Get Your Boom Baps Out! 28.06.11

Beyonce, Coldplay, U2, Chipmunk, Newton Faulkner, Kaiser Chiefs... Apparently the organisers of this years Glastonbury were determined to find something crapper than the weather to talk about, and, in the case of Bono, something more full of shit than the terminally haemorrhaging onsite toilets. Well done ladies and gentlemen, as I watched the coverage on television I mused quietly; you have excelled yourselves. So for all those wise people who have dry feet and a pocket full of money why not consider one of the following treats to help lighten your financial load!

The first little ray of sunshine to trickle over the rain soaked pastures of dear ole Blighty within the upcoming weeks is the new album from Lotek. The Australia dwelling, London MC, producer and all-round UK veteran returns to our sombre shores with his aptly titled International Rudeboy released through Firstword Records. Even if the sun refuses to do its thing, this clutch of dub, reggae, ska and general all round wobbly bass-inflected recordings is the perfect remedy to get your wobbly bits wobbling at your next summer barbecue. Which, I am aware, may very realistically take place indoors and with most of the family adorning headwear more suited to a bank job than a summertime cookout, but with these tunes and the likes of Jimmy Screech, Roots Manuva and the rest of the Banana Clan peoples involved it doesn't matter if your family are a bunch of pointy shoed indie rock clichés who only barbeque tofu, things are still splendid!

For those of you eagle-eared people (that should more accurately be owl or dog eared people, but the alliteration just isn't there) who managed to catch the abysmal audio faeces that is Chipmunk and Dappy's new single 'Spaceship' recently, fear not! There are still some considerate people out there who when left alone with a microphone string words together that actually make sense. One of those such folk is Verb T, who just released the Self Less EP, following up the equally self-centered Self Ish EP and his vastly underrated longplayer of last year Serious Games. The new batch of tracks contains the sort of intricate, self examining rhymes you'd expect from a man called Verbs and the production steps the game up nicely to make this a fat free clutch of tunes. From the frank lyrical observations of 'Lukewarm Buzz' to the wonderfully hazy grooves of 'Day At The Seaside' which I can only hope was created through accidentally leaving Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson smoked out at the helm of a percussion set, Verb T stays true to his lyric and doesn't try to serve you "steak on a paper plate". This man has been overlooked for long enough, let's all help get that lukewarm hype boiling over.

Finally this roundup, to help battle the bitter tastes of yet another vapid amoeba of a rapper who has probably been clogging your radio, ipod, TV or however else you care to sample the words of Britain's talkative hip-hop community is the new single ‘Badman Riddim (Jump)’ from Vato Gonzalez & Foreign Beggars. Any hip-hop connoisseurs out there will no doubt know Foreign Beggars after nearly a decade of releases and hard graft, however less familiar folk may have seen them recently on E4 Music as the featured 'New Artist' with this track last week. A big well done to the ruthlessly efficient research team over at E4, but an even bigger hurrah for Gonzalez and the Beggars who have crafted without doubt one of this year's finest club bangers. Rope in an absurdist bass shagging remix by Friction and it would appear it's high time to ask Dappy and Chipmunk and most of Glastonbury's headliners to get in their spaceships and do one...

Anyroad I'm doing one too, as Chris Martin just tweeted me and told me if I don't recycle my tuna cans and plant a stinging nettle he can't morally get his private jet home from Somerset... I don't have a Twitter account, but if I did I'd most definitely ignore the only Englishman wetter than the weather. Hey ho lets go.