Wretch 32 ft. Example – Unorthodox
He’s no clown…
[Video][Website]
[5.00]
Alfred Soto: Overrated flag bearers for the British zeitgeist have their uses, the most important of which is to provide samples for enterprising hip hop acts. “Fool’s Gold” is better than “True,” but “Set Adrift on Memory Bliss” is better than “Unorthodox,” despite cadences on the latter which provoke faint memories of “It Takes Two.”
[5]
Kat Stevens: OH DEAR. I find “Fools Gold” less grimace-inducing than most Roses songs (due to Brown’s voice being largely absent) and thus it became an acceptable song I could play when fielding requests from insistent Mancunians at my indie disco. It was plenty long enough that I could bugger off for a piss, but not good enough to worry about missing some of it (cf “Blue Monday”). I certainly don’t think that having a laddish drone of a chorus would have improved it any. Now, Wretch is only 26 and probably only attended an indie disco in the post-Strokes era, but Example is my age (and is indie enough to have won a Popjustice 20p prize) so he should certainly be as sick of that riff as I am.
[3]
Martin Skidmore: I seemed to be the only person at the time not to love “Fool’s Gold”, so I don’t much welcome the sample here, and it was really only the sample that I much liked about his last one.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: Is it wrong for me to slap a [9] on this after the first giddy notes of the sample and leave it there? Or does the sheer glee of Wretch’s delivery make it OK? Yeah, I think so.
[9]
Jer Fairall: The Stone Roses riff still sounds great, but wouldn’t nicking such an oft-sampled tune for a braggy dance track be the very opposite of unorthodox?
[5]
Jonathan Bogart: All too orthodox.
[4]
Iain Mew: The problem here is that Wretch 32, Example and the sample (which I guess qualifies as obvious given current trends) seem to get airtime inversely proportional to how enjoyable they are.
[5]