GRIOTS REPUBLIC - AN URBAN BLACK TRAVEL MAG - JULY 2016

full panic mode about gangs of black
boys running the streets of Britain killing
each other. The Operation Trident
initiative, launched by London’s Metropolitan
Police to tackle gun crime and
homicide in the black community, was
introducing a new level of harassment
and surveillance to the lives of young
black men everywhere. My hometown of
Birmingham was experiencing its own
moral panic, after a drive by shooting
resulted in the deaths of Charlene Ellis
and Letisha Shakespeare, and brought
the city’s gang rivalries to the forefront.
The crucible of systematic disenfranchisement
and haphazard violence of
urban Britain was the backdrop for
Grime’s origin story. It began with Wiley,
a member of UK garage crew Pay
As U Go, who began producing a different
kind of music that he dubbed “eskibeat”.
If the good vibes of garage felt
like an endless summer, Wiley was ushering
in winter. The sound was starker
and colder, which lead to him christening
his new tracks with names like
‘Eskimo’, ‘Ice Rink’, and ‘Igloo’. This
new direction kept the frantic tempo
of garage’s 140 beats per minute, but
was sonically more sparse and urgent.
The production was decidedly electronic,
with clicks, bangs and crashes that
didn’t even pretend to sound like any
musical instrument you had ever heard
before. As more producers followed after
Wiley, Grime began to take shape. It
was dark, industrial, and for the uninitiated,
it was thoroughly perplexing.
This truly new genre of music felt like
punk rock for the tower blocks – the
large concrete housing estates and towering
rectangles of low income apartments
that had been thrown together
after Britain, the East End in particular,
was ravaged in the Second World War.
In this melting pot of cultures, Grime’s
slang drew from Jamaican Patois and
dancehall music, while its energy and
MC-driven nature came from jungle and
drum-and-bass. Though closely related
to the party-friendly garage that bubbled
away in British clubs in the late
nineties and early noughties, the tone
of Grime was far-removed from the silky
vocals about fine liquor and even finer
women. Grime’s aesthetic was black
tracksuits and low hats in place of the
flashy Moschino that its older brother
wore. Garage’s Gucci loafers were
replaced with Nike Air Max, and thick
gold chains were now tucked into hoods
instead of on brazen display.
From its nexus of Bow, east London,
Grime spread via pirate radio stations,
vinyl, homemade music videos
and independently produced media
such as Lord of the Mics and Risky
Roadz. I kissed my first boyfriend to
the soundtrack of Grime MCs battling
back-to-back on sets – Grime’s equivalent
of a rap cypher – recorded live off
of illicit radio broadcasts onto cassette
tapes. As time went on, we even got our
own music channel. If you were lucky
enough to have a Sky TV subscription,
you could tune into Channel U and see
kids who looked and sounded just like
www.GriotsRepublic.com
www.GriotsRepublic.com