News From The Ends
Words Sarah B
Watcha Enders. Been a while. This is the ‘no excuses’ issue because me, you and everyone from the Ends all knows this year is about getting our grind on and making some p’s. We’ve banged out CDs down at Hackney Wick Market, flogged bait t-shirts and done some prang videos, but now, to paraphrase JME, it’s time to get serious and drop waste of space mans that moan about downloading, yet have nothing but jumped tunes on their celly demselves. Anyone with one piece of sense can see music’s turning into a free ting, so if you wanna make dat money you better be coming with some good shit to shoot other than tunes. You can push anything on CrackSpace so stop moaning and get hustling, you get me?
Leading the pack for the grimers is JME, merkle man Jammer and top boy producer, Terror Danjah. These mans are hustling hard with some serious merch and yous better be watching. JME and the Boy Better Know camp have been going on good with their ‘Boy Better Know’ t-shirts since last year. The boys have shifted an alleged 8,000 ganze since February ’07. They got nice neon colour splashes, and each shirt now has a kris embroidered ‘I Wear My Own Garms’ badge in the bottom left hand corner, so you can spot a pikey who’s bought a bootleg down Wembley market. Ladies buying ‘Girl Better Blow’ shirts from £5-a-pop sketal gyal shops. Haven’t you heard JME’s freestyle on his MySpace? “Girl better blow make me laugh / You think I’d roll with some sketty girl with no arse.”
So the NASA-sponsored Merkle-Wave (a portable microwave for your jacket pocket to heat take-out food) Jammer was talking about with DJ Cameo on 1Xtra turned out to be a joke, but it showed the levels grime’s original do-it-aller is thinking on and he’s coming hard in 2008 with a whole ‘Are You Dumb’ product line. Yeah, the first few shirts he done were dodgy, but he’s upped the quality and is now making some nice pieces, including hoodies, hats, keychains and underwears for the laydeez. On a music front, he’s slightly eased off the gas with the other mans to work on his solo album. Look forward to that dropping later in the year.
Now take time to check the moves of 18-year-old street magician Liam Walsh down in Brighton. Barely out of younger’s status, the boys studying full-time at college for a business BTEC - “So I can run all my own shit tight” - while zooming around the country doing club PAs, PR-ing himself to the max, answering bare fan messages on six social networks, working on his own street magic merchandise line, and he’s in the final stages of putting together part one of his first street magic DVD series. And he does all this ENTIRELY on his own. No brares, no mans, no bait damanager. Just him, himself and him. New Era hats off to you, bwoy.
Until next time Enders, hustle, hustle, hustle, grind, grind, grind. No excuses. Braap.
