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DOS & DON'TS
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PUT A DONK ON IT - PART 1On the Road With Britain's Newest Insane Musical Trend
BY JAIMIE HODGSON, PHOTOS BY SCOTT KERSHAW, ANDY CAPPER, AND STU BENTLEY
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Those looking to shatter their last, lingering hopes for the future of Britain should visit Burnley. What used to be a prosperous cotton-mill town is now decimated by the terminal decline of industry, with entire square miles of housing steel-boarded-up, repossessed and marked for demolition by the local council. Unemployment is all-consuming, violence is a popular pastime—as is the rampant theft of expensive copper pipes from condemned houses to sell as scrap to pay for heroin and crack. It’s practically a ghost town these days, but instead of headless cavaliers with chains clanging around their wrists and ankles, there are gaggles of toothless, skeletal smackheads waddling around in skid-mark-stained tracksuit bottoms. Actually, scratch that—it’s more zombie town than ghost town. Burnley is also one of the focal points of the planet’s most terrifying and hilarious forms of dance music: donk. It’s pretty much the only thing kids live for there. But drive 40 minutes down the motorway, away from the cluster of northwest donk satellites (Bolton, Wigan, Burnley, Blackpool) and barely anyone’s heard of the genre. There’s a bit of debate about donk’s origins, but generally people attribute early-90s Dutch producers like Ultrabeat for pioneering the sound. It’s a rave-based dance music created around no-budget 150 bpm bouncy beats, intrusive fog-horned synth stabs, cartoon-y samples, and unsettlingly saccharine highs. It’s basically happy hardcore on a crippling steroid comedown. The word “donk” comes from the relentless, maddening “donk” sound that’s overlaid on the beats. The fact that a whole subculture stems from a noise that originated from an old-school keyboard sound-effect that emulates an empty drainpipe being hit by a paddle tells you pretty much all you need to know. The genre has also been called “Scouse house”, which refers to its early proliferation in Liverpool, and “bounce”, which many locals still use today. Donk has come to represent the sound’s recent influx of MC culture. Inspired by Eminem-copying white-boy rabbiting and early-90s rave MCing, the real donk stars these days are its hype men, whose rhyming has become the focus for most young fans. To some, this sounds like a Daily Mail caricature of an ASBO northerner assaulting a crystal-meth-smoking oompah band. People outside the northwest are finally starting to hear donk through its very own boy band, Blackout Crew. The Bolton outfit are the only donk MCs to have recorded actual proper songs with verses and choruses. Blackburn dance label All Around The World spied the group through homemade YouTube videos and quickly cashed in by commissioning a series of proper-budget promo videos and releases. They became our entry into the world of donk after a bunch of their videos were sent in a circular email to Vice staff and friends a few months ago. One track really stood out. It was called “Put a Donk on It”. It’s based around the concept that any type of music can be improved by the simple addition of a “donk”. Go on YouTube now if you haven’t seen it. In broad accents, Blackout rap about everyday stuff like tits, fighting, weed, shagging, knife crime, cars, ecstasy and their favourite brands of chocolate bar. It’s not your typical boy-band fare, but even so, their fan base is almost exclusively teenage girls and boys. Recently, VBS.TV spent a week travelling round the northwest with the band, soaking up every last drop of donk culture. Blackout Crew was formed at a community centre in Bolton. The place is called Harmony, and it’s similar to many youth clubs: lots of shiny veneer, bright yellow lights, table-tennis tables, and a tuck shop selling Panda Pops and Space Raiders crisps. But Harmony just happens to have rehearsal rooms and recording studios down the corridor, and every Tuesday and Thursday the place is transformed into a cross between Shameless and 8 Mile. Swarms of kids in matching flammable ensembles with Nike logos shaved into their heads cram into any available space. Donk blares at deafening levels as the kids try to look mean, and occasionally launch into their own version of a “battle rap”. Maybe it’s because I’m a southern puff, but I could only understand every third line or so. Blackout were basically a dream-team of the best MCs who attended Harmony’s open-mic nights, put together by Tony and Charlie, who run the centre. They consist of MCs Cover, Viper, Zak K, Dowie, and Rapid, alongside DJs Jonezy and Siddy B. After police shut down Harmony’s open mic night owing to aspiring rappers chuffing hash in the car park, we escorted Blackout (who had made a kind of special homecoming goodwill appearance for our benefit) to a gig at an under-18s club just out of the centre of town. There they were met by about a thousand sweaty, red-faced pubescents, all of whom were hyperventilating with excitement. As Blackout opened with “Put a Donk on It,” the venue erupted into surreal pandemonium. The hordes grabbed at them, screaming every syllable like it was donk scripture. After the show, anxious teens scrambled to get close to them and begged members to sign autographs, with one over-excited 12-year-old, who called himself MC Scott, reporting breathlessly that his favourite rappers are “Eminem and MC Dowie”. All the members of Blackout Crew either live at home with their parents or in council houses. This is what gives them such strong local appeal. The tangibility of having their heroes scuff their heels round the same shopping centres seems to have given many kids a refreshing perspective on the concept of celebrity. “I’d love to be a famous MC when I grow up,” said Scott. “At the weekends, mind. I want a proper job too, like selling cars.” CONTINUED PUT A DONK ON IT | 1 | 2 | >
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