Nearly two decades ago, in Bow, London, a generation of innovative young MCs birthed a new chapter in Britain’s cultural story. One that went on to inspire fashion, soundtrack films, appear on the most Spotify playlists and dominate main stages at the UK’s biggest music festivals.
Unapologetically depicting the reality of street culture in London, grime spoke the language of black, working-class life and reeled listeners in with attention-grabbing writing that could gracefully switch between cutting humour and tender vulnerability, and a 140bpm tempo that feels unstoppable. A sister genre to UK garage, grime’s roots derive from hip-hop and jungle with elements of dancehall and house. But by the late noughties and early 2010s, grime’s initial wave of success – driven by the likes of Dizzee Rascal, Lethal B, Kano and others – had quietened.
Many factors were at play, notably the Metropolitan police’s form 696 – an assessment form that required London’s clubs to describe both the genre of music they wanted to play and the ethnicity of their target audience. It was first issued in 2005 and not scrapped until 2017, amid long-standing accusations of racial bias. The decline wasn’t terminal; as quickly as grime retreated, it returned – with a vengeance.
This decade, grime has re-emerged as a force that can’t be ignored. In 2012, Radio 1Xtra’s Fire in the Booth became the place for artists to showcase their freestyle talents, building on the successes of the previous decade’s indie platforms such as Channel U, Lord of the Mics, SB.TV, GRM Daily, Link Up TV and Risky Roadz.
2014 was the year things really kicked into overdrive. Meridian Dan’s German Whip and Skepta’s That’s Not Me powered into mainstream consciousness, while an unsigned Stormzy earned one of the most coveted slots for early-career artists – a performance on the Jools Holland show. In the same year, the Mobos created a standalone grime award category, signifying its importance and uniqueness, while east London MC Ghetts declared grime the new punk.
But grime didn’t succeed on the strength of the music alone. It was around this time that global cultural shifts saw a change in whose stories were valued, who was allowed to speak, and who was going to be listened to, all aided by social media. The time was right for a sound like this to take root.
Soon after, international music heavyweights such as Drake and Kanye West made inroads into the culture, the latter providing one of the most talked-about performances at the Brits when he brought on stage an entourage of some of grime’s finest, from Jammer to Novelist, during his performance of All Day in 2015.
Political interventions from grime artists became headline news, whether it was Stormzy’s 2019 Glastonbury set, climaxing with thousands chanting “Fuck Boris”, or 2017’s Grime 4 Corbyn movement – part of a general election campaign that achieved the highest turnout among 18-24-year-olds for a quarter of a century. And with the release of Skepta’s 2016 Konnichiwa and Stormzy’s 2017 Gang Signs & Prayer, both the old guard, and a new generation of talent, took the wider public by storm.
It’s not just the big commercial artists that are continuing to push the genre forward into mainstream; it’s the smaller underground acts too. Producers like Maxsta and Drone and MCs like Melvillous, Jammz and Yizzy are fine lieutenants in grime’s second coming.
Grime has also become a more diverse space this decade, with numerous female MCs rising to prominence out of the genre’s male-dominated origins, including Nolay, Lady Leshurr, AG, Female Takeover, Lioness and Madam X. And when Lady Leshurr came out as pansexual in 2018, grime found its first LGBTQ+ superstar, while underground MCs like Karnage Kills prove there’s an exciting pipeline of queer grime talent ready for the world to notice. As grime grew in stature, its influence spread beyond the M25, and the 2010s saw artists from around the country, such as Manchester’s Bugzy Malone, match London’s finest for passion, skillset and flow.
Music streaming platforms such as Spotify have played their part in the genre’s growth too, sending new fans on journeys of discovery. Spotify’s own playlists Grime Shutdown and Grime Classics have more than 850,000 followers between them. And its playlists created by fans and brands also attract big numbers. Red Bull’s Grime + UK Rap 2019 playlist is one of the most popular, bringing the best of the year’s output to thousands of fans.
Spotify’s Who We Be – made up of a podcast, social channel, playlist and live experience – has become another home for grime music. The live show, which brings together grime with other related genres, sold out London’s Alexandra Palace in 2018 and Manchester’s Victoria Warehouse this year. In a changing music industry, grime has more than weathered the storm – in 2017, the BPI, Britain’s main music trade association, recorded a 138% rise in streams of grime and grime-related tracks, compared with a 61% growth for tracks as a whole. And in 2018 Spotify recognised this, separating grime from UK rap, garage and urban.
Grime arrived at a time when black British culture needed a vocal means of expression that it could call its own, and survived the changing tides of music consumption. In this decade it has infiltrated every facet of British life – who’d have thought, 20 years ago, that you’d hear a legend like D Double E on a Christmas ad, or grime playing in the EastEnders cafe? In much the same way as hip-hop changed US pop culture decades before, grime is changing UK pop culture – and it is a shift that’s likely to be just as irreversible.
To celebrate the end of the decade, Spotify is unlocking 10 years of your streaming data. Get your Wrapped now and relive the music that mattered to you.
