Junglist

by Two Fingas

  Craig might have some but what I’ve seen of him lately ain’t inspiring no confidence. He looks mash up, totally and utterly. Biggie’ll surely have some. He’s a top-of-the-line dope fiend. Me and Biggie get on fine. I hate being in a dance and there is no chance, not even a smell of getting a puff, unless you look like some poor ass nigga looking to blag some off people you don’t know. Because you know when you don’t have any everyone else’ll be drowning in the stuff. The air’ll be thick with that hard pungent smell that slides up your nostrils and dances along the back of your throat. You can smell it and feel it and your being slips into that blowback frame of mind. When it starts to hallucinate and reminisce over what it’s like to get stoned. Stoned, high, blunted. When you drag deep and the top of your head goes cold and light and you just feel like nothing can touch you. That if you had the chance this is the way you would feel all the time. This state between conscious thought and unconscious being. Light and strong, powerful yet inert. Just damn mellow. When the beat’s rolling you as you drown in the wave of bass, letting it wash you where it will, then the spliff glows red in your fingertips and you don’t need anything else. Free up with the freeness.

  When I was sixteen and clean living — no smoking, no drinking, no sex and definitely no drugs — there were three youts in my year who would smoke all the time. Smoke and smoke, till their eyes were red raw. The joke was that every time a teacher would ask where they were (when they’d be puffing away in the back field) we’d say that they were catching the red eye. They used to puff hard and vigorously and every time I’d see them I’d wonder what it was like. Will I cough? Is it rough on your throat? How long do I inhale for? Questions spinning in my head, like a cannon about to explode, all you needed was to light the fuse. All night you’d see the red glow illuminating them as they stood under some trees by the gate. Smoking till they were red-eyed and senseless. I used to catch the same bus with them and they’d always burn at the back. There it was. On the back of the 133 going to Brixton. Craig, Q and Biggie casually brought me in and now I smoke up storms like the Method Man.

  Legitimise now so I can stop getting hassle from the radii. I remember when I was in Amsterdam. They didn’t haul you up over there. Me and Craig we’d sit in the cafe and smoke like there was no tomorrow. Sit there puffing on these fat ass candlestick spliffs, getting stoned off the planet, then rushing to gulp down litres of orange juice when the urge for munchies was upon us. Our taste buds dry and parched after that heavy session. Then it’d be off to the nearest porno theatre, to catch a few flicks. When I came back I was deep into nasty sex. Riding a woman hard, not caring, out to hurt her. Ramming into her like no man’s business. It got on top of me for a while, all the stuff I’d been trying to hold inside, just came out in a rush. My brush with love opened me up to an emotional minefield and I couldn’t handle it. Fuck I’m getting maudlin. Next thing I’ll be crying in my beer and saying:

  — I wuz robbed, man. Robbed of my youth, my energy, my life.

  I look back into myself and see how my train of thought has moved from one peak to another through and I’m not going to let it get in my way. Pull myself together, back from the brink of the abyss of depression and look past into the night, my saviour. Watch the night stream past the window, my cloak, my saviour, hiding me from those that would oppress me. Look up, crane my neck to see the moon, la Lune, mistress of the night, see her slip behind a bank of clouds, then to reappear in all her majestic glory, full and potent — no illusion.

  Silence reigns in our car. Q’s concentrating on his driving, even though he’s trying not to let it show — tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth, his brow furrowed. The only time he doesn’t look like he’s concentrating is when he’s talking to you or listening to music. I sit back and look again out of the windows. People on the streets, walking up and down, moving, talking, interacting. I turn on and feel the car jump around as the bass rolls free. An old 70s Cortina straight out of The Sweeney, behaving like a Low rider.

  — Sound Bwoy.

  REVOLVER

  I was in it from the beginning. Just a youth back then but that don’t mean shit now. Back when Jungle was still Break-Beat House or whatever the fuck you wanted to call it before it metamorphosed into Jungle. The one and only. Ragga Tekno, Jungle Techno, Ragga Jungle, Hardcore, Darkcore. The Dark Stuff, Ambient Jungle. All just labels to try and describe a feeling that transcends labels. Jungle is just something else. More than the sum of its myriad parts. It is the lifeblood of a city, an attitude, a way of life, a people. Jungle is and always will be a multi-cultural thing, but it is also about a Black identity, Black attitude, Black style and outlook. It’s about giving a voice to the urban generation left to rot in council estates, ghettoised neighbourhoods and schools that ain’t providing an education for shit. Jungle kickin ass and taking names. It run things, seen.

  I was there when Rave just went too fast. So fast that unless you were taking elephant-size wraps you weren’t gonna dance to shit and my friends would drag me to rave after rave after rave and I’d stand up and screw up my face, until they played two little tunes with a ragga sound and I’d jump up with the sound until it disappeared. Then Hardcore went underground and I went with it — went underground and evolved into Jungle — and all the ravers that were into Hardcore slid into Happy House or back to their Garage roots. Back to that false high, that false hope. That false love when your EEEEing off your face and then tripping off your nut and the music goes:

  DUFF!

  DUFF!

  DUFF!

  DUFF!

  When you love everyone and everyone’s your soulmate, the closest person to you in the entire universe. Arms flying, elbows swinging. All feet stamping on the DUFF! All the people into it. Eyes wild, smiles strapped to their faces. House: that middle-class bullshit. So boring and predictable, so irredeemably foul in its twisting off the bassline, turning it into that abomination of a metronome. A Black music form watered down and turned into an acceptable, even positively welcomed form. Taken over by those who desire to have music that they can dance too and always look like they have rhythm. House — I hate to say it, I sound like my mother — but it sounds like so much fuckin’ noise. I stand in there and it turns my heart cold, my face screwed up, my body still, feeling the melody wanting to take me up and away from this purgatory. But it can’t, it can’t get past the bassline. My mind — and so my body — refuses to let it flow through me. Like a rock in the surging waves, letting it all just run past, leaving me smooth and unruffled. Not to say I haven’t enjoyed a House rave. I have, but then I’ve been speeding like the proverbial nutter. I’ve never liked the knowledge that I have to take a drug to enhance my enjoyment of music and make myself want to dance. To enjoy myself I have to take E or speed or a bit of a trip or all of the above.

  I like to smoke, who doesn’t? But pulling on the herb is mellow, more likely to get you to sit down than to dance all night. So I’m caught in the middle with friends into a sound and a scene that ain’t saying shit and saying:

  — We can’t dance to Jungle.

  — It’s too fast.

  — It’s just fucking depressing.

  — It’s noise, just noise. It sounds like fucking techno.

  — We don’t like the atmosphere.

  — All those Raggas.

  Meaning there’s too many Black people there. I don’t take it personal, it’s just what they’ve been socialised into thinking; one Black person might be alright but a mass dance and all that dark, depressing, dangerous Black music? No way, not this boy.

  House is a false sound, a false consciousness, a false sense of reality. The people who listen to it, enjoy it and dance to it, want to lose their worries and fears in the mere act of dancing. But Jungle’s truer to humanity’s real roots. It cuts away the falseness, gives you the ups and the downs, the dark and the light. White is good, Black is bad/evil. Therefore House is good and God and Jungle is bad and dark. The dark forces of those Jungle bunnie
s come to get us. Anything that involves more than one Black person, that is aimed at other Black people, is inherently dangerous. Because it hasn’t been reconstructed and regurgitated for the white mass culture. Top of the Pops. Imagine every pop tune of the next year coming with a Jungle mix. Whitewash.

  But I ain’t bitter, so I let it go ‘cause I always wanted to be a DJ. You know, dictate what people listen to, make them listen to what you like, and then they like and listen to what you listen to. That’s the major thing, getting others to love and dance to what you love. But it’s not only that but also the actual act of DJing, the technical skill that you have to acquire to be any good. Being able to mix, to scratch, to know which song to put where and how to keep the crowd reaching for that space, that place where you feel like you could dance forever and never stop.

  My job is to make the music as seamless as possible, so that it seems as if every song was made with the specific purpose to be played after the one before. Basically I’m here to make the crowd forget I’m there, to disappear from their conscious thoughts. The only time people know you exist is when you fuck up or when they hail for the rewind after you drop some roughass tune. The first you pray never happens. The second you wish could happen all the time. That’s why you practice. You want that feeling of elation, when the hands go up and the yells and the whistles surround you and everyone’s screaming for the rewind. That’s what you go out and spend big amounts of money on records for.

  So I drop the needle into the groove, hand on the disc, pull it back, slide it forward, fingers taut, but relaxed as well. Practice has made me nonchalant, devil-may-care. Stand there feet apart, weight balanced as I lean, head clamped to my neck, the slim body of the phone between shoulder and head. Hear the soft sounds of the other record coming through, change the pitch, slide it with my nail, watch the green light flicker then fade away. The glowing light defining the deck as it spins, black digits blurring into one long line. Switch the record, lift, spin it quickly, slip it back on. Needle into the groove. Windows closing, closing; change pitch, shift back, once… twice, beat on beat, find the right moment. Slam it. Quicksilver movement of the wrist and it’s in, the beat is booming. Jungle.

  CONVERSATIONS IN A VACUUM

  Sitting to the side of Q. The night sailing past, the bass booming around us. Watch the kerb. I’m screwed up tight in my seat, trying not to yell out as the car thunders around corner after corner. Q with his hand at the top of the steering wheel, pretending he’s one of the Dukes of Hazard or dreaming of being Nigel Mansell. His foot hard on the accelerator, pushing the car really hard. So he’s got a licence, but he’s not insured on the old dear’s Cortina. She takes it on faith that he drives like she does, very slowly and carefully. I’ve got a licence. OK, if I took my test I’d have a licence, but I’ve been driving for as long as I can remember. Well, as long as I can remember since I was twelve. To take my mind off the fact that Q could kill me at any moment — and me having dirty underwear on. Mum’s always telling me to change ‘em. “Put on new underwear, if you have an accident I don’t want the doctors seeing your dirty draws and making me ashamed.” When she says this she also pulls out Grandma being ashamed when Grandad had his stroke and was taken to hospital, rather than remembering the pain and grief that she felt, all Granny can remember is the dirty pants that they pulled off him before they operated on him. Got to drag my mind off that thought. Not my dirty underwear, but slamming into another car at upwards of 50 mph. What to do, what to do? With nothing else in the air I start a conversation.

  — So who you going out with now?

  — Her name’s Emily.

  — White or Black?

  Q looks at me hard. I smile: I like getting under his skin. And hey you gotta’ know these things before events start taking on a life of their own.

  — She’s Black.

  — With a name like Emily. No way. Pure middle-class white trash I can smell it. Like bacon.

  I start sniffing like a pig and Q’s foot just twitches on the accelerator taking us just below 60.

  — Her name’s Emily Ngowurah, she’s Nigerian.

  Sharp intake of breath: Nigerian, slippery territory here, how to navigate it? I’ll just kick in the front door like I usually do.

  — Nigerian. Dodgy, very dodgy, heard bad things about ‘em.

  — Don’t even start. I don’t want to hear some long-winded rant on the merits of Amazonian women over Nigerian women, OK.

  I pause: pretend like I’m gonna’ let it go.

  — OK, so describe her to me. Short, tall, thin, fat, big breasts, wide nose? Come on, tell me.

  — She’s nice looking, very nice.

  — Fuck nice, describe her in intimate detail.

  Q leaves a gap in here as if he’s thinking. I know he’s just trying to fool me into shutting up so I ask the question he knows I’m always gonna’ ask any of the crew.

  — She giving you any?

  — I ain’t answering no coarse question from you.

  — Coarse? What’s coarse about it? I just want to know if you diggin’ it. How long you been going out with her?

  — About a month.

  — A month and you still ain’t getting any? You slippin’.

  — Like every girl you go out with you fuckin like rabbits on the first date?

  — Yeah, of course.

  I laugh. I know it’s absurd and so does he. Girls ain’t down for that unless you’re Biggie. Girls be throwin’ their panties at him, like confetti.

  — Okay so I ain’t Mr Casanova sex god himself, but it’s fun to dream. So why ain’t she giving you any?

  — I’m not discussing my sex life with you.

  — Oh you gettin’ all uppity on me. You sure ain’t gettin none. So if you ain’t gettin none, I suppose she ain’t licked it yet.

  — Fuck you. All the time you be going on about pussy this and pussy dat. Gettin’ pussy, licking pussy, banging pussy. Do you think about anything else?

  — What else is there to think about? Do you ever think about Caz?

  He’s gone deep there and I’ve got to pause to compose myself. I try not to think about her too much, it still hurts. Breaks me up and I can feel the tears hot and wet at the back of my eyes, that clogging feeling in my throat. Cassie of the soft hair and the all-enveloping love. I hurt her so many times trying to love, trying to be with her. I let it go and bring myself back to the conversation at hand. Q thinks he broken free, but I rope him back in with another subject he ain’t too quick about answering on.

  — So if you ain’t getting any, you wanking then?

  — What is it with you? I do not wank. I have never wanked, will never wank. Save the seed.

  — Fuck all of that eastern philosophy. If she ain’t giving you none it’s back to the old five-knuckle shuffle.

  — No discipline, no self-control.

  — Oh give it up, wanking’s as natural as breathing. You wake up, you wank, you get out of bed feeling good and go about your day. Wanking’s a natural release. Nothing nasty or perverse about it.

  — If you ain’t got it in your hand, you’re trying to get it into a girl’s hand. All that time you spend wanking you could be out doing something useful.

  — Something like what, signing on the dole? Go on tell me, be my mother.

  — Go back into education, get a degree, get a job, earn some money instead of just spending it. You’ve got a brain: use it.

  — All I want is a conversation and I get a sermon from Q the Pious.

  — You can’t censor what I think and you asked me to tell you so I did.

  Silence reigns again. Q’s driving silent again. His face screwed up. I’m hunched in my seat watching him, watching the road. This is supposed to be a fun weekend. Party all night, party all day. Get blunted, if I can get some gear and watch the honeys wine up their wais. I could be proud and let the silence stretch and stretch and stretch. Taut and pregnant. But I hate those, when everyone’s in the car sitting in silence ju
st watching the lights go by. So Ì break it.

  — We’re supposed to be enjoying ourselves. I didn’t get into this car to argue with you. I got in this car so we could pick up Biggie and go listen to some Jungle. Agreed?

  — Agreed.

  So saying, I turn up the volume again to make talking impossible unless you’re telepathic, and let the bass flow pure and free like mineral water. Watch out world, here we come. Ready or not.

  BIGGIE

  When it come

  It come like a bloodclart heart attack.

  I turn down the radio. Locked into 105.3. Let the words flow over me like a gentle summer breeze. I’m the perfectionist. I create perfection. Perfection is all around me. To achieve perfection, I buy quality goods. Goods that last forever. None of that shite cheap stuff. Just ‘cause it costs a pound don’t mean you have to buy it. Go with-fuckin’-out, that’s one of my mottoes. If you don’t have enough money, deny yourself. Wait. Wait until you do, then you buy it. Get the best. The best is always in short supply and when it is available it costs more than you can afford. So I sit and wait. Just like the old man in kung-fu movies. Sitting and waiting for some young beaten-upon schmuck to come over and say Master teach me. Then I awake, crawl forth from my shell, and teach. Show the youth of today what it takes. And you know what it takes, it takes perfection. Technique. In the end it all comes down to technique. If your technique is weak, you are not going anywhere. Technique is all. Only through technique is perfection attained.

  How do you write your name, hold a pen, put on your clothes? Break a movement, an action, down into its component parts. Find the most efficient way between those points. The smoothest route, the route which takes the least energy, the least effort, the route that looks good. Combine them and you have perfection. Only through a breaking-down of components to their basic parts can you find out how to achieve alignment. The beginnings of perfection. Perfection in all its many forms. That is what I strive for in everything I do. Perfection. Write it down, see how the letters form to make that single solitary word. Perfection.