A red Ford Sierra with Sipho beatboxing in the back, and Bionic chatting reggae over the top.
That’s the scene I remember best from Bad Meaning Good, a documentary about the London hip hop scene, shown on BBC Two in 1987. London Posse were the first British rap group I ever heard using British accents.
What they were doing in that car was My Beatbox Reggae Style. It became the B-side of their first 12-inch, London Posse, which came out on Big Life the same year. That record isn’t on Spotify, so I’ve gone for the one that followed it: Money Mad.
Money Mad came out in 1988 as a 12-inch on Justice. Sipho had left by then, so it was Rodney P and Bionic on the mic, with DJ Biznizz on the scratches.
One thing for the record collectors. The version on Spotify is the one that opened their 1990 album, Gangster Chronicle, and The Vinyl Factory points out that it’s a re-recording. If you want the original 1988 cut, you’ll need the Justice 12-inch.
London in every line
For me, Money Mad is unmistakably British, and it’s never dated.
Plenty of UK rappers back then sounded like they were from New York. On this record you can hear London, and you can hear reggae and dancehall running right through it. WhoSampled lists Mantronix’s King of the Beats and Courtney Melody’s Bad Boy among its samples, which tells you a lot. One foot in hip hop, one in the dancehall.
The Vinyl Factory put it in one line in its list of records that helped British hip hop find its own voice: “With ‘Money Mad,’ British hip hop came of age.”
Your own lane
I said on my podcast once that if you turn up as a version of somebody else, you’re only ever going to be a cheap imitation. London Posse turned up as themselves, in their own voices, and the record still sounds like nobody else.
Put it on when you catch yourself looking sideways at what everyone else is doing.
Which record first made you hear your own accent in a song?
