The gentrification of Grime

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
he's been getting a fair amount of support too, but most of it is missing the point, simply reaffirming that Logan has been important to the grime scene.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
He named himself after the time a Canadian Superhero was masquerading as a Samurai, we all could've seen this coming.
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
catching up on logans twitter feed.
Logan Sama
@djlogansama
Forget the uni students who discovered Grime in 2015, these people who decided to become social activists for Grime in 2015 are funnier!
Logan SamaVerified account
‏@djlogansama
Them people who've been listening to grime for 3 years who think I can't play it "because it's for blacks". I hear you and your ignorance. ��
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Ah ok, the quotes make a bit more sense. "It's for blacks" is very different to "it's black music".
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Dunno how to directly quote from Twitter on here, but:

"Its a direct evolution from Garage. With more MCs. Its not black"
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Logan Sama. it was in a twitter dialogue with a guy I used to know and who asked Logan to clarify his position clearly on the matter (which not many others had done, to be fair)

ah ok got the link -
 
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rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
hmm, yeah, idk, logan seems a bit inconsistent.

house is black music, everything that has stemmed from it is black music

OTOH absolutist statements like this (not from logan, from someone else in that twitter convo) arent really right either.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
i think with LS, he's been personally affronted by some people telling him he doesn't belong in the scene (as well he might be) and he's ended up saying something that doesn't stack up in order to protect his own position, and as a result of saying this has got a whole new group of people riled, who never doubted his position within grime in the first place.
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
yeah, i could be wrong, but i reckon logan is prob already self conscious about being a white guy in grime. i do think hes probably had to fight a bit for his position though, as well as defend the genre, and put up with peoples attitudes towards it, which has prob made him a bit defensive.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
everyone at some point or other has ended up making objectively-dubious arguments when they feel personally slighted - it's just strange when it ends up so publicly on twitter, and when it cuts across such contentious issues about cultural appropriation etc etc
 

benjybars

village elder.
Yeah it's weird that this thread is appearing now in late 2015.. as other people have said, surely this has been going on for ages?

Re: Prancehall - Luka, you've always been up calling him out in a big way (not the first time you've called him a cunt!) but was he really that bad? Surely his blog/interest in grime came from a genuine place? He properly seemed to have a sincere love and enthusiasm for the music and artists? I dunno, maybe I'm just giving him a pass cos at the time as a white middle-class grime fan I related to the blog of another white middle-class grime fan..

It also says something about the longevity of grime when someone like me who went to all those Straight outta Bethnal and Dirty Canvas raves etc can be like "don't chat to me about jumping on the grime bandwaggon, I was doing that shit ten years ago etc etc"

Will be very interesting to see what this thread is saying in another ten years!
 

droid

Well-known member
Prancehall was the heat magazine of grime and was obviously coming from a position of deep affection for the scene.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
One thing I was going to mention re: making fun of grime is that the scene itself has never seemed entirely po-facdd to me (an understatement). While there's obviously a lot of deadly-serious, angry grime there's also a lot of larger than life characters, silly voices and catchphrases. Actually this is one of its many charms - listening to sets where there's all this aggressive gun talk but at the same time you can tell on another level its mates having a laugh.

As droid says I don't see prancehall as being like bo selecta really, since bo selecta took the piss out of Craig David e.g. without any affection for him whatsoever.
 

Sectionfive

bandwagon house
Aside from regrets that it didn't happen for more artists sooner, I see very little downside to the current boom period tbh. Haven't there been enough post mortems on grime's failure to break through sustainably, instead, there have never been more DJs playing it. The whole spectrum from chart to club is relatively healthy. This week Stormzy is battling for xmas number one, Leshurr is touring America, Slimzee & Slackk did a Sunday on Rinse. Boxed doing their first full release. The only one not happy at the moment is Wiley and the impending pitter patter of tiny feet.

As for gentrification, every wave of new fans to any scene brings fresh ignorance and more distance from the roots. But I reckon there are far more pressing structural and institutional issues than students wearing their hats backwards. BBK, Butterz, etc, are happy enough to shift the merch I'm sure.

I guess Logan's position is a bit more nuanced and understandable than what's coming across on twitter. Himself, Geeneus, Slimzee have been pivotal of course and all deserve their due but grime clearly has had significantly less white input than most other genres in the UK family. Not least considering the prominence of Africans in comparison to any scene previously.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
One of the interesting aspects of this latest argument is that some old riddims are now big again, but with a wider audience (Functions on the Low e.g.). I think that's a weird aspect of this grime resurgence - it's sort of repeating what it did the first time but with much more success commercially, as opposed to coming out in a 'new and improved' way. (Not saying grime hasn't moved on, I know Butterz e.g. have pushed things forward a lot. I'm talking about the stuff that's blowing up more.)

I don't mind personally, I think it's great that Skepta is doing grime tunes rather than shitty trance-pop hybrid songs.

Actually interesting that prancehall was brought up cos it seems like Noisey/VICE are somehow connected to all this. Are they just hitching to the bandwagon? How did grime suddenly become popular again? Was it the Drake cosign? I guess German Whip came before that. Someone sketch it out for me.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Well the thing is that neither of those things (posh kids from the provinces and "culture") are monolithic things.

On the one hand, posh white kids get into grime for all sorts of reasons, some of which will be reductive safari-like stereotypes as mentioned on this thread. But others will be more nuanced.

On the other hand, grime presents a pretty reductive version of a "different
culture" anyway given that it is largely about blokes of a certain age from a very specific time and place in London etc.

That last point is very true, very interesting. Obviously for fairly personal reasons I'm fascinated with why it is that middle-class white kids are and have been so captivated by working-class (mostly) black culture.

Oh and I also realised reading the above that I'm being disingenuous if I pretend that I'M not a posh white kid, to some extent. Parents are both teachers, went to a comprehensive, etc., but I'm certainly posh compared to many.
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
working class culture has always been a source of fascination for middle class people whatever the country. working class masculinity in particular is seen as a 'purer' form of masculinity. add blackness into it and you have a whole load of other projections.

it is funny though how grime is the only british dance genre to achieve its greatest success a full decade pretty much after it began. everything else made its mark much quicker (jungle, garage, rave, etc etc). even dubstep took off earlier than grime, if not exactly commercially. it will be interesting to see what happens. maybe in ten years time, we will look at eskimo and those early tracks and think theyre just primitive compared to whats being made (whereas right now, it seems a lot of people think a lot of the newer stuff isnt as hard as what came before it, but maybe this is simply progression, rather than gentrification). grime seems to have bubbled/muddled along, rather than done what the other scenes did, which is sort of start with an underground base, then explode into pop, then become something for the converted. OTOH, and i might be wrong, as i dont listen to it religiously like i used to now, but im not sure i hear enough of where grime is *going*, rather than interesting tweaks, or reworks of things that were done a decade or so back.
 
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Corpsey

bandz ahoy
You might be right, but to me the 'primitive' stuff is the most stunning to this day, precisely because it IS so 'primitive'. I'm putting air quotes around that cos I don't actually think it's unmusical or whatever.
 
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