In which we reveal our stances on cursing at children…

[Video][Website]
[6.70]

Alfred Soto: When I last heard Dizzee he had recorded the only listenable Calvin Harris collaborations to date, for which he was duly recorded in his homeland. So I regret to say that he’s substituted telling for showing — where once he let the most disgusting distorted bass of the 2000’s sully his monologues, now he’s required to remind us, like a boy caught by his girlfriend staring at a waiter’s ass, that he loves them. Right.
[4]

Anthony Easton: I refuse to believe that Dizzee thinks that consuming uppers and loving the bass is a zero-sum game, I also refuse to believe anyone thinks that Dizzee has a bass problem, or that people have whinged about it around him — straw-person argument in favour of total aggro is profoundly silly, but him saying “dirty stinkin’ bass” could work in a much better context.
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: The irony here is that the bassline is little more than an afterthought. The star is Dizzee’s buffoonish bass evangelist character, and as such the track doesn’t work nearly as well without the video. That’s not to say it doesn’t stand up well on its own – there mightn’t be a better use of epistrophe this year than “The other day I got an ASBO order; and I think it’s well out of order” — while it’s no “White Lines”, it does at least kick Example’s more recent and misguided “Just Say No” update into a cocked hat.
[7]

Iain Mew: Rather punk in its one note, one joke simplicity, and it is a fine joke with a fine whacking beat behind it. The problem is that it’s three minutes long, and with next to no progression in either of them it’s badly in need of being cut down by a further minute or two.
[4]

Brad Shoup: Because I’m a dinosaur, I tend to hear the track before watching the video. Look what happens when I don’t. Still, there’s a decent chance I’d love this regardless — when a musician is funny, it’s a thing to be treasured. “Bassline Junkie” clings fiercely to its unthreatening territory with a mean mug, dumb rhymes and a tight sphincter. Oh, and the bass is filthy too.
[9]

Ian Mathers: I’m sure some people consider it surplus to requirements, but I’m only giving this one extra point for the fact that the video (especially the first minute or so) brings me so much delight. It would be worth watching even if the song was just so-so, but the bassline and Dizzee’s delivery — joyful, aggressive, strident, defiant — make for a perfect sermon. “Tell ’em again!”
[9]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Dizzee never stopped being the Dizzee we all fell in love with – what happened is that his raging yelp was attached to cartoonish subject matter. Tongue’n’Cheek’s “Road Rage” is the best song he’s released in the past five years because it successfully takes grime’s anti-social edge into overblown territory, especially when attached to excitable Baltimore club, one of the most youthful sounds in the world to this day. “Bassline Junkie” almost gets away with its concept of bass music being akin to an A class drug by blowing up its sense of humour to pure absurdity, like when he threatens someone’s life for momentarily stopping the track (ten times better in the amazing Megaforce-directed video, when he swears out a child). That’s the word, though: “almost”. The song never develops past being a curio at best and a novelty at worst.
[6]

Will Adams: Dizzee Rascal’s vision of a drug-free rave appeals to me a lot (clearly), and it would sound preachy were it not balanced with some genuinely funny moments and a great hook – from now on I think I’ll enter clubs by chanting BIG DIRTY STINKIN’ BASS. The bassline is really the star here, though, starting small but slowly morphing into a beast that overtakes the whole scene. The entire package is quite off-kilter, so I can’t imagine playing it for friends at a party, but sometimes it’s nice to have a song that’s yours alone.
[8]

Andy Hutchins: Dizzee having fun is one of my favorite things in music, period, and the commitment to the it-should-really-be-stale joke here (which is tripled in the very funny video), which doubles as winking satire about music changing a life that works whether or not Dizzee means it, is certainly evidence that he can still skate on bass. The bass itself farting out of every orifice of the track sure helps make his case, too.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: Low-end dependency is a conceit neither clever nor particularly original (it dates at least back to Josh Abrahams in 1998) but Dizzee Rascal gets a lot of mileage out of the gag. The chirpy, very British interjections on the hook help, pulling up only just shy of “pip-pip” or “tally-ho.” I like also how fetid he makes his compulsion sound, wallowing in the scatological qualities of the adjectives in the “big, dirty, stinkin’ bass” hook. I wouldn’t call toilet humor subtle, but there’s a sly malodorousness to “I like my basslines fuckin’ filthy.”
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