The Sónar festival occupies a very special place in the New Music calendar – and is this year expanding outwards temporally and geographically, with new franchises in Tokyo and A Coruña, Galicia. Now into its 17th year, the parent festival in Barcelona serves as a vital meeting point for those of all stripes who refuse to acknowledge the polarisation of avant-garde and populism, or of club culture and the mainstream music industry. With 10 or more main stages and untold off-piste club events around the city, it would be impossible to condense even a single day and night of Sónar Barcelona into a standard gig-venue show, but that's what A Taste of Sónar tried to do last night.

Rap audiences are not renowned for being easy to please – but it's a daring performer indeed who is willing to stand up and drop lyrics in front of some couple of hundred babies and toddlers. Yes, as television's Rastamouse has brought reggae culture to Ceebeebies viewers, so this week DJ, promoter, teacher and poet Charlie Dark has been breaking down the elements of hip-hop for those who are more pre-school than old-school.

While the world of indie bands is, with a very few exceptions, colonised by posh kids with well-conditioned hair and earnest agendas, this country's pop is feeling more like the voice of those who actually consume it than it has for many years. The Tinchys, the Tinies and the N-Dubzes might make music of variable quality, but they provide something that ordinary young people can aspire to that is not far removed from their own lives, and have added a dose of youthful vim to the charts to boot.

Grime music, following its emergence from (mostly) East London clubs and pirate radio stations in the very early 2000s, was archetypical music of urban disaffection. Although it produced characters like the rambunctious Jammer and the oddly melancholic Trim among its legions of young rappers, its fundamental mode is of straight-up combat and threat – of gunplay and postcode rivalries, of “slewing” (killing), “murking” (killing) and “duppying” (go on, have a guess) rivals, of fury at unspecified “haters” – and the jagged rhythms and harsh tones of the music tended to back this up.

Given the somewhat viral nature of Odd Future's rapidly flourishing notoriety, it's both appropriate and a little ironic that their debut UK performance should take place in the basement of a pub in a part of north London where the underground doesn't run. Also known as OFWGKTA (or Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All), this 10-strong self-contained teenage rap conglomerate from Los Angeles has united hip-hop über-nerds, jaded old-schoolers and regular rap fans alike – a remarkable achievement in itself – in praise of unique DIY aesthetic, both musical and visual, inspired by, amongst other things, a love of early Eminem, skateboard culture and the consumption of marijuana.

The video for this Kansas fantasist’s new single shows Monáe in harshly lit close-up singing the adrenalin-charged “Cold War” directly to camera. But then halfway through the song her concentration goes and she starts laughing and then crying, leaving one wondering what the thinking was behind its release. Perhaps this “artist and business woman” (as she describes herself) deduced that such a curiosity would get people talking and therefore watching - and she was right: it’s had over a quarter of a million hits so far.

Doc Brown comes on stage in the hip-hop uniform of all-black clothing, lots of bling and black-out shades, and starts rapping “It’s all about me” in suitably bombastic tones. But Brown isn’t all he seems, as the rap peters out, the gear comes off and he is no longer a rapper, but a stand-up making his debut at this year’s Fringe. It's a terrific and captivating opening to an hour that speeds by.

Tulisa, Dappy and Fazer of North London pop phenomenon N-Dubz – or, if you prefer, Tula Constavlos, her cousin Dino Constavlos and their schoolfriend Richard Rawson – are easy to mock, and Channel 4 know it. The first episode of this showbiz slice-of-life documentary about the ebullient trio is so slathered with the kind of hideously knowing upper-middle-class arched-eybrow voiceover that characterises the whole of the channel's T4 youth programming strand that you have to wonder if they actually credit the viewer with the ability to form an opinion at all.

Today Rinse FM, London's leading pirate radio station, announced it has been granted a legal broadcast licence after 16 years of illicit transmissions. It's almost impossible to overstate how potentially momentous this event is for the UK's most vibrant and promising music scenes, and what opportunities it presents for artists, personalities and record labels ranging from the deep and experimental to the most flagrantly commercial. From the rumbustuous, teen-friendly fun of Scratcha's breakfast show to the experimental electronic jazz and funk of Alex Nut at Saturday lunchtime to various hard and dark grime and dubstep shows - as often as not playing exclusive music fresh from the hard drives of its creators that may never even become commercially available - it is a brilliant representation of London's cultural vitality in the 21st century.