Brief history of grime music: from underground to mainstream

A Brief History of Grime

“I’m making thiiiis much money”

Tinie Tempah’s finally got to number one, just as Tinchy Stryder did before him (with ‘Number One’ – yeah that’s my brother), NDubz and Dizzee Rascal. Wiley, Kano and Lethal B have been close – but are these artists selling- out? Is Grime what it used to be? Or is it purely pop? To celebrate the birth of popular (or mourn the death of true) grime – join us as we traverse through:

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GRIME

By M.C Hawking

To track the changing sound of grime music we’ve selected a few choice cuts to take you on a musical journey through this (once) unique genre. We’ve even included a handy graph that charts the evolution of the movement, with a nifty sound guide that identifies which songs are more Miley than Wiley.

Click more to track grime’s history and to listen to a few tunes

Grime is said to have started in Bow, East London around 2000, as a result of emerging urban pirate radio stations playing the unsigned music of artists like Wiley and Dizzee – often in the form of unrehearsed rap battles. These face-offs didn’t always showcase the best lyrics – just count how many times Wiley rhymes ‘Kane’ with ‘Kane’ here – but the Gameboy beats and the confrontational, raw feel were enough to garner a large following. The present moniker wasn’t set in stone either, with Wiley’s own term – Eskibeat – being bandied around to describe the emerging genre at the time.

Gradually the scene began to expand, with MCs like Skepta, JME, Shystie, Lethal B, Lady Sovereign, Ghetto, Kano, Scorcher, Fumin and Taylor Swift each making a name for themselves within the genre. Of the most recognisable artists, Dizzee Rascal was the first to achieve real mainstream success with the release of his debut album Boy in da Corner in 2003. This recognition was partly down to the popular music TV station – Channel U – that showcased unsigned artists and thrust the scene further into the mainstream.

From then on in, it was money-making time for the major labels with MCs like Wiley and Lethal B releasing studio albums to critical and commercial success. With this came producers and performers from other genres (Calvin Harris, Mark Ronson, Gallows, Craig David) hopping, skipping and jumping onto the grime bandwagon. From this new found interest emerged new hybrid genres like electro-grime and grindie.

To some this was the end of the movement. To others (notably the artists themselves) it was the beginning. As grime went pop(ular), everyone and their mum got involved – from Lily Allen to Armand Van Helden – and grime MCs turned into fully-fledged chart-dominating pop stars. For the first time in donkey’s years, rappers from Britain were in the charts and although it wasn’t necessarily the grime that started in Bow all those years ago that was surfing the airwaves – the stems were still there (but whether that’s a good or bad thing is up to you).

Yet regardless of all its mainstream genre-bending, there are still many MCs that are ‘keeping it real’ as it were, by steadily producing music that stays true to the aural aesthetics and roots of the genre – sometimes at the same time as reaching mainstream success. So is the genre dead? Well, next month’s collaboration between Westlife and JME entitled ‘Fuck u duhkeds, you CAN SUCK IT BITCH” will be a major turning point, that’s for sure.

Below are the songs from our very scientific graph, with a few to listen to – which is nice. So as Tim Westwood might say: