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ARTICLE
From 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 anti-establishment 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
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 anti-establishment 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
The full review can be found in Pro Mobile Issue 100, Pages 52-56.
