Blackdown sez:
i think this is a simplification though because it only sees half of grime MC's objectives. sure, one aim is to be rich, but the other is to attain status amongst their peers. grime may be teetering on the first of those objectives, but on the second it's wildly successful. MCs are total street heroes in their local enviroment.
i don't think that would ever be enough for grime, though, not for the invidual egos or the collective ones... they could never be content with be godstars on Stratford High Street
(the idea that its journalists who Puff-ed up that ego is daft.... the ambition and delusions of grandeur and high hopes existed long before the press showed up... again, the Puff sample on Roll deep's 'terrible', that's from 99 -- no, what caused it was watching American rap, especially the Bad Boy stuff.... also, don't forget, there's high bench mark set by 2step with its massive crossover, AND there's So Solid Crew who got to number one... so it's not so much that the high expectations are unrealistic as that something's changed, there's been a shift, the odds have gotten titled against grime in some way… so it’s not so much that the expectations are unrealistic but that reality has changed in just a few years)
as a fan-onlooker i have a sense of injustice, that this amazing music should have gotten way bigger way quicker. but then i wonder A/ where does that "should" come from? and B/ if i feel that unfairness, what do the actual members of the scene feel?
i think one thing that's shifted is that while your media types like the whole "voice of the streets" angle, your punter-people sorts don't buy it, literally.... partly they don't have room in their lives for something so harsh and hard and real, but mainly it's they don't really care, deep down really don't want to know about the voices of the British streets .... 20 years ago that angle of championing (“these are the often ugly but compelling voices of the streets and it behoves you to listen to them”), might have paid off more, but now people don't respond to it... indeed some resent what they perceive as social worker-ist guilt-tripping... it's all part of the postsocialist privatisation of social life thing... there's a large amount of shit not being given!
(on a tangent connecting to other threads in other forums, i really fear that bush's indifference and callousness towards news orleans actually reflects the attitudes of his core supporters towards the underclass ... on some TV audience call ins and email ins here you actually are hearing from these people now, and they say stuff like "all this blaming the government is wrong, people should help themselves, it's their own fault if they didn't take steps to get out"... again its that "i refuse to feel guilty, feel empathy, whatever, with these people who are not like me" )
sorry bleed through from other topic, back to grime and meta-grime and meta-meta-grime!
personally even without the social angle, i think grime ought to have won over purely on its excitement and novelty and the charisma of the mcs and musical inventiveness .... but it hasn't, yet, and well, i'm mystified
viz Black down comment:
but the other is to attain status amongst their peers
thing is, you could say the same about improv or the noise scene... or probably any small music scene really, sadsack indie rockers too ... at the moment grime is teetering on the edge, it could go either way: either become a proper equiv to Hip hop (with regular presence in the charts and accepted status as Voice of the Streets) or it could dwindle into an unpopular vanguard, with audience that largely consists of other practioners and some fanzine writers (us bloggaz!)
it might not be a disaster, aesthetically, if the second option occurred... but it would not live up to the promise of the genre, in my opinion