All the swingings & singings of YouTube and beyond.
‘Y.B.G.’ – DJ Rokk & Dean Atta
DJ Rokk is a London based DJ/producer and resident DJ at the Dalston Superstore night ‘Body Talk’. Dean Atta is a young gay poet, often to be found performing on the spoken word scene in London and Brighton.
When Atta sent his spoken word album to Rokk, the poetic track that really stood out for the DJ was ‘Young, Black and Gay’ which he listened to on repeat. Feeling that it was deserving of a wider audience, he decided to put it to music.
Thus, ‘Y.B.G.’ was produced. An infectious, stylishly insidious beat leads into Atta’s heavily vocoded words. ‘My people are many and few,’ states a deep, strange, powerful voice, ‘subdivisions of me and you / substantial people sometimes called subhuman / negroes, faggots and all that use them.’ Through a series of builds the track rises to the chorus: ‘Don’t think your rights came over night.’
As this mantra is repeated with the syllables etched to their backing beats the meaning of the words is laden yet further by their music.
It’s an intriguing, and wonderful experience. What Rokk has produced here with the intelligence and vitality of Atta’s words, is a track that you could hear out in a club, or even in the background on the radio. Then suddenly the lyrics might strike a chord in your brain, you might listen to it more intimately and find a message of even more substance amongst the eminently listenable style.
The excellent video for this track is worth watching on its own accord, but what is additionally exciting about ‘Y.B.G.’ is that this may pave the way for more collaborations of this kind. Dance as a genre is intelligent and commands some great musical minds in its production.
Therefore it deserves more from its lyricism then simply inane platitudes about searching for ‘love’ and sex. Spoken word deserves to be listened to more, outside its sometime prison of mother poetry. Here, we have the start of an innovative blend.
• www.deanatta.co.uk
• www.soundcloud.com/rokkmail/ybg-young-black-gay/
