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The best thing has to be Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip's 'Thou Shalt Always Kill'. No song comes close for pinpoint accuracy. It deserves song of the year purely for the line, 'Thou shalt not question Stephen Fry.' It also contains possibly my favourite lyric ever: 'Thou shalt not watch Hollyoaks.'
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Thou Shalt Always Kill was making plenty of noise before it hit digital stores in April, and the strength of it has sent Scroobius Pip (MC) and Dan Le Sac (Producer) to nearly every major European festival this year. Through this Electronica/Hip-Hop/Spoken Word hybrid, Scroobius Pip leads a poetic assault on war, pop culture, and Rock music, all with a tongue-in-cheek delivery that contradicts itself at every turn. Coke, Nestle, NME, and a slew of others get the Thou Shalt Not treatment.
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These former HMV employees crank up the adrenaline through a one-two punch of Pip’s lecturing rhymes, which deliver a snobby, anti-hipster but still hop manifesto over top of what sounds like a “big beat” right out of 1996. Somebody get Fatboy Slim and the rest of the Skint crew on the phone — their careers may just have a second wind after all!
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These cheeky Brits do Moses about two dozen better with a slew of commandments skewering the hipster flock. Among them: "Thou shall not read NME" and "Thou shall not wish your girlfriend was a freak like me." The electro novelty tune peaks with a call and (lack of) response: "When I say 'hey,' thou shalt not say 'ho'! "
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Good news: The streaming one-liners (“Thou shall not judge Lethal Weapon by Danny Glover”) hit more often than not.
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On this novelty hit, a British dude who looks like Matisyahu and sounds like the Streets disses pop culture, rapping "Thou shalt not shake it like a Polaroid picture!/Thou shalt not wish your girlfriend was a freak like me!"
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But shalt thou also buy this hot track, then decide it’s a novelty hit?
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If the idea of a poet/MC from Reading delivering a demented little harangue on modern life and pop culture, while breakbeats squelch and Casio keyboards squiggle sounds suspiciously like novelty territory, the wit and passion in Scroobius' sermon lift it beyond.
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Sounds a bit like a smart-arsed British take on LCD Soundsystem’s 'Losing My Edge,' only with a faltering sense of irony and an overkeening need to lunge at you while squawking “do I shock yooou?” in a privileged fashion-student voice.
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"Arctic Monkeys? Just a band!" Modern life is rubbish, or at least it is according to this whipsmart rapper.
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Is it really long enough after “Losing My Edge” that this can be done again? The whole hipster-of-the-year campaign stump over tinny electro beats thing? I guess it is.
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I can’t tell if this is the greatest novelty song ever or legitimate hipster fodder for months/weeks (more like days) to come.
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Basically, the sum of everything amusing written in the “blogosphere” in about 48 hours, over a blippy beat.
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Scroobius Pip, you've just written the Track Of The Year. Thou shalt buy this song and listen to it every day until the Sun swallows the Earth.
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One of this years hottest unsigned tracks has now been translated into the video medium. Good for those who need a visual image to understand the English accent.
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It's pretty addictive, thanks to Dan Le Sac's instantly infectious 8-bit backing track and the way that Pip (or can we call him Scroobius?) sounds like what would happen if a crazed preacher suddenly turned into the crankiest music blogger ever.
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Between Le Sac's sproingy electronic textures and the song's middle verse, wherein Pip lays everyone from the Beatles to Radiohead to waste by soberly reminding us they were all "just a band," there's loads to like here.
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