ABSTRACT
Introduction Grime music belongs to the city, but its sonic origins and influences, hip-hop, R n B, reggae and the cultural practice of Jamaican sound systems, flow through and are embedded within the black diaspora. The starting point for this book is urban east London, from where grime emerged in the opening years of the new millennium. As a black Atlantic creative expression that reaches beyond national borders, grime’s most well-known exponent is arguably Dizzee Rascal. In this chapter, I look back over a decade of grime to argue that the space where Dizzee Rascal learned and then honed his craft lies within the broader picture of the movement and migration that encapsulates the east end of London and, on a smaller scale, the grime crew and the clandestine, claustrophobic setting of pirate radio. The crew is underpinned by friendship and kinship connections that allow for the creation of a landscape where young people, with limited resources, are able to create a thoroughly English black creative expression. The early adoption of emerging technology by practitioners in this field means that social media, video sharing websites such as YouTube, and online TV channels have now superseded pirate radio for the dissemination of grime. However, although they are viewed as a threat to public safety, pirate radio stations afforded a unique opportunity for DJs and MCs to perform in public. I contend that the grime music scene allows for a creative practice, nourished by familial influences, that articulates the here and now while reaching back into past cultural heritage. In this sector, young people work across boundaries and in collaboration, simultaneously occupying discrete and compound roles. A further connection to the operation of the Jamaican sound system is in the way that grime artists draw on this practice by utilising the enterprise element, thereby presenting a way to make a living through the sale of music and its related
merchandise. As Ian states in the quote that opens this chapter, ‘everything goes back, at some stage’, so I now turn to a history of grime to bring us into the present.
