Grime on the rise

The tizzy over Dizzee Rascal is just the beginning of the latest British Invasion. With cockney raps and console beats, pirate push and pubescent stars, the street-level East London amalgam called grime is stirring up heat, hype and beefs galore

by SCOTT C

There's a new sound coming out of the U.K. that has revived use of the term "British Invasion" in the North American music press. Not since drum & bass has a truly British form of underground music seen such growth in scope and popularity, both inside the U.K. and out. This music has been called many things - sublow, eight-bar, dubstep, eski, G-hop and the all-encompassing U.K. garage (pronounced "garridge") - but the top-o'-the-pile term for today is grime. The endless name-juggling, a matter star MC Wiley capitalized on with the single "Wot Do U Call It?," isn't inappropriate, given grime's wide spread of influences, adding variety and strength to a genre exploding with regional interpretations and creativity.

For many people outside of the U.K., awareness of grime began with the arrival of 20-year-old East London boy Dizzee Rascal (who plays Club Soda this week), but for thousands of devotees back in England, Dizzee was just the latest, most prominent manifestation of something that had been growing for ages. Pulling at the coattails of the commercialized, ailing two-step and garage scene, while ignoring the climate of derivative hip hop and R&B in an urban-music industry which had likewise ignored it for years, the grime movement is the youngest child in a long line of siblings, and is now garnering all the attention.

To assess the new sound of London street life as simply the U.K. version of hip hop is a little shortsighted, given that the wide range of material out there draws influences from hip hop, techno, drum & bass, dancehall and even punk. MCs do not waste time trying to pass themselves off as American types, instead lacing rhymes with Council Estate (government housing) cockney and manor-house bravado. With bouncing, syncopated rhythms, Detroit techno and eight-bit, video-game synth sounds, strange minimalist blips and even straight guitar riffs that accompany infectious, guttural basslines, much of the beats don't resemble anything present in hip hop as we know it, either. Add to this the strife and aggression of a generation of impoverished young black Britons, simmered in the juices of the British rave scene and peppered with MC battles and clashes that sometimes end in violence, and you have grime.

East End beginnings

So? Just what is it that has propelled grime into the spotlight? Is this truly a major moment in music, or has the hype machine just taken a bite out of London for a hot minute? "It's definitely a milestone in the development of U.K. music," explains Charlie Dark, DJ, producer, former member of U.K. outfit Attica Blues and founder of Blacktronica, a forum for black electronic expression committed to changing the parameters of the U.K. music industry. "Grime is the final conclusion of many different factors, one of them being the migration of people from the Caribbean and Africa into England. It's the offspring of these people that are making this music. With that, they've brought the whole influence of reggae, hip hop and various different cultures into the mix. The U.K. has always had a tradition of absorbing cultures from other places, and then spewing out its own version, and grime incorporates that as well.

"Technology has also arrived at a point where anyone can get their hands on pirate music software, or a Playstation, make their tracks and have them on the radio or in the club that night, or sent around the world at a click. These things have allowed what is essentially regional music to constantly change and mutate very quickly."

Although grime was born out of the streets of East London, you can trace the sounds of hundreds of crews and individual artists to all corners of that city, while it slowly creeps into the rest of the country. The young faces who are currently championing this new sound - Wiley, Kano, Terror Danjah, Shystie, Plasticman, Dizzee Rascal and Lady Sovereign, to name just a few - may have helped spark a very healthy and welcoming scene in New York City, but ultimately they represent the voice of London youth, a voice that's cracking into maturity right before our eyes. With records made by 14- or 15-year-old kids getting play, this truly is the sound of young London.

"To be honest, I don't think most of the kids making this music are really that bothered if anyone outside London is feeling it," says Dark wryly. "It's more like the music has given them an opportunity to say how they feel about the state of things where they live. They're thinking, with that voice, hopefully, will come some cash to help me survive the situation that I'm in. I live in the heart of East London, and it's unlike any other part of London, and the music is very reflective of what goes on here. It's quite grimy here! But the music embodies the attitude that you feel walking down the street, much like the early sounds of hip hop were able to capture the feel of New York in the music. Unlike drum & bass, which was made by people who had travelled, grime is made by people who have never been out of East London. Traditionally, U.K. music hasn't survived outside of the U.K. because the music gets exported, but the culture that goes with it doesn't."

Dizzee spell

East London's biggest export right now is a young Dylan Mills, better known as Dizzee Rascal, who before winning England's Mercury Prize in 2003 had already made a name for himself in the garage scene as a member of the Roll Deep Crew. 2003's award-winning Boy in da Corner LP was greeted with both enthusiasm and confusion by North America, with many taking the album completely out of context, having no prior knowledge of the thriving scene he had graduated from. Dizzee epitomized the rough-edged, troubled youth of East London and had no problem translating that into beats and rhymes, ultimately becoming the first breakout star to represent grime. Since releasing Showtime in 2004, he has been touring tirelessly, remembering to use his Mercury Prize as a doorstop, leaving just enough room for the rest of East London's thriving scene to slide through.

"I didn't really realize how many people you could touch, just doin' two albums," says Dizzee Rascal in a calm but wildly cryptic voice. "It's mad. People ask me all the time if I feel pressure in the position I'm in, but the only pressure I feel is to make the best music I can, naw'mean? It's easy to say that you have no boundaries, but it's another thing to put that into your music, naw'mean? You have to be open-minded and really have no boundaries when it come to music. Hip hop is one of my favourite music, and then drum & bass and fing, but I appreciate rock, grunge, techno, 'ardcore, R&B, dancehall, country-western, whatevah, naw'mean?"

Dizzee seems to have embraced his stardom with a relative nonchalance, and clearly hasn't forgotten where he came from yet, but how did he go from being a little troublemaker getting kicked out of schools left and right to the biggest name in U.K. urban music? Was he plucked off a stage at an all-nighter? Did his demo fall into the hands of some high-powered A&R guy? Did he win an East London talent show?

Nope. Dizzee tapped into one of the most pervasive and influential forces at work in the U.K. underground - pirate radio. "Pirate radio is one of the only avenues, where I'm from, for people to get heard, naw'mean? Whether they're MCs, DJs or producers. This is what the kids from the Council Estates have to do, naw'mean? But more than that, it's part of English culture. Pirate radio has been going on for years, and most of the big music to come out of the U.K., like drum & bass, 'ardcore, garage or whatevah, was born out of pirate radio."

Non-stop on the rooftop

With underground networks that run self-sufficient, confounding the music industry status quo with its reach and direct connection to the streets, it's no wonder that even in 2005, pirate radio is a vital part of this thriving underground scene. Only two weeks ago, 23-year-old DJ Slimzee was banned from every rooftop across the borough of Tower Hamlets in East London after a surveillance camera caught him setting up shop on a rooftop in Stephney. Slimzee was setting up for Rinse FM, one of the most popular pirate radio stations and the very one that launched Dizzee Rascal's career. The scene also boasts its own cable station in the form of Channel U, a big middle finger to MTV that plays homegrown grime videos right alongside big-budget American clips.

Some have questioned whether or not the whole grime scene can stay underground for much longer, looking at the demise of two-step and garage as a model. As these scenes grew in popularity, the music became more and more geared towards the mainstream audience. "I look at grime as a stepping stone, really," explains Lady Fury, a 17-year-old who reps as one of the rawest females on the mic. "Everybody is an MC. Over here, there's so many people doing garage, so many people putting out independent work, that there will always be an underground. It can't die. It's way too deep. But as far as getting recognition, moving forward, making a living off of your music, these are things that I think everybody wants to do. I'm going to use grime to do what I want to do."

While the divisions between North, South, East and West London makes for some great moments on record and provide propulsion for the entire scene, there's an accompanying amount of online message-board gossip that goes on, giving birth to beefs that will play out over time, whether it's a battle at a rave or gunshots in the back alley of a club.

The British press has done much over the years to malign garage, and now the grime scene, stating that the music incites violence and criminal behaviour, but Lady Fury believes just the opposite. "A lot of people don't realize that we're role models. There's always going to be some badman looking to cause trouble at a rave somewhere, but the youngest kids look up to us onstage. They're looking at us up on stage MCing, with people shouting our names and singing along with our lyrics, so obviously they think, ‘I wanna do that.' So instead of being on road, getting into trouble, or being bored and doing nothing with your time, you work towards it. You write the lyrics, you do the pirate radio, you do the raves and if you put in the hard work and dedication, you'll get somewhere. Kids know this because we are young people in this. It's young people that are pushing this thing forward."

Grime is perhaps the only genre of music where listening to 14-year-old kids rattling on about gunplay in their area over Playstation beats can be as entertaining as an introspective twentysomething getting clever over alternating 16-bar spurts of well-polished gutter breaks. The sound of young London is demanding to be heard. The least you can do is listen.

Dizzee Rascal and DJ Wonder play Club Soda
on Wednesday, April 27, 9 p.m., $17, all ages