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Now grime has cleaned up, where does urban music go next?

13 July 2018

Nowadays it’s not unusual for a grime artist to receive an MBE, a mainstream book publishing deal or to be praised by an MP. But where does that leave what was once considered a gritty, outsider music? DAN HANCOX wonders if grime now faces an uncertain future.

Stormzy performs at Wireless Festival 2018 | Photo: Lorne Thomson/Getty

Triumph over the odds

Grime's arrival at the pinnacle of British pop music in the last few years has been as triumphant as it was unexpected.

It has always been the ultimate outsider sound

Originating in the poorest council estates of inner city London in the early 2000s, it was dismissed as too fast for daytime radio – it is twice the speed of most American rap music – and too hardcore to be saleable by the music industry.

The genre that produced the likes of Dizzee Rascal, Wiley and Kano in its first flush of youth evolved in the narrow radius of barely a few miles, shrouded in static and crackle and broadcast from illegal pirate radio aerials erected on east London towerblocks.

It has always been the ultimate outsider sound, mixing the snarling rebel attitude of punk and the dancefloor energy of the rave music, jungle, drum 'n' bass and UK garage that preceded it – captivating in its avant-garde fearlessness, but perhaps not for everyone.

Dizzee Rascal & Wiley, 2002 | Photo: David Tonge/Getty

The journey from the margins to the mainstream has been a stunning triumph over the odds, and in 2018 black British music brims with more self-confidence than it ever has done.

Stormzy performs on Day 2 of Wireless Festival 2018 | Photo: Joseph Okpako/Getty

Last Saturday, Stormzy headlined the three-day Wireless Festival in Finsbury Park, on a line-up surrounded by the biggest names in US rap music, and geed up the tens of thousands of screaming fans by telling them: “we're not Americans, we're f**king London!”

The 24-year-old grime MC has undoubtedly earned that place: scoring the first ever number one grime album last year with his debut, Gang Signs and Prayer, a bold and uncompromising record blending the gleeful velocity of grime and the soulful gospel of his Christian upbringing – and winning two Brit Awards in the process.

Stormzy's pop cultural heft is felt far beyond his music: he can be seen on billboards around the country promoting the world's biggest brands, and last week launched his own publishing imprint, Merky, with Penguin Random House.

It's emblematic of grime's winning DIY hustle that he shot to fame less than three years ago, with a humble three-minute 'freestyle', Shut Up, filmed in his local park, that landed in the Christmas Top 10.

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Skepta and Wiley perform on stage at O2 Academy Leicester, 2012 | Photo: Ollie Millington/Getty

The “poets laureate” of today

It may be staggering for those of us who have been covering grime throughout its rough-and-ready underground years, loitering around underneath flyovers and outside tube stations waiting to meet our interviewees, but it is now just accepted by teenage fans as the normal state of things that 'grime' t-shirts should be on-sale in H&M, or that Skepta could win the Mercury Music Prize, or that Wiley, the mercurial 'godfather of grime', would be given an MBE in the Queen's New Year's Honours.

The British music industry is falling over itself to learn the lessons of grime's entrepreneurial, self-sufficient route to commercial success – artists have led the way in using social media to communicate directly with their fans – while the Labour MP for Kensington, Emma Dent Coad has cited grime MCs in the House of Commons as the “poets laureate” of our times, after the likes of Stormzy, AJ Tracey and Big Zuu spoke up in support of the survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire.

Wiley received his MBE in March 2018 | Photo: Yui Mok/Getty Images

Uncertain times

All this would suggest that Britain's answer to rap music has become a permanent fixture on the pop landscape, just like hip-hop culture did in the 1990s, after roughly the same period of gestation. But look beneath the surface success, and talk to people in the scene, and there is uncertainty; it was even implicit in the Wireless Festival.

AJ Tracey performs in the 1Xtra Live Lounge
A thrilling new generation of rappers and MCs are emerging – but most of them are just not making grime.

The last-minute cancellation of Sunday night headliner DJ Khaled raised a pertinent question, as the organisers scrambled for a local replacement – which artist could plausibly be within a few hours reach of London on a Sunday morning, with the stature to carry such a headline slot, apart from Stormzy (who'd already headlined), Skepta (who'd headlined in 2017) or his crew Boy Better Know (who'd headlined in 2016)?

In the end Canadian superstar Drake, who happened to be in London, stepped into the breach – but grime's lack of strength in depth is notable; it's hard to envision who from the UK grime scene could fill such a slot that hasn't already done so. A thrilling new generation of rappers and MCs are emerging – but most of them are just not making grime.

Young west Londoner AJ Tracey, who came up through the underground as a grime star, making grime music, caused consternation earlier this year when he told Esquire in a landmark interview, “don't call me a grime artist”.

Hotly-tipped teenage lyricist Dave has appeared on one or two grime songs, but is very much in the classic rap mould – more like Streatham's answer to Nas.

Brummie Mist and north Londoner Mostack, who delivered a show-stopping performance together at Wireless, and the supremely talented J Hus, are creating a much slower, more melodic sound, a fusion of Jamaican dancehall, west African 'Afrobeats' and rap, which some are calling 'Afroswing'.

Dizzee Rascal, 2003 | Photo: Eva Edsjo/Getty

Perhaps a grassroots genre like grime, invented on cheap home computer software and cultivated in school playgrounds and inner city youth clubs, which has thrived precisely because of its devil-may-care youthful creativity, was always going to suffer a kind of altitude sickness the moment it ascended to the peak of the pop establishment – all new genres ossify eventually, crack, and then the pieces shatter and are put back together in new ways.

So even if grime's triumph is also the moment of its decline, perhaps this is no bad thing at all. The new forms emerging from black British music are as tantalising as ever.

Dan Hancox is the author of Inner City Pressure: The Story of Grime (HarperCollins)

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