rom its humble beginnings on London’s inner-city estates to the popular appeal of Stormzy’s legendary Glastonbury set, grime has “smashed its way into the mainstream” . But how did this often misunderstood genre develop from UK garage into the biggest musical movement since punk? Greg Cartwright explores grime’s evolution... Inner-city youth.
Urban frustration. Aggressive, loud music. DIY approach. Sound familiar?
You’d be forgiven for thinking I was talking about the punk movement of the 1970s, but actually these are the phrases that first come to mind when considering grime - the UK’s biggest musical movement since the Sex Pistols declared “Anarchy in the UK” . Much like Britpop in the 1990s, grime is a uniquely British thing - with a tongue-in-cheek black humour to it - that isn’t largely known by international audiences. The music in both genres talks about UK culture, with Britpop focusing on white working-class traditions and quintessentially British experiences while grime documents the violence and poverty found on our inner-city estates.
Where the two differ is that Britpop was a mainstream concept promoted by the music press (the bands involved rarely came from the same scene), while grime is a grassroots, underground movement of young producers and MCs, having much more in common with punk’s DIY ethics and antiestablishment stance. To understand how grime came about, you really have to turn back the clock to the late 1990s, when UK garage and its two-step variant were enjoying huge popularity.
UK garage was largely born from jungle nights, where DJs began speeding up original US garage tracks to around 130BPM and playing them in a second room, giving punters a break from jungle’s relentless 170BPM. Producers then began creating their own UK garage tracks, mixing them with US originals, and taking further influence from American R&B and dance music to create a sound that was much more soulful and therefore palatable to mainstream pop audiences.
With support from pirate radio stations like Rinse FM and Deja Vu, UK garage and two-step continued to gain popularity, with artists such as Artful Dodger, Craig David and Baby D creating some of the genre’s biggest anthems. By 2001, tracks such as ‘Do You Really Like It?’ (Pied Piper) and ‘21 Seconds’ (So Solid Crew) were topping the UK singles charts. Some producers began stripping back the R&B influence on the genre, adopting a darker sound (pioneered by Jess Jackson in the late ‘90s and continued by the likes of So Solid Crew) that incorporated heavier bass and ragga vocals.
It was these ‘dark garage’ tracks (which also influenced Dubstep) that teenagers living in London’s poorest areas started MCing over in the early 2000s, giving birth to grime and kicking off a multi-cultural movement that would spread across the UK to Birmingham, Manchester and beyond. Although it did harness the energy of the garage rave, this early grime music wasn’t as overtly ‘dancy’ . These were rough-cut demos recorded in cramped bedrooms using the most rudimentary gear.
Choruses were pretty much non-existent. The vocals were aggressive and, with unflinching honesty, the lyrics detailed the gang violence and financial struggles experienced by young people on the streets of London on a daily basis. A by-product of this was the macho posturing, one-up-manship and ‘diss’ culture – borrowed from US hip-hop – that grime MCs grew up with. Many early commentators levelled criticism at MCs for depicting and even inciting violence with their lyrics, focussing on the anger that belied the intelligence, wit and black humour found in much of the music.
Violence is indeed prevalent in the lyrics, but it’s important to realise that it was the brutal gang violence experienced by these MCs that inspired grime, not the other way around. Like all things, grime soon evolved. When Dizzee Rascal took home the 2003 Mercury Prize, it confirmed grime’s true status as an intelligent, creative art form that could also contend with pop and rock for chart success. The mid 2000s was a fertile period, with the likes of Dizzee, Kano, The Streets and Lethal Bizzle finding mainstream success.
This heyday also coincided with a resurgence in indie music in the latter part of the decade, and the collaborative nature of grime saw MCs like Wiley and Lethal Bizzle guesting on tracks by pop and indie artists, bringing an awareness of grime to new audiences. However, as dubstep rose up to become the exciting new buzz genre, the mainstream began to lose interest in grime, pushing the genre back underground by 2009. Some artists, including Tinchy Stryder, Chipmunk and Wiley, had moved When Dizzee Rascal took home the Mercury Prize,it confirmed grime 's true status as an intelligent, creative art form that could also contend with pop and rock for chart success Timeline of grime : the key moments 2000 - So Solid Crew release ‘Dilemma’ The first grime track is something that’s fiercely contested, just like aging punks will debate endlessly about who put out the first punk record.
The debate could go on forever, but it’s this 2000 track from So Solid Crew which is the obvious choice. The Battersea collective pushed UK garage into darker territory, emphasising the role of the MC and reigning in the R&B vocals most associated with the genre. The sparse sound and heavy bass stabs were archetypal grime. 2002 - Wiley’s ‘Eskimo’ becomes first true grime instrumental This instrumental track from grime pioneer Wiley was described by the rapper as ‘eskibeat’ , an early style with a dark, dystopic sound that reflected Wiley’s “angry and coldhearted” mindset.
Wiley’s music was essentially grime, just under a different name, and eskibeat eventually became a subgenre. 2003 - Boy In Da Corner wins the Mercury Prize A real turning point, Dizzee Rascal’s classic debut album gave grime its first mainstream exposure after seeing off huge rock competitors like Radiohead and Coldplay. Second single ‘Fix Up, Look Sharp’ broke the Top 20, with Dizzee rapping over a sparse composition consisting of a repetitive, rambling beat and rock vocals (both sampled from Billy Squier’s ‘The Big Beat’).
2004 - Grime gets its biggest hit Despite having no real hook, save for Lethal Bizzle shouting the title, his 2004 single ‘Pow!’ charted at UK #11 and caused such a ruckus at club nights that many venues banned the track, only adding to its appeal to young music fans. In 2010, ‘Pow!’ became the unofficial song of the student protests. 2005 - London Metropolitan Police introduce Form real setback for grime, just as the scene was building momentum, the Met’s heavy-handed risk assessment requirement (Form 696) resulted in the closure of many grime nights across London.
According to The Guardian, the form “required club promotors to detail the ethnicity of their clientele,” and was slammed for racial profiling by leading music industry figures. It was scrapped in 2017. in a more commercial direction, incorporating elements of dance and pop into their music - a move often met with criticism by ‘true’ grime fans. Owing somewhat to the shortlived success of dubstep, but also to the resilience of the underground scene, producers began revisiting grime in the early 2010s, spawning a series of new instrumentals.
By 2014, the genre was enjoying a commercial comeback, with some of its most revered MCs (including Lethal Bizzle, Jme, Skepta and Tempa T) scoring Top 20 hits. But what was most exciting was the crop of new MCs emerging from the scene, bringing with them different values and a fresh sound, without compromising on grime’s energy and streetsmart lyrics. When grime’s new poster boy, Stormzy, dropped ‘Shut Up’ in 2015, everything seemed to come full circle.
Originally filmed in a South London park, with the music played from a mobile phone, the track saw Stormzy freestyle over the classic grime instrumental ‘Functions on the Low’ , originally released by the Ruff Sqwad collective in 2004. After being recorded as a studio track, ‘Shut Up’ was catapulted into the Top 10 by a Christmas number-one campaign, helping further popularise grime and paving the way for Stormzy, whose 2017 Gang Signs and Prayer album reached UK #1 in 2017.
With its popularity well and truly reinstated, 2019 gave us perhaps the only further confirmation we needed that grime is here to stay - a headline set at the UK’s biggest festival. Despite criticism levelled at Stormzy and grime music generally, Emily Eavis’s decision 2008 - ‘Wearing My Rolex’ spawns a slew of imitations A huge hit for Wiley, ‘Wearing My Rolex’ showed that grime could reach the upper echelons of the UK charts - as long as it was willing to compromise.
Reaching #2, the track introduced elements of electro and house music, and influenced a raft of singles from other grime artists, not least Dizzee Rascal’s collaboration with Calvin Harris, ‘Dance Wiv Me’ . 2009 - Grime gets serious again with Tempa T’s ‘Next Hype’ As the mainstream lost interest, a whole host of new MCs were causing a stir in the underground. Exploding with ‘hype’ and tongue-in-cheek posturing, Tempa T’s aggressive sound contrasted starkly with the poppier releases from some grime artists at the end of the decade.
2012 - Charlie Sloth creates ‘Fire In The Booth’ segment on BBC 1Xtra Never underestimate the power of the DJ. Charlie Sloth’s new segment provided a solid platform for upcoming grime artists at a time when there weren’t many mainstream platforms left. ‘Fire In The Booth’ showcased renowned freestyles from some of the scene’s biggest names, including Wretch 32, Bugzy Malone and Big Narstie. 2016 - Birmingham’s Lady Leshurr wins MOBO award for Best Female Act The Solihull rapper, who became known for her Queen’s Speech series of freestyle videos, walked away with the Best Female Act at the awards, and has collaborated with Bashy, Wiley and even will.i.am.
Inspired by Eminem and Ms Dynamite, Lady Leshurr takes a more light-hearted approach to grime, telling the BBC in 2018: "People associate grime with violence and aggression, and I wanted to be the person to change that.” 2017 - Wiley receives MBE for services to music The pioneering grime producer and MC was included in the 2018 New Year’s Honours list - and rightly so. At 38 years old, this veteran artist has been the one constant throughout grime’s story so far, whether through his early underground instrumentals or his more mainstream efforts.
2019 - Stormzy headlines Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury Two years after his debut became the first grime album to reach the top spot, it was announced that Stormzy would headline the main stage at the UK’s biggest music festival. The album, which set a new record by becoming the first to have all of its tracks appear in the UK charts concurrently, formed the crux of his epic set. It incorporated grime, gospel, street dance and theatrics, and received widespread acclaim from fans and the music press alike. to book Stormzy as Glastonbury’s Friday night headliner proved that grime is now a big player in popular music, just as Jay-Z (whose retort against Noel Gallagher was genius) and Beyoncé (who has sold more records than Glasto favourite Coldplay) proved that hip hop and R&B acts also make great headliners (in 2008 and 2011 respectively).
Stormzy soon silenced any naysayers, with a smart, varied, politically charged set that sealed his status as one of the UK’s finest artists and reinforced grime’s legacy as a unique, hugely important cultural phenomenon. As the rapper put it himself in a 2016 feature for Clash magazine: “In British music you have indie, rock… Grime is now one of those pillars. It’s a foundation of British music.” As I write this – as if to hammer home the point – Stormzy’s appropriately titled single ‘Own It (ft.
Ed Sheeran & Burna Boy)’ is sitting pretty at the top of the charts – the first UK #1 of the 2020s. Could this be the decade of grime? I guess we’ll have to see… In British music you have indie , rock… Grime is now one of those pillars . It ’ s a foundation of British music .” STORMZY
