In the nineties a series of hiphop bad girls appeared, not afraid to be compared with the men, rapwise or streetwise. These girls where hard as rocks, made just as hard tunes as anyone else, weren’t afraid to celebrate their sexuality, nor afraid to beat up some skank in the beauty parlor (for which Foxy eventually got a year in pen). In New York you had Lil’Kim and Foxy Brown. In the south Master P’s No Limit gave us Mia X and Mercedes, paving the way for artist like Gangsta Boo,”da baddest bitch” Trina and Khia. Since then this unfortunately seems to have disappeared. Now i’m not gonna claim that i’ve been looking that hard, but lately it seems most girls have been dancing and singing softly on the screen, rather than boasting about their gangsta cred.
The hope that this could be the return of the self confident bad bitch, and the excellent production credits, is what made me give a chance to Mz Bratt’s Give It To Them Vol.2. A mistake as it turned out.
First thing that should be noted about this is it’s a free download, which i guess is the reason that it’s a mixed cd with short versions of the originals and a seriously annoying Mz Bratt talking all over it. The idea i guess i to give some previews and get some hype before the real release.
Secondly; unfortunately Mz Bratt is no bad bitch on this release. Instead she seems to have chosen to go the way of Tinchy stryder and Chipmunk, dancey, electro, RnB, aimed i suppose for the charts. Not aimed at me at at least. This formula takes up most of the mixtape. Whether this is good or bad tunes for the genre i couldn’t say. They are not made me for me. They sound kind of crappy, but so does most of that music to my ears.
Three tunes stand out though. “Warning” is ok, but mostly because of Bruza and Tinie Tempah, “This Year” with Griminal is good, at least, it’s grime. And “Best Crawler freestyle” with Bruza is a monster. But this is really Terror Danjah proving he can bang out a great tune when he wants to.
The conclusion must be, Mz Bratt is no grime princess, and no Gangsta Boo. She’s mediocre, middle of the road, hoping for the charts and loosing evertything interesting about herself in the process. I will have to look for my grime elsewhere and i will have to look for the bad bitch somewhere else as well. Except for “Best crawler” one thing about this mixtape make me really happy and that is Mz Bratt letting us now Bruza will have a cd out soon.
More on: http://cakedwithdirt.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/not-such-a-bad-bitch-mz-bratt-give-it-to-them-vol-2-review/
