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Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip

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What? Despite its blasphemous denunciations of rock’s most prophetic figures — the Beatles, Radiohead, Led Zeppelin, and many others — this British MC and DJ duo’s breakout Mike Skinner-meets-Fatboy Slim key-plunker “Thou Shalt Always Kill,” is more a sprawling attack on pretension and hype than a too-cool-for-school declaration. “Thou shalt think for yourselves,” spits Scroobius Pip, before capping endless verses of grime-wit and pop-culture commandments with a reiteration of the track’s title; ‘kill,’ as in, “Yo, you killed it, bro.” And with rainbow-range synths, stumbling beats, and street-poet pacing, Dan and Scroobius’ social slaughter continues forth on tracks from their debut full-length, Angles, set to drop stateside in May.

Who? London-based knob-twiddler Dan Le Sac, who booked a poet from Essex dubbed Scroobius Pip over two years ago to open one of his shows. Dan immediately took a liking to Scroobius’ lyrics, and soon kicked up a MySpace page that quickly drew more traffic than the two artist’s individual sites — thus the DJ vs. MC battle was born. Though SXSW saw their first proper stateside appearance, Coachella will shoot sunbeams on the duo this Friday, April 25.

Fun Fact: “Thou Shalt Always Kill,” is full of contradictions; one minute Joe Strummer’s name is not to be taken in vein, and the next, the Clash is “just a band.” But Scroobius defends himself: “That’s kind of the point of it,” he told UK radio show Loose Cannons, “we wanted to do like 30 [bands] so no one would listen and agree to everything. ‘I don’t agree with that, therefore I’m going to make my own opinion’ as opposed to going ‘everything on there is exactly right, I agree with everything.'”

Now Hear This: “Thou Shalt Always Kill”