Beggars Belief, Beggars Can’t Be Choosers, Etc. Etc.

So the new Foreign Beggar single ‘Hit That Gash’ is starting to make waves across the blogoverse in preparation for the imminent album ‘drop’. And why not, after the urbane mix of lyrical genius and breezeblock-solid beats that was ‘Asylum Speakers’ and ‘Stray Point Agenda’? But wait! Why aren’t we going batshit with joy in a feverish fit of bodypopping delirium? Well, for starters the beat sounds like a Dalek dipped in amyl nitrate fondling a kickdrum outside a cheesy disco, which rolls around under a wheelbarrow full of tediously priapic Fiddy-esque “I’m so thugged up and blinged out and knee deep in the skeef” lyrics that you always thought the Beggar Boys were better than. ‘Hit That Gash’ isn’t bad per se, but after a three year wait it’s a long way from good – we haven’t been this disappointed since we found that turd in Grandpa’s cutlery drawer.

It’s also largely composed of French rapping and production, courtesy of Rouge A Levres. Which is a shame, because French rap is a bit rubbish it’s difficult to ‘dig’ what they are ‘spitting’. To make matters worse, in a feat of shit punnery almost as cringe-worthy as Public Enemy’s ‘New Whirl Odor’ (which becomes ‘New World Order’ if you scratch your head and squint at it for several hours), Foreign Beggars have sagely decided to call their next effort ‘United Colours Of Beggatron’, some lead-coated wordplay which revolves around a shit clothing line that may or may not have once considered putting RFID tracking chips in their clothes. Ho hum.

Speaking of hip hop, remember when Mark Ronson was Tim Westwood? We haven’t laughed this much since we found that turd in Grandpa’s cutlery drawer.

B-Side Sunday.

Oooooh Lordy, praise be! With the fire and righteous passion of a Southern Baptist minister confronting a bunch of cracked-up paedo heathens pissing on a comatose baby Jezuz outside a brothel, B-Side Sunday returns to dowse the congregation with servings of sonic absolution and musical atonement from pop’s forgotten undergrowth. Like the Good Samaritan, bad can often be the raw material for good, and B-Side Sunday stands as a consecrated platform for all those tracks that had the courage to stick it out on the flipside of those attention hogging, chart humping A-Sides. The meek shall inherit the earth…

This week the holy scriblitures that set down the sanctity of B-Side Sunday turn to focus their unerring gaze on one Orifice Vulgatron, MC with the unparalleled Foreign Beggars and general of all British hip hop that isn’t knee-gnawingly tedious or blinkered to the point of blindness. Boasting flows heavier than Fern Britton when she’s up on the bricks, this encapsulates Orifice’s consistent ability to deliver nothing less than pure, unfettered brilliance that explodes within seconds like an elephant in a microwave – all hidden beneath a beat that sounds like a playground full of ASBO kids who have had their Ritalin cut with speed pulling a piano apart. It’s the sort of haywire wit and scattergun hubris that sends Dizzee Rascal and Kano back to school with ‘D- Must Try Harder’ stamped across their foreheads. If it had been written by Eminem it would have gone to number one in more countries than actually exist.

Sure, it isn’t technically a B-Side (rather a off-cut from OV’s Dented Records print) but, like all the best religious ceremonies, B-Side Sunday contains a healthy amount of contradiction and pointlessness. So, whilst the choir boys duck out for a cheeky fag and the vicar sneaks another joyless bump of coke in the vestibule, enjoy a slice of twisted glee that’s more fun than a bull with a dwarf up its jacksy. Until next week, Amen.