The London electronic bass music production duo Chase & Status, aka Saul Milton (Chase) and Will Kennard (Status), have announced their new London Bars series. With the announcement, they shared a new track entitled "Funny," featuring Frisco. The track and the entire series is being released via Chase & Status' label, MTA Records. Listen to the track and watch its official video via the artists' YouTube below.
The new track premiered as a world exclusive on Mistajam's BBC Radio 1Xtra show Wednesday evening.
Tonight at 8pm, #InboxFresh comes from the mighty @chaseandstatus Feat. @BigFris. Make sure you lock in, it's BIG! pic.twitter.com/UkpqrS2TPF
— BBC Radio 1Xtra (@1Xtra) November 5, 2015
The new track is only the first installment of a series which, as Your EDM reports, sets out to feature some of the best MCs of the UK grime scene. "Funny" shines the spotlight on Frisco, an MC affiliated with BBK, or Boy Better Know, the English grime crew and record label. The track proves to be a perfect introduction to the series, particularly when Frisco raps "when they said that grime is dead I couldn't stop laughing, I found that sh*t so funny."
Although grime has gained more visibility since Kanye's performance at the Brit Awards earlier this year during which he invited a whole posse of UK's finest MCs to perform "All Day" with him, the genre has historically been a thing of the underground, once relegated to UK pirate radio. In recent years the genre has trickled from its East London home, and has even been reconceived by artists like Texas-based Rabit as something purely instrumental and atmospheric. It's clear that Chase & Status' project intends to get back to the genre's MC-driven roots where grime is considered more of a movement than a musical classification.
"Funny" marks the duo's first release since 2013's full-length album entitled Brand New Machine, which plays like a history lesson in the duo's musical interests and is certainly a nod to the bass-driven parties of the UK's underground in the 90s. By the time Brand New Machine had dropped, they were already renowned for their drum'n'bass production—2011's No More Idols had gone triple-platinum, making the duo synonymous with UK bass music.
Chase & Status tend to take the best parts of drum'n'bass, dubstep, garage and grime, and together, with some of the best MCs in the UK, can get any crowd going whether we're talking a tiny hole-in-the-wall club packed with sweaty superfans or the main stage at international multi-day festivals featuring headliners that run the whole gambit of genres. Listen to their 2012 BBC1 Essential Mix, below.
