seriously, does anyone really think grime used to all be brilliant? even on those old legendary nasty show radio rips, a lot of the MCing is diabolically bad, half the time its just ridiculous shouting and clipped spurts that mean nothing and sound horrendously amateur, and a lot of the beats even back then were quite poor as well. yeah, of course there were people who stood out, and tracks that were brilliant, but the distance from the cream of the crop to well, the crop, has always been quite a big gulf from what i can tell. and i dont think thats changed. a lot has changed in terms of the sound of the beats, but i dont necessarily think the apparent merger with the dubstep sound is a bad thing. in some ways, i prefer this 'grimestep' sound of the beats - theyre dark and bassy like dubstep but not so clinical or industrial. it does seem that not too many new MCs have are that special but theres always been a huge glut of substandard hanger ons all trying to spit their terrible lyrics. the problem now is im not sure whos really setting the standard. jme and skepta might be the top boys but both have stilted styles that i dont think are going to be great influences.
i dont think grime is dead -listen to a newham gens show, its still great and exciting, the energys still there, its just different. just cos it hasnt had top ten success doesnt mean its failed. more problematic for me is a lot of new vocal tracks seem to be making too good a go of all the hype that grime is the uks real hip hop cos thats what they sound like, and i really dont want to hear that from anyone whos meant to be 'grime'. but i suppose it was inevitable really that thats what it would mutate into. the mcs want to be artists and do concerts, not raves, but the problem is they dont really have the songs to back it up, theyre still better at hour long radio sets than individual tracks. which would be fine if people wanted to pay for that, but im not sure they do.