It used to be the way of things that whenever a rapper was covered by the mainstream media in Britain, his (inevitably they were always male) lyrics were picked apart and subjected to political correctness evaluation before a positive verdict could be pronounced. This wasn't an entirely bad thing, but it meant that rap careers tended to be evaluated not in terms of the ability of the artist, but on how accurately their lyrics reflected the critic's own world view. The overall result was that the UK music press spent the whole of the early '90s dismissing people like Ice Cube for their attitude to women while claiming that the Disposable Heroes of HipHoprisy represented the future of rap.
Some time in the 1990s, before the emergence of Eminem (though it's solidified since), a 180-degree switch was effected, and now the situation remains equally unsatisfactory but for precisely the opposite reason. Now there is almost no discussion of lyrical content in UK-published hip hop criticism, and we've gone from ignoring genuinely innovative artists because of issues with their vocabulary to lauding some truly lame individuals because we can't be arsed to criticise them at all.
It would be, ahem, ludicrous to go back to those olden days. But today's standards are skewed, too. Ludacris is neither patron saint of all that's wholesome in rap, nor is he the worst transgressor of middle-class liberal values. If there are three degrees of sexism - outright misogyny, unthinking discrimination, and talking dirty - Chris Bridges has both his feet, and probably some other appendages as well, in the latter, least troubling camp. But simply because he doesn't display a pathological hatred of the opposite sex doesn't mean that he should get off without any criticism at all.
On record, there's more depth to Bridges and his impressively rendered shtick, but live, things are hardly cerebral. Let's be honest: the cover of his latest LP, 'Chicken And Beer', looks like it was designed by the team who came up with 'Smell The Glove' for Spinal Tap, and tonight's show follows the same logic. 'Area Codes' isn't the only song in which women are routinely referred to as "Hos", so while he charms the locals by giving props to "the 208" he's still all about the groin. Moments later, for instance, we're informed that "Brixton girls give Brixton head". Well, it's nice to see the locality is known abroad for something other than early '80s riots and Clash records.
Of course, this all goes down tremendously well with the Avirex and Rocawear-clad masses, a sizeable number of which are women. And Bridges, for all the smut, is an engaging performer, taking the stage with his coat on back to front either in apparent homage to his Atlanta homeboys Kriss Kross, or suffering from one of those "wardrobe malfunctions" that seem to be afflicting folks who've worked with The Neptunes and Timbaland at the moment. But he sells himself short by ploughing in such a limited and well-tilled furrow; skills alone cannot make up for the lack of meaningful content.
