b. Dylan Mills, 1 November 1985, London, England. In September 2003, Dizzee Rascal's stunning debut, Boy In Da Corner, was the surprise (but deserving) winner of the UK's Mercury Music Prize, the second consecutive album (following the success of Ms. Dynamite's debut, A Little Deeper) to receive the accolade to have originated from the UK urban music scene.
Mills is reported to have admitted that prior to music making he was "a bit of a naughty boy" at Langdown Park School in Bow, east London. He was excluded from every class at school with the exception of music, where the teacher Mr. Smith saw his potential and encouraged him to create music on a school computer (Smith was thanked on the sleeve of Boy In Da Corner with the words "I'll never forget da way you kept your faith in me, even when things looked grim."). "Music was the only option available to me," Mills has recalled, "I put all my energies into it. [Otherwise] I'd have ended up carrying on a life of crime."
Although Mills distances himself from any genre ("It ain't UK garage so get used to it", he declared on b-side "Vexed"), the sometime Roll Deep crew-member undoubtedly comes from a garage-inspired UK MC tradition. Mills himself credits his mutated take on garage to the simple fact that in the context of pirate radio, his panicked yelp sounded ineffective over blaring garage music: he had to create a new music to suit his voice. Looking beyond garage's aspirational aesthetic, however, Boy In Da Corner frequently sounded like a lament for a prematurely finished childhood: "We used to fight with kids from other estates/Now eight millimetres settle debates" ("Brand New Day"). Rascal's remarkable first single, "I Luv U", meanwhile, hung on a duet/argument (with Jeanine Jacques) about whether he was the father of a 15-year-old's child. Elsewhere, as on opening track "Sittin' Here", Mills frequently sounds on the verge of tears.
Mills' voice and music have been compared to artists as implausible as David Sylvian and Kurt Cobain. His voice shares a similar sense of vulnerability and desperation to the Nirvana front man. "There was something rugged and rebellious about them," says Mills of the latter's surprisingly acknowledged influence, in The Guardian newspaper, "Kurt Cobain, he was just heavy." The melodies of tracks such as "Sittin' Here", meanwhile, seemed to echo Sylvian/Ryûichi Sakamoto compositions, albeit juxtaposed with the sounds of police sirens and distant gunshots. A more apt comparison point might be trip-hop pioneer Tricky. Dizzee Rascal's grimy and dystopian debut shared the latter's sense of paranoia, claustrophobia and ability to unsettle.
In the same week Boy In Da Corner was released, Mills was stabbed five times in the popular Cyprian summer clubbing resort of Ayia Napa. Despite rumours that his follow-up album would take a more US-friendly approach, there was little on Showtime (2004) that indicated a willingness to pander to a commercial market. Recorded quickly and released barely a year after Boy In Da Corner, Dizzee Rascal's new album confirmed his standing as one of the most important of the new generation of UK rappers. One of the tracks, "Stand Up Tall", even reached the UK Top 10 when released as a single.
Later in 2004 Mills appeared on the Band Aid 20 re-recording of the charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?", adding two new (rapped) lines to the song. In the next two years he concentrated on expanding his Dirtee Stank record label, signing Klass A and Newham Generals. His third album Maths + English was his most Americanized recording, with a guest appearance from US rappers UGK (alongside UK singer Lily Allen and the Arctic Monkeys' Alex Turner) and barely any reminders of Dizzee's grime roots. Surprisingly, the album was only made available as a digital download for the American market.
