Music: That Rascally Rapper

Dizzee Rascal may be England's most original hip-hop voice, but good luck trying to figure him out

The British insist that Dizzee Rascal has all the right rap values. He hates violence, cops and teen pregnancy; he likes parties, sneakers and sex. Americans will just have to take it on faith, because entire songs fly by on Dizzee's debut album, Boy in Da Corner, in which nothing recognizable as a word rises above the computer-generated whirs and beats. Occasionally you can hear Dizzee scream his name, and attentive listeners might even catch him boasting about being unstoppable. But a lot of Boy in Da Corner sounds like Michael Caine speed-reading P. Diddy's biography in a video arcade.

The...

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