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.
So as the scene's biggest stars (the Dizzee Rascals and Tinchy Stryders) have moved to glossier, more upbeat sounds, and other British rappers like Giggs have adopted a more laid-back gangsta-rap style, so it was inevitable that grime's grassroots would reassert its innate anger.
A thoroughly splendid compilation, recently released, called This is UK Grime, is as good an overview of the state of the core of grime as you could ask for. It features most of the frontline artists who made the genre what it is over the past decade – names like JME, Skepta, Ghetts, Badness, Blacks, Mz Bratt and many more – and even one of the fiercest voices of foundation level grime, Crazy Titch, with a track recorded (over a rhythm by star producer Silencer aka Teddy) in jail where he is currently serving 30 years for a fatal shooting which seemingly took place in an escalating argument over lyrics. This is really not, as you may already be surmising, pretty or particularly politically correct music.
Listen to Crazy Titch's "Silencer Freestyle":
Of the newer artists on the compilation, the most prominent are Tempz aka Tempa T, whose “Next Hype” (produced by newcomer Darq E Freaker), a track so ludicrously aggressive it borders on the cartoonish, has sent club crowds wild over the past year or two, and 18-year-old Maxsta, a spiky character who delights in goading more populist vocalists. Missing from it, though, is the young sensation Kozzie. In a genre where a popular new instrumental track will be “voiced” by every artist on the scene, he has made this year's biggest rhythm – DJ Spooky's 300-sampling “Spartan” - his own with his version entitled “Destruction”. Also missing is Devlin - one of a few white rappers who've made waves on the scene, and whose storytelling skills that are liable to erupt into righteous rage have got him signed to a major label - and the astoundingly prolific producer/rapper Dot Rotten, whose dense articulations of urban frustrations make him a favourite on the scene.
Watch the video for Kozzie's "Destruction":
It would be tempting to say that this stuff is all bravado, that it's all about hype and onstage energy, that all the violent imagery is figurative – and that is to a great degree true: grime is in many ways analogous to a modern-day version of punk music in the late 1970s, a channelling of anger and despair at a grim day-to-day reality into something focused, creative and energetic. These tracks are, almost a decade into the genre's existence, still thrilling and aggressively innovative, even when they lack the shock of the new that the sound had blasting out of car radios in 2002. The lyrical themes are diverse, and there is plenty of positivity, humour and community in the music as well as confrontation. But the anger that's in the music is real, and however successful a few musicians may get, it clearly is not going away.
It may often be inchoate, contradictory and directed at the wrong targets (ie other musicians), rather than at its root causes, but it is real, and as the case of Crazy Titch demonstrates, it's not all talk. It is the sound of people used to commonplace violence and estates – the “ends” or “bits” of the lyrics – where ambition to anything but crime is stamped on by gangs, drugs, petty jealousies and failing infrastructure alike; it's the sound of people bouncing off the walls in absolute frustration. A few students smashing windows may be headline news right now, but as the mood of the country becomes increasingly irate, we might be wise, uncomfortable as it may be, to listen to and try to understand the voices that have been trying to articulate the rage of the British dispossessed - those who deal with a lot worse than student debt - for some years now.
