Grime and Graf

Diggedy Derek

Stray Dog
I can't think of a single grime lyric which bigs up graffiti or its artists. Which is pretty strange, when you consider that MCs even big up "the Rock massive" from time to time.

Funny that. Does this mean is graffiti viewed by London as desparately uncool?
 

luka

Well-known member
yup. pretty much all the big writers are 30 something white blokes from the provinces.
 

originaldrum

from start till done
i never heard of anyone breakdancing to grime either....

not including these two elements may be the strongest way for grime to differentiate itself from hip hop
 

Diggedy Derek

Stray Dog
Possibly. On the other hand I was impressed by a recent article arguing that the holy trinity of DJing, MCing, breaking and graffing (OK that's four but whatever) was a false one, and really graffiti could be detached from the other three.

Just gut feeling, I can't justify that, but I've always felt graffiti was just tagged (ha!) on to the other three.
 

mpc

wasteman
haha.

i could quite easily imagine logan sama doing his robot impression to some terror danjah.
 

Fiddy

Well-known member
You'd be surprised, Flirta D can breakdance and I've seen him bust a few moves to grime. At Smoove one night I was shocked to see how many bashment dance moves are coming into it.
 

stelfox

Beast of Burden
graf actually predates hip hop by quite some distance and being into hip hop really isn't a prerequisite, as it obviously is with breakdancing - what else would you dance to?
that's not to say that they aren't bound together in many ways, though. for instance, kodwo eshun writes fabulously in more brilliant than the sun on the way wildstyle graf and his theories of breakbeat science mirror on another.
so, i guess what i'm saying is that undoubtedly graf is very strongly linked to hip hop culture and vice versa, but both could feasibly exist without the other (i bet the graf would look a lot different if hip hop never happened and that it would be a really shadowy subculture that *none* of us knew about, though), whereas other facets of hip hop culture just couldn't.
as ambrose and luka have both pointed out, in the uk, at least, graf has to a certain extent become a preserve of middle-class white boys from the provinces (and one of the country's leading painters is actually a metal fan who's not much into hip-hop at all, incidentally!) but that in no way invaildates it as "street" art at all.
you can be from a relatively privileged background and still be down; just don't front like you're from the wilds of harlesden when you're really from pinner and you'll be okay! this may be me talking from a slightly self- interested standpoint here ("what the fuck is someone who went to boarding school always prattling on about street music and ragga for?!") but there are quite a few of us like that here, me included. therefore someone loving graf and being an old etonian aren't mutually exclusive in my book.
re chantelle's point about dancehall moves cropping up at grime nights: this i really don't find surprising at all. it's totally obvious, what with the way it used to happen at jungle nights and 2step things there's always been a bit of it going on anyway, then figure in the areas where the music is coming from etc. maybe it's just happening a lot more now, though. i dunno. i've not been out in a while... what moves were they doing, incidentally? quite intrigued to find out to what tracks, too. dancehall dances are still a bit of a grey area for me: i have enough of a job keeping up with the music and have two (clubbed) left feet.
 

luka

Well-known member
i've been in love with graf since i was 8 years old incidently. the only time i've got in trouble with the police was over a peice in a sainsburys loading bay aged 12. i';m not knocking it. i just know where 90% of the major practioners come from.
 

luka

Well-known member
i got off without a caution though. don't tell those fuckers anything, silent treatment across the board is almost always the best policy. if they had enough evidence they wouldn';t bother asking questions.
 

Mr H

Active member
stelfox said:
graf actually predates hip hop by quite some distance and being into hip hop really isn't a prerequisite, as it obviously is with breakdancing - what else would you dance to?

I remember being at a club in NYC in 96/97, think it was called Vinyl, and all the breakers were in the house room which was pretty bizarre. Suppose it was the speed and the space that they needed as the hiphop room was rammed.
 
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outraygeous

Well-known member
i would say grime and graf are from 2 diffrent age groups. also alot of people who are into graf are more into dnb. from my encounters.

im 25 and when i was about 15 graf was massssive.. now its not as hot as the main writers are all about my age and its long doing a stretch for graf in a big mans prison
 

SIZZLE

gasoline for haters
yeah that whole 'elements' idea of hiphop is definitely open to debate, can seem a bit artificially stuck together at times and I find that it's often the most middle class kids who are trying to be down who feel the most strongly about supporting it. For those who don't know, Graf is well documented as predating hiphop music and many of the OG writers take real exception at being lumped in with the whole hiphop thing. I think the most ignored and largest group of writers I know is white metal heads.

re: bashment and grime, this is more than not surprising and I think oft overlooked. Eskimo 1, which many acknowledge as THE seminal grime track was voiced by Harry Toddler, the jamaican bashment artist. I might argue that the bashment influence was one of the things that turned grime from garage into what it is now. Also, many of these kids are of Jamaican descent and if you compare grime to hiphop they'll say "well, it's more of a bashment ting innit"

Once again Jamaican musical culture produces crucial european dance music innovation, it gets less and less suprising the more often it happens.
 

Diggedy Derek

Stray Dog
Interesting Mr. Stelfox.

I was thinking about this at the weekend, and it struck me that both Djing and Mcing are about dominating urban space, making moves in the street. They're very dynamic and body-orientated, and there's interaction between people.

Graffiti though feels like a sort of urban pastoral art form, you leave your tag and hope people come to appreciate it. Graffiti writers only interact with other writers, and on the whole it's very easy to ignore. It's biggest affinity I guess is with really really really old school hip hop, where people were just doing it as a hobby, and if the the rest of the world didn't give a damn about it, well it didn't matter.
 
S

simon silverdollar

Guest
crazy titch's new logo [on his latest 12 inch] is done like grafitti.
 

stelfox

Beast of Burden
SIZZLE said:
re: bashment and grime, this is more than not surprising and I think oft overlooked. Eskimo 1, which many acknowledge as THE seminal grime track was voiced by Harry Toddler, the jamaican bashment artist. I might argue that the bashment influence was one of the things that turned grime from garage into what it is now. Also, many of these kids are of Jamaican descent and if you compare grime to hiphop they'll say "well, it's more of a bashment ting innit"

Once again Jamaican musical culture produces crucial european dance music innovation, it gets less and less suprising the more often it happens.

good points and almost exactly what i mean re the jamaican soundsystem ethics at the heart of the whole of the h/c 'nuum. then again ragga *making* grime is a slightly tougher idea to assert properly. i think there were roughly equally as many ragga-influenced 2step garage tracks as there have been grime cuts. what has been really interesting is the increase of other sides of reggae process like the riddim/version method (which sounds like something out of the joy of sex). i personally have always seen grime having a lot more to do with ragga, directly from the jungle->2step->grime progression - just makes sense. however, the descent of "many of these kids" is a lot, lot more diverse than you might at first think. i know luka has his own ideas about african culture affecting grime.
 

SIZZLE

gasoline for haters
stelfox said:
good points and almost exactly what i mean re the jamaican soundsystem ethics at the heart of the whole of the h/c 'nuum. then again ragga *making* grime is a slightly tougher idea to assert properly. i think there were roughly equally as many ragga-influenced 2step garage tracks as there have been grime cuts. what has been really interesting is the increase of other sides of reggae process like the riddim/version method (which sounds like something out of the joy of sex). i personally have always seen grime having a lot more to do with ragga, directly from the jungle->2step->grime progression - just makes sense. however, the descent of "many of these kids" is a lot, lot more diverse than you might at first think. i know luka has his own ideas about african culture affecting grime.

yeah word, that's certainly true. I wasnt trying to assert that ragga 'made' grime per se, just that I felt that Eskimo 1 was very identifiably a move of 2step further towards ragga than it had gone before (half timing, with vocals by an actual bashment artist). And yes, the versioning thing cannot be ignored, big riddims like Pied Piper getting like 8 released versions is a clear inheritance from reggae.

As far as descent really I can only speak on the kids I have met many of whom if they weren't ethnically Jamaican affected to be so through slang etc. That might be a distinction to make, even if these kids have no JA blood people like Scratchy getting on mic and going 'you get B-U-N' points a very clear finger at what they see as being a big source of cultural inspiration. But of course I did not say 'Mainly' or 'Mostly' or anything like that, I love the diversity of the grime thing. I'm just waving the JA flag a bit as I feel (inexplicably) there is a trend to marginalize the impact of Jamaican musical innovation in European dance music history.
 
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