Over a nice bowl of cornflakes yesterday morning I was treated to what seemed to be a horrendously unjustified dismissal of Pyrelli from Channel 4's Orange Unsigned Act show.
If Pyrelli hadn't put the work in and not given what seemed to me to be a pretty on point performance, this might be justified. But he did all that was asked of him. OK so the song he did was a little on the commercial side for my taste but it wasn't compromising his style and was a pretty good pick from his catalogue given the audience.
It seems obvious to me that the panel which is comprised of Lauren Leverne (a person whom I'm not overly pleased I share a portion of my name with), Alex James (former bassist of Blur) and Simon Gavin (the only one which actually does this for a living) really had no idea what to make of the man. In the 21st century it seemed like we have three supposed music experts who really have no understanding of Hip Hop, one of the biggest global selling genre's of the last ten years.
This was demonstrated by Alex James' criticism of Pyrelli for having scratching in his song because it was a barrier to anyone taking him seriously. It's 2008, is he really serious? He then proceeded to talk over Pyrelli's DJ when he explained that scratching is a central part of Hip Hop and indeed Kanye West has A-Track, one of the worlds best cutters, on his payroll. The guy was just not interested in hearing it at all.
Someone has to go each week, that is the nature of these completions. However the criticism's fired at the other competitors were a lot more telling than what they had to say about Pyrelli. Hip Parade were chastised for not taking the competition seriously after performing with a hang-over, SleeperCell were told their performance was just plain week and Klaus Says Buy the Record was told his work sounding unfinished. Yet these guys all made it above what was a top to bottom professional and tight performance.
For years i have listened to rappers complain on and off record about the burdens of making it in the established music industry, but never hard I witnessed it broadcast on national television. It made the years of whinging i have heard seem justified. I'm still aghast that music executives do not understand this culture after 20 years. IT has been shown to be popular, it has been shown to be marketable on a global scale and above it all it has been shown to make money and yet there are still, those who's position is big enough to get them on a national music show, that don't understand it on even a base level.
Ironically it will probably do Pyrelli's career no harm at all. Before this programme he was a fairly well known rapper amongst Hip Hop heads in the UK and this will only have bought him to a new audience. He has already released one album independently, with a little help from Dan Greenpeace's All City label and I would suggest to him that he continue to do the same.
The future of Orange unsigned however is to continue serving up bland indie acts in an already over saturated market. I hope that works out for them.
Image by Mark Tighe
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