Last night, the BFI hosted a screening of the final three episodes of Dubplate Drama, the street-up Channel 4 drama following a London MC (played by real-life rapper Shystie), where viewers vote on the cliff-hanger dilemma which ends each episode. Instead of the usual clientele, the cinema was packed with girls wearing their slicked-back hair with razor-sharp kiss curls and teenage boys in diamond studs and big coats who laughed and brapped their way through the screening.
'Look, there's Big Narstie!' giggled two girls as they shuffled to their seats, pointing at the rapper who appeared in the show alongside a host of underground heroes, and whose free mixtape What's The Story Brixton Glory saw the outsized rapper reworking Oasis and James Blunt. As well as being an excellent showcase for the genuine talent lurking in Britain's (online and FM) pirate radio stations it's a brilliant example of youth TV using music properly.
I nearly threw the Skins soundtrack CD at the wall when I noticed that it included Shuggie Otis' 'Aht Uh Mi Hed' but that's because my love for the song was mirrored inversely by how terrible I thought the show was. But Dubplate throws together live performances and on-point incidental music in a way that makes perfect sense. I have to admit some vested interest here, as I wrote the sleevenotes for Dubstep Drama, the accompanying compilation album, but my point stands: the show uses music to amplify the action, not to provide wowy compilation options.
Dubplate's soundtrack contains the moody, atmospheric hyper-urban music that the characters would be listening to, and because it's set in the present day (something youth TV's generally been bad at) it also acts as an accurate record of what's happening in UK music. Which is essentially that grime's DIY ethic is still propelling our music culture forwards and that someone needs to commission a bunch of dubstep artists like Skream and Benga to score the next series of The Bill.
