"Showtime" and "Treading on thin ice" redux

I'm about to go hear Wiley play in Tokyo (!!!) And am sitting listening to "Treading on thin ice" for the first time in ages. Occurs to me that this record is much fresher, and bearing up much better these days than "Showtime" which sounds a bit tired and thin. Wiley's perspective is richer than Dizzee's and obviously the beats are much better.

Anyway I think it's interesting to consider these records a year on because the discourse around grime is always so immediate - how do feel they've fared?

I agree with everyone above. It's a classic (and "Showtime" probably isn't).

Slimzee and Wiley was great. Weird but great. Very male crowd, but knew their stuff. There were cheers when Wiley mentioned D Double and Tinchy Stryder and people were shouting along to "Wot do you call it" (which I have to agree has aged really well - gone from sounding novelty to sounding like an anthem).

Wiley called Dizzee "a very clever boy" in a very wry, bittersweet kind of way. He played 2 new tracks from "the new album" (so when's that coming out then?) which were both great and which I didn't recognize. Several times he exhorted the crowd to "go and make some Japanese grime" which is an idea I kind of love. I reckon it'd be better than Japanese hip hop, anyhow.

Talking of which, the crowd was mostly Japanese hip hop types, with the obligatory obsessively perfect outfits. I liked this because it indicates that grime is seen as street music here, not hipster stuff. Not that it was exactly rowdy inside but there was a lot of energy with fist pumping, rewind motions and jumping up and down.

There was also a very cuddly and very e'd up kid called Yasu hugging people on the dancefloor and grinning constantly which I reckon probably doesn't happen at grime nights in the UK much...