The Stool Pigeon

The Newham Generals’ walking tour of their Forest Gate manor in east London begins, appropriately enough, with a bottle-strewn backstreet known as Dead Man’s Alley. “At least, that’s what people call it around here,” chuckles Footsie. “I wouldn’t bother typing it into Google Maps, or trying to find it on your TomTom.”

Moments later Footsie and D Double E are looking moody in branded black caps and coats while the Stool Pigeon photographer takes pictures, the early spring sunshine lending the scene an oddly Californian air. “There’s another decent spot near Wanstead Park station,” says Footsie as our snapper shoulders his bag. “Dingy underpass, lots of graffiti. Bit of a cliché, but may be worth a shot.”

We’re taking a shortcut through a squat concrete estate when a hefty man with plenty of metal in his mouth recognises the Generals across the court and swaggers over. There are huge smiles, complicated handshakes and much mumbling, and it’s only later, seated in the boys’ local greasy spoon - the infectiously cheerful Footsie slurping a strawberry milkshake; the skinnier, quieter Double stirring his banana version with measured seriousness - that they explain what happened.

“That guy actually lives in south London,” says Footsie, “but he came over to let us know that his mates down there are all singing ‘Bell Dem Slags’ every Saturday night.”

“It’s a tune about those times when you’re out drinking with your boys and you’re after some female company,” adds Double, “so you ring the group of girls you know will come running. It’s a harsh idea, but it’s normal around here - everyone can relate to it.”

The same could be said of the rest of the album, Generally Speaking - from the sad shrug of ‘Heard U Been Smoking’, an elegy on a close associate-turned-crackhead, to the rottweiler aggression of ‘Violence’ (“I was born and raised in the gutter / So I can be a nice dude or I can be a nutter / Put my knife to your neck like butter”). The latter is indicative of the record’s repeatedly savage brutality, something that seems to conflict with the warmth of its reception by the mainstream music press. Sure, its release on Dizzee Rascal’s Dirtee Stank Recordings offers genuine media clout, but the Generals seem also to have tapped into a middle class fascination with the underworld in much the same way as the guys behind The Wire, the murky ghetto lifestyles of which are now water-cooler conversation fodder along the lines of Strictly Come Dancing. The key, says Footsie, is authenticity.

“We’re not smooth-faced kids saying stuff to shock our mates’ mums: we’ve been surrounded by this shit our whole lives (both are 29), so we’re just writing about what we see everyday. I think for some people we represent a window into a world they might otherwise know nothing about, or a lifestyle that might otherwise exist only on the news. Sometimes it can be a scary thing to absorb, but that’s part of the excitement.”

Footsie’s straw rattles around the bottom of his glass as he sucks up the last of his shake. “I mean, look out the window. This isn’t a neighbourhood filled with flash cars and luxury parking.”

He’s right. The near-Biblical sunlight makes it hard to take seriously, but Forest Gate is a serious place - and Footsie and Double aren’t the only ones to have been ‘saved’ by their artful sidestep into music. The neighbourhood also fostered rappers Kano and Plan B, and served as a setting for the latter’s ‘Rakin’ The Dead’ (about his friend’s discovery of a body on nearby Wanstead Flats), which includes the line: “Forest Gate is a place without a forest or a gate / There probably used to be but nowadays there ain’t.”

Were it not for the music, says Footsie, he’d like to think he’d be a professional footballer - he was once signed up for Charlton - while Double says he could well have ended up playing basketball. But both agree that they could just as easily have gone down that other road - Footsie’s crooked nose and gold tooth seem to justify his claim that the ghetto life is “never more than a walk to the shop away”.

Nor do either of them show the slightest bitterness when bringing up the subject of Munk, the erstwhile third Newham General now locally famous for handing out Christian literature at Forest Gate station. “He’s still producing music,” says Double respectfully, “although it’s on more of a gospel than a grime tip.”

“His MySpace site says ‘Doing it all for Jesus’,” says Footsie. “You can’t knock that kind of dedication. And maybe it was for the best: Munk was always a serious guy, and when it came to performing our material in front of crowds he was never that comfortable letting go.”

Letting go is something Generally Speaking does musically as well as lyrically. Its scattershot beats, tearing basslines and retina-scalding synths are far more akin to rave music than the wobbly dubstep underpinning so much of today’s grime smashes. Lead single ‘Head Get Mangled’ (the video for which was shot in a derelict mental hospital in Epsom) could well have featured on The Prodigy’s The Fat Of The Land; the inspiring ‘Mind Is A Gun’ (the closest the Generals will ever get to a ‘be cool, stay in school’ number) wouldn’t have sounded out of place as a B-side to their predecessor’s early-nineties floor-filler Charly.

“There’s so much heavyweight music out there that doesn’t make you want to move your feet,” says Footsie, “and we’re keen to remind people that grime is still ‘dance’ music with roots in rave and techno. Whatever the politics, whatever happens on the periphery of the scene, you’re still supposed to get down to it. Cage [who co-produced the album with Footsie] is a real raver at heart; so is Dizzee. That’s why the album turned out the way it did - a relentless, 45-minute heart attack of a record that would tear up a dancefloor the same as a DJ set.”

Shakes finished, the boys start counting out coins on the Formica tabletop. It’s a million miles away from the image of bling championed by the lion’s share of rappers, one which the Generals say is an outdated and largely illusory version of reality.

“All that crap about private yachts and personal jets doesn’t hold much sway these days: people are becoming more cynical, especially in the current financial climate. There’s a definite shift in perspectives over here: radio stations are being made to play more British tunes, and a lot of those tunes deal with issues that ordinary people can relate to. It’s up to us to take the lead. Because aspiring to follow other people’s imaginary lifestyles just isn’t enough anymore.”

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