Side Missions project.

In Vassal State, Angus Hanton goes into forensic detail about the UK’s ‘special relationship’ with the US. He examines how romanticised British companies are being increasingly run through and captured by American ones, to the extent that one in ten Brits now work for a company owned on the other side of the Atlantic. Full disclosure, I’m one of them. To quote:

The British characters we assign to shops – Morrisons, the working-class supermarket from Bradford, or Gail’s, the blousy bakery from Hampstead – are fictions; both are owned by US private equity firms, as are the middle-class temples of Majestic Wine and Waterstones.

Every time you tap your card to pay for an American multinational’s product, the American payment provider skims off the top again. To put it all the way bluntly, behind a shaky facade the UK is fast-becoming a sad little island shamelessly selling off the family china.

Adam Curtis’ latest singular project for the BBC, Shifty, compiles reams of fever dream-inducing footage from the end of the last century into a contemptuous swipe at Britains establishment for not just accepting, but gleefully celebrating, the death of any identifiable vision for the country’s future. In its final part, we see a dithering assemblage of forgettable suits trying to decide what will go into the Millennium Dome’s 14 “zones”. The bankruptcy of ideas and decaying hollowness of collective values is laid bare. This vacuum is somehow stretched by the hands of Peter Mandelson who delivers an empty impression of delight down the phone upon noticing a stale projection on the wall of a toad-in-the-hole. He declares:

I absolutely love toad in the hole. I haven’t had it since I was about six.

Meanwhile, something a little bit eerie is happening in UK music. Donning my tinfoil hat for a quick second, I can’t shake the feeling that it’s all connected. Central Cee, pinkpantheress and AJ Tracey all released albums recently that caught my eye. On the cover of Central’s record, Can’t Rush Greatness, he sports a Union Jack beanie and holds up a chain to the camera, proudly bearing a piece dedicated to Queen Lizzie II. On Fancy That, pinkpantheress also decided to honour our deceased ruler, wearing Crown Jewels as part of a collage also featuring a red telephone box. That same phone box is sketched out on the front of AJ Tracey’s latest effort, Don’t Die Before You’re Dead, in front of a stylised Big Ben and Houses of Parliament enshrouded by blue dragons.

Who is this for? As a 30-something (white) male, I won’t try and pretend I’m the target audience here (full disclosure, my 11-year old second cousin from Canvey Island knows more Central Cee bars than me), but I’m convinced that this level of whiplash cannot be explained purely by ageing out. From where I’m sitting, the presentation evokes similar feelings to the experience of walking by those played out souvenir shops on Oxford Street. Locals intuitively understand that these places are for visitors and tourists that have internalised a reductive narrative about Britain from a distance. What is a quintessential souvenir, if not a comforting myth that the world is as simplistic as the stories you were told as a child?

This performance goes undeniably deeper than aesthetics. Pinkpantheress does her best Bridgerton cosplay in the video for Tonight, while Stateside details a long-distance love affair with an American. Central Cee explains how British life contrasts with American culture on GBP alongside 21 Savage. AJ Tracey namechecks Lupe Fiasco and 2Chainz on Imposter Syndrome, then Destiny’s Child and TLC on West Life. The age old adage of “breaking America” has been around for a long time, but this might be a distinctly new sub-genre. How did we get here?

Exit to America

There have always been contemporary British artists that became household names in the States, but the list is getting smaller and smaller. Here’s the artists that scored number ones on the Billboard Hot 100 in the 2010s:

Compare this to 1988 ALONE:

The fall-off is a madness. On top of this, the new crop of hitmakers have had to aggressively assimilate themselves into US culture so relentlessly that they were likely all over Harry & Meghan’s stateside soft-launch mood board. American artist features, release parties in LA and promo runs on the US late shows are the norm. Fuck a chokehold — Sony, Warner and Universal (all American-owned companies) have the pop music industry in the Walls of Jericho (tbh the wheels were set in motion back then).

Calvin Harris rode the ubiquitous, distinctly anti-regional wave of EDM in 2011 right to no. 1 with an all-timer Rihanna feature on We Found Love (BTW the follow-up, 2016’s This is What You Came For, has to be the flattest, most disrespectfully bland RiRi vocal ever put on a record) and then went out with Taylor Swift. Ed Sheeran might well be the UK’s answer to Drake — raw talent and relentless work ethic aside, he has proved equally adept and willing to shape-shift into whatever worldly sound the global pop market will reward. This is a skill in itself, but ultimately (like the others) the cost is that Ed is fundamentally dislocated from (and indirectly harms) the sustainable development of British art scenes and subculture.

While Adele is famously private, Mark Fisher identified why her time-travelling ability marked her out as special:

Take someone like the stupendously successful Adele: although her music is not marketed as retro, there is nothing that marks out her records as belonging to the 21st Century either. Like so much contemporary cultural production, Adele’s recordings are saturated with a vague but persistent feeling of the past without recalling any specific historical moment.

Adele is a singular, nostalgia-drenched powerhouse that has all but exited the UK music scene. She last released an album in 2021 (30, which was basically recorded by the start of 2020) and has limited touring since then to a two-year Las Vegas residency and ten shows at a purpose-built “Adele Arena” in Munich (plus a cringe-inducing carpool karaoke w/ James Corden) . She’s played one UK gig in eight years. None of this is intended as a critique of ability or judgement over the quality of the tunes. It’s an observation of the UK’s irrelevance in their work these days.

In many respects, today’s offer to musicians dreaming of landing it big in America is a simple one — remove your art from any distinctly British tradition, then we’ll talk. The door policy has become stricter, the relative rewards behind the door have ballooned while your local struggles to keep the lights on. Ed Sheeran (1) and Calvin Harris (2) are building entire villages in the UK with their winnings , while Adele is getting Architectural Digest write-ups about her four (4) gaffs in Beverly Hills, alone. These people have, quite literally, outgrown the UK and provided a winner-takes-all blueprint for the next gen.

Debuting UK Twee

The unabashed use of national symbols like the Union Jack, red phone box and classic tartan patterns in these album covers are giving pungent “twee” flavours. pinkpantheress’ predilection for britpop-inspired fashion is well-established, while Central’s Lizzie chain has it’s own GQ feature. The obvious reference point is 90’s “Cool Britannia” mainstream, which on one level operated as a window for the rest of the world to gaze upon Britishness as a quaint relic. On the other side of the mood board we’ve got The Great British Bake Off, Downton Abbey and Paddington, all outsized smashes (and cozy, non-threatening throwbacks) on the other side of the pond. It’s as if the point is to delicately package up British music into an all-inclusive holiday where you never have to touch the locals. Welcome to the comforting world of UK Twee.

Ground zero for the theory of UK Twee is Central Cee’s LA Leaker’s radio freestyle back in 2022. First off, he deftly establishes a familiarity with Los Angeles culture to make the hosts feel understood and at home.

They think I'm the one that can bridge the gap, huh
I came to LA to work, but first, where the bitches at?
They're tellin' me Tao or The Highlight Room

After making this peace offering, Central moves into the next phase of the freestyle which acts as a translation manual of common US parlance to the equivalent UK slang. Here’s an example:

You say "The trenches", we say "The ends"
You say "Y'all", we say "You lot"
You say "Restroom", we say "Toilet"

This structure demonstrates an understanding of the local patter and does the work of bridging the gap with his own parlance for the audience. In effect, he is masterfully edging the US listener into his world. The magic trick is complete with the final phase of the freestyle, where he rattles off American references to the host’s delight:

Stood outside of the night club, try make the trap line kick like Flight Club
All of my drip from Rodeo Drive, ain't none of this shit from China, huh
I don't want Nobu, I need me a yard food, so I'm in Inglewood

This freestyle was a masterstroke, by conventional metrics. He would go on to become the first British MC to make the Billboard top 10 albums chart with Can’t Rush Greatness. (To put this in perspective, Tinie Tempah had the best previous effort back in 2012, reaching no. 21. The Streets commercial crossover moment, A Grand Don’t Come for Free, went 4x platinum in the UK but only managed #82 on Billboard). It’s impossible to overstate how anomalous this level of mainstream US success is. In a later interview with the Guardian, he revealed the extent to which his writing style is explicitly engineered for foreign ears:

“I’ll tell you this in a mathematical way: when I rap, I never really end my lyrics on a word that could be misconstrued through my accent. I’ll never end saying ‘matter’ like ‘matt-uh’. If you” – an American – “sang ‘bitch is gay’, it would sound the same way how I say it,” he says with a grin.

Lost in Translation

Stormzy, Skepta and Giggs each did a similar circuit of US Hip Hop Radio around the time when they reached their respective “peak” US stock. Things went down differently, shall we say. In 2015, Hot 97’s Peter Rosenberg did a video with Stormzy on GRM Daily called “Bagel And Shots”. The pair take a drive around Shoreditch, eating bagels on Brick Lane, drinking shots at Boxpark and talking about transatlantic musical appeal. What strikes me watching this back now is the deference and permission that a young Stormzy gives, and the ease with which Rosenberg receives it:

Stormzy: Do you think it’s possible to keep it so British and cross-over, for you guys, over [there]?
Rosenberg: I think it’s going to happen. It’s going to take someone like you, or Skepta…let me put it this way, though. It either has to have a hook that for some reason doesn’t sound that British, or it has to be so different but funny, or amusing, or catchy in someway.

Unironically, Rosenberg brings up his love for The Office (UK) moments later, the prototypical example of a UK cultural phenomenon that had to be re-packaged into a brand-new show for American audiences. For anyone unaware, this bloke’s public persona is that of the backpack-rap lifer, the true music nerd “keeping one ear to the ground at all times”. Yet, he all but states that a British MC cannot land in the US with authentic British styles. Stormzy reads between the lines and lends an olive branch in the shape of Skepta’s NYC link-up with ASAP Bari, It Ain’t Safe. Pete provides positive reinforcement.

At the close of the video, Stormzy freestyles over Ruff Sqwad instrumental Pied Piper outside Shoreditch High Street station with none of the concessions Central Cee would make ten years later. In much the same way that Rosenberg rejects the notion of authentic British artistry, he declines to spit on the beat and exclaims “there’s not a chance I can get in this pocket”. Rather than demonstrating any curiosity about the unique origins and culture of Grime freestyles, he can’t help himself reach for a familiar US reference point in Battle Rap. The pair part ways and I’m convinced Pete Rosenberg never left Boxpark that day.

A few months later and Skepta is guesting on Peter Rosenberg’s Real Late Hot 97 radio show. It’s an odd affair. Skepta is palpably vulnerable, going into moving detail about the trauma he and a previous girlfriend experienced following a miscarriage, then dealing with the loss of a close friend. Rosenberg, to his credit, shares a genuinely touching anecdote about recounting memories of his wife’s deceased brother. Skep succinctly explains how music curiosity only seems to work in one direction:

Skepta: This is what people don’t know about you. This is the stuff that people laugh at you about.
Rosenberg: What were some of those? What did he [Virgil Abloh] tell you?
Skepta: Just like my accent and stuff, you get what I’m saying. But that’s your identity, so carry on doing what you’re doing. It might feel like people are always like “I can’t understand you” or “I don’t understand what he’s saying”, but, bro, we don’t understand what Young Thug says. Someone from New York speaks completely different to Chief Keef. I couldn’t understand what Keef was saying when he first started, but I liked the story. He was giving me the story so raw and so real that I had to, I want to know what he’s saying.

Can you spot the difference? These artists have genuine fans across the states, but these interactions were all characterised by an apparent lack of curiosity and glaring gaps in foundational knowledge you would expect from professionals. To a young hopeful taking all this in, a chilling crossroad emerges — carry on authentic British musical traditions and make peace with disappointing the immovable object of American taste, or lean in to quaint ideas of Britishness for suitable export.

Nothing Great About Britain

On a recent episode of Chuckie and Poet’s HC Podcast, Elijah sat on the sofa and had words for UK radio programming. In particular, the normalisation of BBC Radio 1Xtra (a UK taxpayer-funded station) filling daytime playlists with stale American-made music, culminating in the genuine horror of Joe Budden’s now twenty-year old Pump it Up getting spins at half nine (AM) on Mother’s Day, with chest. The conversation moves around discussions of US music monopolisation in spaces critical for British artist development, Sunday morning as a protected time for honouring heritage musical styles and the importance of fostering local music scenes through grassroots music policies in the rave. This analysis of the UK music industry, from primetime to grassroots, is crucial to understanding not where “growth” has stalled but what vital ground has been given up. The “middle class” of British music, much like the countries, is under attack.

Turn on the radio and it sounds like 20 years ago, it doesn’t even sound like ten. Now we’ve got like a generation that don’t even believe that you could have a radio that sounded mostly UK, or they haven’t been to a rave that’s mostly UK. The first things that we went to — [UK] Garage, Grime, all those things — yeah you might have a dancehall section, R&B and hip-hop, but you could have three hours, four hours of UK music. These people haven’t grown up in that environment, at all.

There is a US-backed cartel operating in most UK music venues as well. Live Nation UK, a subsidiary of Live Nation Entertainment, has a majority stake in Academy Music Group and Festival Republic. This means US-based control of your local 02 Academy and next trip to Wireless, Leeds and Reading festivals. The magic trick is complete with the US ownership of the major ticketing platform, Ticketmaster, who got to act as middle men for the national scramble to book a place at one of Oasis’ historic comeback gigs this summer. They gladly used this position to drink themselves silly at the well of nostalgia, cynically gouging prices under the guise of “dynamic pricing” in league with the Gallagher brothers. Wouldn’t you know it, another faustian bargain with the dollar for our records.

The promised “democratisation” of opportunity and tearing down of gatekeepers like radio through the proliferation of streaming has collapsed the middle class of music. In the book Mood Machine, Liz Pelly writes about Spotify’s insatiable desire to fill their playlists with “ghost artists” on their own books and to drive listeners away from listening to album’s as a a cohesive body of work. This process has led to the vandalisation of the LP, the most intimate and fullest expression of an artist’s interiority, in favour of vibes-based potpourri. Crucially, gate-keeping the platform and the playlists gives the DSPs a payola-like monopoly of their own.

Violent state repression of emergent youth culture, nestled in with industry bollocks, is the historic norm rather than an anomaly. The deadly ingredient slowly being dripped in to the cocktail for this generation is the collapse of music-making as a stable source of income, in and of itself, for enough people to constitute a sustainable scene that doesn’t have to capitulate at the first sign of a brand deal. Sugar-coating the state of things serves no one except the elites that benefit from this status quo. Major label bosses, tech execs and the 1% of artists in gilded cages don’t mind any of this. What’s the alternative?

DIY Will Never Die

Despite this grim mess of a picture I’ve gone and painted, there are shoots of hope to be found in the cracks. Jme is a one-of-one entrepreneur-to-the-bone unicorn, but can be found generously sharing the sauce while whipping it up over on Twitch/YouTube and, vitally, IRL. He’s marrying white-label-out-the-car-boot groundwork with Twitch streamer culture, rooted in a staunchly anti-streaming and open-source ethos. In practice, we have an artist putting together fully-fledged DIY roll-outs (e.g. star-shaped vinyl, pop-up shows, tape-deck air fresheners) for singles and giving you forensic behind-the-scenes detail (think screenshots of convos with vinyl distribution and photoshop walk-throughs to make custom foam hand designs). Jme has notably ignored conventional measures of “success” since day dot. He skipped joining Kanye West on stage at the Brit awards because he was hungry at the time Skepta received the Bat Signal at short notice. After a harsh examination of the deference of British culture and industry to the whims of US imperialism, it’s almost impossible to fathom the deliciousness of this irony. What can be understood, on a straightforward one, is that Jme continues to make art defiantly for himself and the scene he cares so much about.

Many will have cottoned on to Duval Timothy after hearing his undeniable handprints all over the distinct sonic palette of Kendrick Lamar’s 2022 album Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. Despite this most titanic of US bring-ins, it’s refreshingly apparent that he is not budging from his local philosophy to appease new audiences. Here’s a quote taken from a Pitchfork feature shortly after all the K Dot hubbub:

[Duval Timothy:] I love outsiders: little micro-cultures of musicians who don’t enter the system…It feels like there are less true subcultures now; things get associated with brands. But it’s cool when you hear something from a place.

Say it louder for those in the back. FROM A PLACE. The constant in all of this is that the mainstream doesn’t want to let things flourish on their own terms, in the places that it comes from. At this juncture, I have to shout out Sister Midnight, the first community-owned music venue in Lewisham (also the borough I live in). Democratic ownership is an explicit principle at the heart of this project that offers a vision for how cultural production can happen under a fundamentally non-exploitative model. I’m under no illusions that these grassroots initiatives are operating in a whole different league, sport even, in comparison to the centres of power up for discussion here. It’s time to abandon outdated models that have long been rigged, in favour of spending time building a local treasure you and your mates can build community in.

One of my favourite sounds in the world, one that I memorialised in an NTS radio mix, is a whiff of two-step pulsing from a passing white van to signal the true start of summer. It’s a sonic signature lovingly hand-stamped and made inside the M25. There are rituals and forms imprinted on us by place that need honouring and a healthy dose of gatekeeping. The vultures will show, Drake might even get a creepy tattoo of you, but Cashh put it best — if you want greener grass, you have to water where you are.

I feel bad for not mentioning at least one feel-good story about “giving back” that I found in my Sheeran/Harris/Adele hit job research. Harris is bankrolling a Dumfries pub that’s doing wonders for his hometown’s local music scene. This is likely chump change for our kid, but it’s a start on the road back to genuine patronage. To be honest, asking for better elites is barely one step removed from bootlicking but I have no shame and the bar is in hell right now. Is it too much to ask that DJs come back from their Ibiza/Vegas/Coachella summer and underwrite a local music venue for the winter?

Outro

As I was writing this, a whole drama played out in UK/US rap that was so perfectly on theme, I couldn’t make it up if I tried. It started with Skepta announcing his belief that UK rappers would win a hypothetical battle versus the Americans. This rallying cry conjured up the sum total of a Joyner Lucas response, followed by a series of rapid-fire disses from Skepta himself, Novelist and Big Zuu. For me, by far the most interesting contribution came from Ambush, who floated over a Preditah flip of Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us while turning fire directly at his Grime compatriots for giving any oxygen to this debacle. In the process, he summarised why I bothered to write about this stuff better than I ever could:

Really can’t fake this shit anymore, I don’t listen to American shit anymore

It’s overwhelming sometimes, the impossible American headlock. Maybe looking at it through the prism of popular music can act as a template for thinking critically about your own complicated relationship to American imperialism. If you take one thing away from here, just do a stock take of how many times in the day your life is mediated by the US. The art you enjoy making, the friends you love being with, the food you cook and share. Get vexed about it. Then put some work in to reclaim it. Just know that this doesn’t stop at the tunes.