Grime-where did it all go wrong?

[rubberdingyrapids]

i think theres a lot of good stuff still out there - butterz is its own universe but if you listen to spyro or logan theres still good tunes being made. but as far as it outlasting dubstep, really?! dubstep is this all conquering beast. also, most grime producers have worked dubstep into their beats or just actually gone and made dubstep. there def isnt as much from the other way happening.

 

[slackk]

Yeah that was probably a bit of an exaggeration on my part but in terms of it being a London led underground scene- which is really how I define most things- I'd argue that grime's certainly still retained it's roots far more.

Not sure you could really say the same about dubstep. I know it's "massive" but is it really what it was? Bar that System night- which I'd like to go to- and a few producers still pushing it, is it actually still a legitimate underground thing?

Maybe I'm wrong but it seems to me that it's basically gone the way of jungle and lost the core of what it was. The last dubstep I saw was at Fabric recently and it was just a load of tearout and bits of trap, oddly. I don't think you can compare dubstep now to dubstep at the time this thread started; 3/4 of the scene is making house now.

 

[rubberdingyrapids]

i think dubstep still has its underground roots in the old halfsteppy stuff people still make, guys like mala or youngsta only seem to play puristy stuff. but yeah, it has basically gone the way of D&B. idk about grime - you still have your preditahs and rude kids making it and logan always plays stuff that sticks with the proper grime sound but it seems like such a small number now (im not including butterz obv). not sure if that makes it any diff to dubstep. and i just dont see enough consistency from the top guys. they all seem to be buying into the 'do a bit of everything' mentality like everyone else. even tempz did a D&B track as his last single.

 

[slackk]

Tbh I have no idea what Logan plays, haven't listened to him in ages.

If you listen to Spooky's shows on Deja (which is probably the biggest grime show now anyway) or indeed someone like Score5 on Rinse, I don't see how you can say that there isn't anyone pushing the proper grime sound. Those shows are consistently great I think.

Don't see why you'd discount Butterz?

Anyway my point is that there is a very strong instrumental sound now in grime. MC wise, less so, but it's been like that for years.

Listen to this show-
http://www.djscore5.com/radio-sets/rinse-fm-20th-june-up-coming-producer-showcase/

Really good. And what, 3/4 of it is new producers?

3/4 of those producers are new and it's great.

 

[rubberdingyrapids]

i listened to score5s show yesteday - i thought it was pretty exciting. instrumental stuff im not worried about, the vocal stuff is more what i was talking about in terms of it dwindling. reason i dont include butterz is that that whole approach seems its own thing! then again its not like royal t and mr mitch etc dont get played by score 5 and spyro so maybe idk what im on about. i just see the butterz sound as quite diff to preditah and co.

 

[slackk]

Yeah I think it is quite different as well, but it's not like that's a new thing is it- Ruff Sqwad sets were hardly the same Slew Dem's back then, were they?

To be honest, as much as I love a good MC on a set, the MC thing has been falling off for years. I couldn't care less what they're doing anymore, that moment's gone really. I wish it hadn't but at least the instrumental side of it is doing so well.

 

[outraygeous]

Its hard to get a load of MCs in the same place these days without a DSLR pointing at them.

When technology started to get better, pirate radio wasnt the best route anymore. To MCs detriment, they went down different routes and for grime those routes were not the best choices.

You cant make a new reload bar from doing youtube videos. They have to be done on sets. You can do sets, for youtube but thats only just started happening.

MCs in general are a weird bunch. Lazy and shallow. They roll in groups which they think can help them and the majority might not be long standing friend. A few of them perhaps. Example, that recent video of BBK / Meridian and Flirta is there.

Skepta and Flirta had beef previously, maybe they dont now and they hugged it out but some of these guys just roll from crew to crew.

 

[rubberdingyrapids]

yeah basically grime = radio/club sets.

and i dont mean a freestyle session like on logans show. it has to be a longform thing where you have space to try out new things.

tbh i think the death of sets had a lot to do with why i went off grime for a while. i was tuning into bbk or roll deep or newham gens and it was just half baked with mcs sounding like they werent really into it or felt funny about still turning up to do sets when its no longer looked at as being a cool thing to do.

oh well.

i know theres a lot of great beats still coming out but im not that big a fan of some of the new beats where its a bit grime, a bit dubstep, a bit french house.

 

[Elijah]

Just going to make a few points not sure if they are all connected. But they are things happening in my world atm.

We started Butterz the label in 2010, and between then and now no new MC has produced anything memorable in my opinion. We started with the angle of not needing an MC at all, and we have barely needed to incorporate them at all into our releases and events because they haven't really been doing anything worth celebrating in my opinion.

So much generic stuff about flows and empty concepts just makes it easy to exclude. Most people are either saying the same thing they have already said, or just saying the same thing someone else has said a long time ago. I saw this happening and wrote about this in 2008, not much has changed.

We did a release with P Money and Trim who I'd say have been the stand outs over the last 3 years. The other MC's I'd still want to work with now have been around from ages ago.

Production wise atm I'd break it up like this.

People trying new things with old sounds.

People trying old things with new sounds.

People trying new things with new sounds.

People making music without specific 'genre' or 'scene' in mind and getting picked up on.

So a typical radio show from me atm sounds like a mixture of all of those from guys like Royal-T, Terror Danjah, Mr Mitch, Swindle/Silkie, Joker, Preditah, Champion, D.O.K, P Jam, Starkey, Bloom, Baxta, DJ Q, Bok Bok, Moony, TS7, Notion, Arkane Soul, Darq E Freaker, Faze Miyake, Flava D and a few more.

Stylistically they are quite all over the place, thats why it still makes it difficult for anyone to put their finger on 'how to make a grime tune'. Thats what keeps it fun for me and anyone that listens I guess. That's why I find it baffling when people on the Grime Forum a really dismissive of what is grime and what isn't.

The reason we haven't released as much as we did last year is we don't want to cover the same ground we have covered before, and we have this kinda non rule of nobody having two solo releases on the label to make things a bit more of a challenge.

Was good bringing in Champion for the one off release, and Crystal Meth has gone down really well. Incorporating the 'current Funky' stuff into our club nights has worked too. I've never got any negative feedback about Champions sets at Cable. That kinda hard funky stuff in that environment is what a lot of people have been screaming out for ages. It works well as a break up to what we do too.

Working with a couple of people we haven't worked with before atm, trying a few different ways of presenting the tracks too. That's as important to us, to do something we haven't done before in terms of promotion. I've got a marketing degree so that's part of the fun for me personally.

In terms of the clubbing scene, this year for me has been up and down, ive seen my profile rise as a DJ but there isn't really much of an infrastructure to support someone explicitly calling themselves a Grime DJ. I don't even want there to be really. I like playing at nights where they have a mixture of DJs playing. It just makes things harder as House & Dubstep is usually the priority aside from the Rinse events where it gets a good balance of everything.

I've seen some really strong nights pop up over the past year, and I hope they continue, as long as this happens, more clubs will give it a chance, and more nights will happen. The return of Eskimo Dance has been massive too, giving a generation that were too young to experience an MC led night a chance.

Right now people you are likely to see on line ups semi regular are Royal-T, Preditah, Terror Danjah, Spooky and Swindle. The more producers that take the craft of Djing seriously, the more you will see out at a variety of nights.

Putting together the Butterz tour this winter has been difficult, but at the beginning of 2011 we didn't even have a regular club night so to take it to a few different cities with no management or anything is something we are all proud of.

It's funny when any Grime report goes out on any website, it always begins with a Grimes not dead part to it. Been happening for years. Heres a perfect example:

Read the descriptions

Royal-T XLR8R Podcast 2012 - http://www.xlr8r.com/podcast/2012/08/royal-t

Elijah & Skilliam XLR8R Podcast 2010 - http://www.xlr8r.com/podcast/2010/11/elijah-skilliam

Nearly exactly the same sentence at the start, even though they are two years apart. Surely we can't be dead then?

Anyone checked the Royal-T album by the way? I'd say thats a good representation of where things are at right now.

Reading back through the thread its spooky. Its like a list of all the reasons why I do what I do now.

Flick to page 6 and someone is talking about how 'Duppy' is awful. So strange. that tune is still going off today. That's actually one of the best.

A lot of people didn't enjoy some of the best music this country has ever seen while it was peaking. The amount of talent that came through in a short space of time was ridiculous. I don't think it will ever be repeated. Maybe one or two acts will stand out every couple of years from now on, but to have that amount of production and MC talent that came through between 2002-2005 is a tall order.

Lastly Grime has operated since its inception under the fact that there is next to no financial input or economic gain to be had from its 'industry'. Acid House to UK Garage had a financial infrastructure that it relied on. Take that away and it becomes detrimental. Grime has operated since its inception with little to no reliance on finance, partially due to its ability to operate in the virtual, that is the un-regimented and democratic realms of cyberspace. If record shop closes, it's no skin off of grimes back (watch out for server crashes however.) You just a willing kid/MC/producer (creates the mode) need pirate copies of fruity, (method) and a radioshow or a forum. (medium) Taking personal taste into account is irrelevant.

This is still true 5 years later.

 

[CrowleyHead]

I think the big difference is, grime MCs aren't really approaching grime with a fresh and new attitude. I'm talking about the guys my age and younger making grime, like Family Tree and them, not more of the people with 5 year careers and such. It seems all of their flows are very very trad., the content is fairly dull, humorless (and I see that people are a bit anti-humor in the beginnings of this thread, very anti-'wheel' MCs with the one lines; but quite honestly the greater focus on 'lyrically lyrical' MCs really ended up doing in grime just as badly, if not moreso). Beats are anywhere from good to great, but the MCs are just coasting.

It's so less about persona, more about sounding like someone who sounds like a grime MC. It's a bit pretentious.

Obviously, the instrumental side is brilliant, but y'know.

 

[rubberdingyrapids]

so much for grime being the start of a real 'grassroots' (god that term was abused) uk hip hop tradition. more like the END of a uk MC tradition. its like what frustrated rave mcs had been wanting for years then when they got it and found out that there wasnt as much as they thought waiting for them (unless you were lucky) they stopped being inspired. i still like mcs - the mcs WERE grime to me (though i think they still get a bit of a raw deal - even in 2004/05 i thought they could be better so im guilty of this too, i think people will just always expect more from them). the instrumental thing was always important but without it grime isnt quite as interesting. so many of the tracks i used to pick up were cos i first heard them under some mc on rinse.

i should probably just listen to spookys show more.

 

[Kristian]

So much generic stuff about flows and empty concepts just makes it easy to exclude. Most people are either saying the same thing they have already said, or just saying the same thing someone else has said a long time ago. I saw this happening and wrote about this in 2008, not much has changed.

hmm, but in that post you said you preferred what the majority of MC's are currently delivering; violent, skippy, gun and shank bars..?

I'm not comfortable with bloggers disregarding what new MC's are doing and that the default position in pushing Grime forward seems to exclude them. MC's are front men; their troublesome, unpredictable and difficult nature is very appealing and exciting. It's also a great spectacle to watch.

The new lot - people like Family Tree, are caught in a catch 22. Do something heartfelt (like that track Merky did about his mum having a brain tumour) and it goes under the radar. Spit bars that aren't violent and get labelled moist. Spit hype gun chats and get called boring.

I think the personality aspect that Crowleyhead talks about rings truest for me.

 

[outraygeous]

I remember this MC called Rinse, on the internet and mp3 he was great.

Then I saw him spit at a stage show and it was terrible. He was more content than hype. You just couldnt hear what he was saying.

When the new crop of MCs came through, chipmunk, icekid and those sorts of mcs. You could tell from the shows they missed the practice of pirate radio.

If you are going to do grime and you dont have reload bars then what are you doing?

I dont listen to grime MCs for content, just reloads and catch phrases.

 

[CrowleyHead]

Indeed. I can't honestly say that there's much about those kids that I like as people, whereas you looked at grime in the '04-'06 era, and there are CHARACTERS. Both in a cartoony aspect (Bearman = BRILLIANT) and just in their persona (see: Wiley, but also JME to a certain aspect. I've grown less enamored with his whole 'teen braniac nerd' persona, but he worked it really well.)

Skepta's trail of merking kind of brought this down though, because he deliberately went after shit MCs who just have the ability to do a quick little gimmick thing and can't really spit. Granted, that was desperately needed at the time, but he brought in this persona of "'Real G' spitting hard bars >>> guys who make helicopter noises". He's not that guy, granted, but he brought in the "No Fun Club" element of grime by doing so, because look who's the kind of MCs who came after him? Devlin, Dot Rotten, guys who are just FLAT on person-ability, no matter how deep they can get. Imagine somebody like Mr. Wong coming back into 'the fray' nowadays; nobody would dare even take him seriously.

 

[rubberdingyrapids]

one good thing about mcs falling off is that it means i have time to go back and check out the mcs i used to think were crap but are actually probably not that bad. if i can find their cds that is.

 

[Sectionfive]

Grime's in the best shape it's been for while

 

[Benny Bunter]

Indeed. I can't honestly say that there's much about those kids that I like as people, whereas you looked at grime in the '04-'06 era, and there are CHARACTERS. Both in a cartoony aspect (Bearman = BRILLIANT) and just in their persona (see: Wiley, but also JME to a certain aspect. I've grown less enamored with his whole 'teen braniac nerd' persona, but he worked it really well.)

Skepta's trail of merking kind of brought this down though, because he deliberately went after shit MCs who just have the ability to do a quick little gimmick thing and can't really spit. Granted, that was desperately needed at the time, but he brought in this persona of "'Real G' spitting hard bars >>> guys who make helicopter noises". He's not that guy, granted, but he brought in the "No Fun Club" element of grime by doing so, because look who's the kind of MCs who came after him? Devlin, Dot Rotten, guys who are just FLAT on person-ability, no matter how deep they can get. Imagine somebody like Mr. Wong coming back into 'the fray' nowadays; nobody would dare even take him seriously.

Crowley you are so otm at the minute, good stuff.

The last time I got anything like that old feeling I used to get from grime sets was actually Petchy's shows with Dream, Topsee, Shantie and Hot-S. The hype, the range of personalities, the dynamic between the DJ and MCs was all there on that Last Supper show. Really only the music and the attitude were different. That lasted for such a short time but it did feel like the conditions that had allowed Grime to flourish on radio back in the day had somehow been recreated (albeit on a much smaller scale). I had quite high hopes for this new direction at the time and it seems such a shame that it fizzled out so quickly.

 

[rubberdingyrapids]

i disagreee about skepta bringing that through just because hes always had a certain wit about him - he was pretty good (and still is i think) at punchlines. in fact i think hes actually wittier than a lot of grime mcs. and you can see this even extended to hats he used to wear.

 

[CrowleyHead]

i disagreee about skepta bringing that through just because hes always had a certain wit about him - he was pretty good (and still is i think) at punchlines. in fact i think hes actually wittier than a lot of grime mcs. and you can see this even extended to hats he used to wear.

I'm not trying to paint Skepta as that guy himself. But I think his actions might have contributed to that sort of behavior... Trim's guilty of this too, if you think about it. Going after MCs who say "Yah Yah Yah" on "The Low Down", or his ageist attack on the older junglist/garage MCs like Hyper and Flow Dan.

This is where I'm totally going to seem off the mark, but it's why "Sounds & Gimmicks" by P & Dot is such a huge track. Because everyone before them, obviously needs those sounds and gimmicks, it becomes a tributary collage of identities. Does Devlin have that? Does Ghetto have that? Yes, their music is great, dense, lyrical, etc. etc. But is there anything about those people that really could summarize themselves in a brief blip of energy?

I'm not trying to discredit those MCs either, because they're really good... But I feel like they're rappers, not grime MCs. Let me do the reversal... If you use rapper logic, D Double E is shit. There was like, a three year period where he just used the same bars he wrote way back in 2002-04. Good on him, because those are classics, but in the rap world, imagine if a rapper was placed on a pedestal without contributing anything new in 3 years, without any serious excuse such as jailtime.

Returning to the "Real" Grime thread? It's the difference between Terminator and Scorcher. Scorcher has been spitting for over half a decade, and he lacks anything that is identifiable as Terminator's voice (mostly because he's suffered an identity crisis his whole career, but hey).

 

[Elijah]

hmm, but in that post you said you preferred what the majority of MC's are currently delivering; violent, skippy, gun and shank bars..?

I'm not comfortable with bloggers disregarding what new MC's are doing and that the default position in pushing Grime forward seems to exclude them. MC's are front men; their troublesome, unpredictable and difficult nature is very appealing and exciting. It's also a great spectacle to watch.

The new lot - people like Family Tree, are caught in a catch 22. Do something heartfelt (like that track Merky did about his mum having a brain tumour) and it goes under the radar. Spit bars that aren't violent and get labelled moist. Spit hype gun chats and get called boring.

I think the personality aspect that Crowleyhead talks about rings truest for me.

Read why I said that. Its all in delivery. As I said in the post, at the time, the whole swagger thing had a lazy delivery that I am not into. Lazy lyrics, lazy flows. Less about entertainment more about simply bragging which I find jarring.

I'm not even a 'blogger' anymore. Im a DJ and I've chosen to exclude them because they dont interest me personally. I see more talented weighted in favour of the producer and when we started it was no issue doing this as there were many other vocal heavy shows on Rinse for instance. Now that has totally changed.

There are other DJs, but most aren't really doing anything interesting with the music either. Its kinda gone the way DJs did in hip hop. Not required to be heard anymore. People are going to SBTV and Grime Daily these days. That's not a diss to any DJ, that's just an unfavourable change in the way people listen to the music. It seems like an alien concept to people to have a 'radio premier' these days. Bang it on youtube, tweet it, facebook it, job done.

I don't think anyone is caught in a catch 22. Some people just make original music, something that people can connect to from all walks of life, then some people make music to entertain the 'grime fan'. That's what I find irritating. If people think 'o they only wanna hear shank lyrics' then they are letting fans dictate their output. That is ridiculous in itself for an MC who are supposed to be care free and rebellious.