Blasting from pirate radio stations at 140bpm, grime’s rapid-fire breakbeats reverberated from council estates in the early 2000s. Mutating from garage, dancehall and jungle, grime’s crude, cathartic sound delivered an honest portrayal of East Lon
‘Grime was about alienation’, says Simon Wheatley, author of Don’t Call Me Urban! ‘It was raw and painful.’ By the early 2000s, London’s council estates were flooded with young MCs desperate to articulate the struggles of their hand-to-mouth existen
The sense of social and economic alienation splintered London’s poorest boroughs. For this reason, underground events like Lord of the Mics (LOTM) provided an important remedy for artists looking to share their lyrical talent. Often filmed in grubb
Originally designed by Sergio Lozano, the anatomical Air Max 95 was nicknamed ‘110’ for their price, and set a paradigm for Air Max obsession within grime. With the genre still mostly confined to clandestine radio airwaves and underground battles, g
Jordan Hughes, a photographer for NME magazine, was witness to the second wave in 2015, when grime’s raucous sound had ears ringing across the globe. For Jordan, grime was less besotted by US hip hop’s materialist peacocking, and more concerned with
But as artists like Stormzy, Skepta and Dizzee Rascal continue to launch high-profile collaborations with the likes of Nike and adidas, there’s still a deep sense of nostalgia for those documenting grime’s fledgling years in East London. For Simon,
Has grime managed to establish its own unique identity, or has it conformed to American cues from across the pond? Furthermore, can ‘corporate American’ help emblazon a path for young British artists, or is it a marriage based on the bottomline? As
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