I ain't missing British Bakeoff on rewind

November 14, 2024 2:07 PM

London musician So Good (Sophie Bokor-Ingram) makes music she calls "ignorant brat pop" that's a rough mix of drill, hip hop and punk. HATE is about the things she fucking hates, but her hate for America gets its own song. She kicks off I Hate It Here with "We had the worst prime minister EVAR/And then we had the worst prime minister EVAR/And now we have the worst prime minister EVAR." She does like Dogs though. And she might have written an all-time jam about the joys of staying in, JOMO (Joy of Missing Out). If she sounds like the feminine answer to the kind of bawdy, cocky rapper who probably has a song about his dick, well she kinda has one of those too: If I Had A. (Basically every track linked is NSFW.)

Extra links:

Linktree | TikTok | YouTube | Instagram

Christmas song: Give Me My Presents
Early SoundCloud song: I Rewrote the Fucking Bible

posted by DirtyOldTown (16 comments total)

it took about eight hours for me to go from having an Ask about this artist to being a huge fan.

I hate America, too, lady.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:08 PM on November 14, 2024 [2 favorites]

sogoodsooogood
cause I got you-dah-DAH-DaDHAT
OOWW.
I know that I can do no wrong
nowwwww do the British Em-pyre.


especially like give me my gifts, it has that veruca salt quality.
posted by clavdivs at 2:53 PM on November 14, 2024

If I Had A... hit my radar last week and pretty much blew me away. So Good indeed. I'm listening and enjoying the rest now, esp. that SoundCloud track.

This is the kind of vulgarity that I can really embrace.
posted by mcstayinskool at 3:17 PM on November 14, 2024

Oh my god she is incredible!!!!! Thank you for this post!
posted by unicorn chaser at 4:31 PM on November 14, 2024

This is a beautiful gift you have given me today, DirtyOldTown.
posted by Lyn Never at 5:28 PM on November 14, 2024

Fun! 'I hate it here' reminds me a bit of 'United states of whatever', in the music and video.
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:57 PM on November 14, 2024 [2 favorites]

Good stuff. JOMO reminds me a lot of Hey Ho, Let's Not Go by the Just Joans
posted by scruss at 6:26 PM on November 14, 2024

Thanks for posting this! I saw your Ask yesterday and the song there was ok, but here I listened to JOMO and as soon as she rhymed 'PJs' with 'DJs' I sent it to all my friends. Brilliant, and just so very British. I'm trying to work out if her accent is real or 'Mockney'. I hope its real.

She has great branding with her berets.
posted by atlantica at 1:30 AM on November 15, 2024

I'm trying to work out if her accent is real or 'Mockney'. I hope its real.

This is her profile for voice over work. Sorry love, it's "Mockney", aka a middle class white girl pretending to be working class to get all them numbers innit. She went to a posh boarding school for the children of aspiring parents of pop stars and soap actors. I'd bet that everything she knows about the drill scene she learned by driving around South London in a chauffered car. Pass.
posted by fight or flight at 2:23 AM on November 15, 2024 [2 favorites]

Ah, shame. Same as it ever was, Lily Allen, etc. Thanks fight or flight, I'll consume with that in mind.
posted by atlantica at 2:39 AM on November 15, 2024

Yeah. Props for the message, but I'd respect her more if she wasn't putting on the accent, dropping her t's and giving it all that wide boy attitude that someone's told her sells better for the punk/drill look. Out here fighting against the establishment while mummy and daddy paid for her to go to a performing arts school. Just embrace the posh, Sophie! Her namesake Ellis-Bextor manages to make it work.
posted by fight or flight at 3:07 AM on November 15, 2024

I mean... the Beastie Boys' parents included an architect, an art dealer, and a playwright.

I don't have a problem with a persona. It's not like she's waving guns around and talking about dealing on the estate.

I mean, y'all know the color coordinated outfits and berets are calculated, too, right?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:44 AM on November 15, 2024 [1 favorite]

I mean, y'all know the color coordinated outfits and berets are calculated, too, right?

Colour coordinated outfits and berets don't result in discrimination and bias in the real world. A middle or upper class person code switching to make themselves sound like they have a different cultural background associated strongly with working class and poor communities, who can then switch out of that accent whenever they want to be taken seriously, isn't a fun little joke to everyone.

Drill is also a genre of music associated with Black culture, specifically young Black men, who also face widespread discrimination for their artform. Forgive me for rolling my eyes at a posh young white woman co-opting drill music and swearing at people in a town centre, well aware that she'll safely earn praise and not be arrested for it.
posted by fight or flight at 5:05 AM on November 15, 2024 [2 favorites]

Obviously constructed persona is constructed but I'm betting she really does like British Bakeoff and dogs. None of the content seems insincere or claiming a life she doesn't live, but then, we always manage to find the strictest possible filters for legitimacy on MeFi for female artists. They just get well actually-ed to death.

Really, if she was gonna catch shit here, I figured it would be for this couplet:

I don't like cat people
Dogs are better factual
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:28 AM on November 15, 2024 [3 favorites]

Yeah, class/accent discrimination is a big thing in the UK (I've lived in the US too, and it's worse in UK), literally in the news again just a couple of days ago.

See also, Goldie Lookin Chain for musical 'comedy' appropriation.

I do get what you're saying about female artists though, DirtyOldTown, and I enjoyed the music! It's just this may be one of those UK-specific 'leaves a bad taste' things.
posted by atlantica at 9:09 AM on November 15, 2024 [2 favorites]

This treacly, awful song seems to be something Bokor-Ingram recorded at 16 to raise money for family friends who lost a child. It's a terrible, saccharine song (sorry, little dead kid) that was clearly written by a hammy teenager who thought she might turn into Mariah Carey... but she seems to have effectively the same accent. She's trying to sound classy, as it's some power ballad BS, but even my American ears can hear the accent. She knaurs a gull.

So I mean... that's just how she sounds, give or take?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:22 AM on November 15, 2024