What are you listening to?

If you live in London, perhaps you've scanned the FM spectrum and come to a halt at a pirate station whose sound you can't quite finger or figure. It's got house music's slinky panache, but the rhythm's wrong--too fitful and funked-up, and besides, there's an MC jabbering over the top, jungle-style. Maybe it's jungle, then--but then again, maybe not: too slow, too sexy. Sometimes it's a bit like American R&B--except it sounds druggy, the wrong kind of druggy: like Timbaland on E. So what is it, this genre-without-a-name? It's the latest in a series of mutations spawned from London's multiracial rave scene, the next evolutionary stage beyond speed garage (itself a swerve sideways from jungle). And the new style does have a name, albeit an unsatisfactorily dry, technical one: "2-step," increasingly a general rubric for all kinds of jittery, irregular rhythms that don't conform to garage's traditional 4-to-the-floor pulse. Somebody really should coin a more attractive name, though, one that captures 2-step's lipsmacking lusciousness. Because all the juice squeezed out of jungle by the post-techstep school of scientific drum & bass has oozed back in the succulent form of 2-step

A coupla years ago my mate was telling me about this style of US R&B that was slowed down a stupid amount... Apparently designed for all the cough medicine addicts, anyone heard of it? I couldn't find a mention of it anywhere on t'web... Still intrigued...