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| Rollingstone. |
 Named with an evident lapse in imagination, UK Funky is basically house music. But on this thorough introduction's best songs, it's a fabulously mongrel genre that adds Latin percussion, R&B hooks, electro-soca rhythms and monstrous sub bass to functional dance pop. It's a singles game (see "Calabria 2007," with its hand claps, post-punk sax and kinky dancehall patois), but Geeneus, Crazy Cousinz and Donae'o, who all appear on the mixes, are acts to watch. Sure, there are empty verses and annoying DJ shout-outs, but when the restless beats are right, the words are irrelevant....full text |
| Pitchfork |
| UK funky has been the most exciting thing in dance music the past 18 months or so, but it nonetheless remains a tricky thing to pin down. After all, what is UK funky other than house music produced by Londoners? Sure, it's house produced by refugees from UK garage and grime looking to have a good time while bringing their sonic and stylistic baggage with them: But, well, so what? It's still just house, isn't it? But UK funky is both "just house" in its most conventional sense and also "other than house" in pretty much every manner that is worth pursuing. It's house at the point where house becomes rave, R&B, rap, dancehall, soca, and, a lot of the time, just manic percussion. But also, a lot of the time, just house. All of which makes packaging this emerging genre a difficult proposition: UK Funky is like a magic eye picture, its startling multi-genre topography invisible to the naked eye until you discover, perhaps by accident, the right perspective from which to observe it. For many listeners, myself included, the right perspective was provided by the imposition of the MC. On a good radio set-- mixing fast and loose from one track to next, treating full-blown songs like they're functionalist riddims-- the MC confirms that the closest fit for funky's sensibility is dancehall: hence the obsessive focus on dance crazes, the trash'n'treasure opportunism of its sonic eclecticism, and, most importantly, the unlikely balancing act of its covalent relationship between vocal and groove, mouth and body....full text |
| Nme |
| Reinvoking the chinking Cava, cream crocodile-skin loafers and beaming grins of 1999 UK garage’s panto-bling, ‘UK funky’ has reignited grime’s Ayia Napa-bound contingent to much-needed sexier, good-times effect. Most of the 41 cuts on here are assembled around the same formula: shuffling bongo-loaded percussion, swooping no-frills basslines, ’tudey g’yal singalong hooks and smiley rudeboy back-chatting, but this compilation sums up the scene in its current prime. As fun as a Balearic mountain-side scooter ride in an open Ralph Lauren shirt and orange cargo shorts, silver tooth glinting in the dusk light....full text |
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