What Killed Grime The First Time

Eskimo by Wiley is released. Crowd goes wild. It’s only 2002. Within a couple months, Radio 1 loads up. Promises to platform Black Music. It does….in a way.

Years go on…03 sees the release of Boy in Da Corner. A Classic. 04, Walthamstow’s Lethal B puts himself on the map…05,06….

End of the decade. Grime isn’t in such a good shape. People are jumping ship. Going mainstream. It dies back into the underground…

What happened the first time round? And how can our gen avoid it? Let’s do a run through.

Issue 1: Form 696

Form 696 was a risk assessment made by the Met, and was in use between 2005 to 2017. That’s nearly 15 years. With this assessment, the use was to request promoters to have 14 day notice of an event taking place in 21 London boroughs. If they failed- the Feds could go right on a shut it down. Sounds normal…right?

Here’s the issue. It also required the names, addresses and phone numbers of just about EVERYONE in that event: promoters, the DJ’s, the rappers. And to make matters worse, they also had to disclose what type of event it was going to be and what demographic was likely to be there. In boroughs where there was notable Black and Asian populations, events were often under threat and canceled if organisers could not provide these details.

Only in 2017, a year after Sadiq Khan became mayor, was it reviewed and subsequently scrapped.

Issue 2: KEEP THE PASSA AT HOME (they couldn’t).

Internal conflicts in the grime scene was not new. In fact, the Netflix documentary, The Evolution of Black British Music, touches on this a fair bit. With internal conflicts often came violence- think Crazy Titch’s murder of a man in Chingford, East London, or Esco’s death in Leytonstone in 2008. These issues added to instability, and whenever there was violence at events, promoters became afraid of signing these people on.

Issue 3: No one’s About No More (Gentrification)

Gentrification does more than just displace, it removes communities. With the turbo gentrification of London, Inner London’s appeal became that of people who were from wealthier backgrounds, and those who lived in those high rise flats just a stones throw away from the mile long city found themselves outside London, where the effect simply, just was not the same. With youth clubs closing and people moving away, the streets ran dry with the culture that once populated it. Though now we can say Outer London carries the torch, back then the zones spanning 4-6 didn’t have nearly the same pull as 1-3.

So, that’s my run through. Let’s be real, Grime hasn’t gone away! With people like Skep and Wiley who have kept it alive and running, we’ve got people like West London’s Kibo (who I’ve spoken about regarding Outer London being the city’s torch carrier) who channel grime in their raps, showing us that culture doesn’t die: it reinvents itself.

Written By Chinwendu Akus (Bydahour)