SOUND 01 (BIG DADA SAMPLER)

A 15 track album () — released June 18th 2001 on BIG DADA

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It was meant to be a history. Something to inform and expand your understanding. A factual account of our short life as a label. Then we got bored. So we wrote something else. But everyone found it depressing. So we tried again and again. And this is where we got to. Big Dada is a hip hop label. What that means is, of course, open to question. The term seems to be hijacked and re-hijacked till it means almost nothing. It got so bad we even started saying we were an afro-punk label for a while, which was funny but didn't sum it up quite (sometimes it did). So now we're a label who just puts out the hip hop we love, regardless of whether anyone else even thinks it's hip hop. The problem we have - we've been having - is that we're not a very fashionable label. Not so much in the absence of over-engineered jeans etc (tho? we are deficient in this area), but because of what the label is all about. Things which are, frankly, embarrassing to talk about. Things that make us sound naïve, childish, clichéd and just fuckin? ridiculous. But, after all the evasions, we've just got to say it. We're just making it worse by avoiding it. Big Dada try to release original, innovative, heartfelt music. Not necessarily hip hop by artists trying to push the boundaries of hip hop, but hip hop by artists trying to push the boundaries of themselves. Even that isn't quite right (and makes us cringe to re-read). The words 'true' and 'real' have been used again and again as the ultimate marketing campaigns in hip hop, but we keep returning to them for a reason. All the artists on Big Dada are circling around those words, trying to get at them without it turning it into a money man's midnight fantasy. SOUND 01 is 02 in many ways. 1998's 'Black Whole Styles' catalogued the birth of the label and the early singles. This compilation is like a brief overview or taster of the albums that have followed (or will follow shortly). The very range of music and thought on offer is, hopefully, a reflection of the label's policy - a less cringeworthy way of saying it. From Roots Manuva's instant-classic flow, through New Flesh's experiments with new rhythmic forms and a kind of space-age dancehall-jazz, through Ty's deeply personal soul hip hop, through Gamma's leftfield Black Pride anthems, cLOUDDEAD's almost psychedelic soundscapes, the Infesticons? middle finger political humour, to French crew TTC's language-mania. It sounds shit to say it, but we give a shit. Hip hop is a beautiful thing, a thing to be cherished, a voice for the voiceless. What's not to give a shit about? Whatever. Take it how you like. This is the Big Dada Sound. And it's just love, really.'
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