The Singles Jukebox

And the liking just don’t stop…

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[7.62]

Martin Skidmore: A lively enough grime-ish number, though the garagey music strikes me as kind of rockish, surprisingly. She’s a bright enough rapper, but I felt as if this were lacking a little punch, in music and vocals. It also outstays its welcome by a couple of minutes, with a long beats-and-Spanish-guitar section.
[6]

Frank Kogan: Guitars are scratchy and dreamy at the same time, the beats hard dance and hard rock, Shystie strutting along, laughing at our expenses, while the music creates landscapes and digs caverns behind her.
[10]

Chuck Eddy: I really love the ethereal spaciness around Shystie’s voice at the very beginning and the extended middle-Asian beauty toward the end, and I appreciate all the odd incidental squeaks and interjections tossed at us between, but can’t say they ever grab me tight and don’t let go — maybe because you have to pay super-close attention to catch any of it. Like jazz.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: Reasonably infectious, but Shystie sounds as if she’s rapping in about her fourth language, or they’ve cut about six takes together. Goes on a bit.
[6]

Michaelangelo Matos: Let’s be real: the only thing worth attending to here is that fizzing b-line on the instrumental breakdowns, which sounds like they’d cause mayhem on the floor. The rest: eh.
[5]

Rodney J. Greene: Starts with some Californicated guitar, a “Numbers” beat, and Shystie’s enticing boasts, and keeps doing something new every time you wouldn’t expect. At some point we get acid squelches and redoubled drums, then a bridge full of double-dutch chants and deconstructed stutter-stings, a Latin guitar solo, and an extended structure that makes this work just as well as dance music as hip-hop.
[8]

Alex Macpherson: The re-emergence of some of the first wave of grime’s leading female MCs in 2009 has been most welcome, with the likes of Stush, Ms Dynamite and Shystie tempted back out by newly danceable beats, whether electro or funky, and the sight of their male compadres Dizzee Rascal and Tinchy Stryder becoming fully-fledged pop stars. Using her overlooked and underrated 2004 cut “Woman’s World (Gurlz Stand Up)” as a jump-off point, Shystie rampages around a deeply weird, not-quite-bassline, not-quite-electro beat restaking her claim for your attention – and succeeding rather well. It’s best the more surreally aggressive Shystie gets — “I ain’t no trouble-maker, I ain’t no instigator…Yes I’m bloody lairy, but you still love me dearly” — her voice slicing through the jack-in-the-box beat, but as fascinating as its tangents are, there’s ultimately something frustrating about the chops and changes of “Nu Style”; Shystie drops in and out of her own song when she should dominate it. Consequently, it’s not quite the anthem and easy [10] that her biggest track of 2009 was, the Ill Blu remix of “Pull It”.
[8]

Kat Stevens: Boys sit down, stand up girls/We can run this world/We can take a stand/Join my army man! Imagine an underground party that crops up every night in a different location somewhere in London, run by a garrison of strong, talented, fearless women. Their only goal is to make the party bigger and better the next night, spreading the word so more can join in, laughing in the face of anyone trying to oppose or dismiss this unstoppable juggernaut. Shystie is their spokesperson, rallying the troops and enticing new recruits. The party itself will never end as long as Deekline’s continuous sine wave fuzz keeps revolving (punctuated only by those irresistible ‘bwop bwop bwop’ goldfish bubbles). But Shystie is always present — splintering herself into a thousand pieces and entwining them into the beats as a constant reminder for Deekline to keep up the high standard (I’m showing gentlemen/that we can do it just as good/or even better than!). I want to follow Shystie and her hedonistic cult to the ends of the earth.
[10]