Grime and the media

[mos dan]

i was going to keep this discussion going in the trim thread, but there are already enough tangents in there i reckon, and this is a subject pretty close to my heart.

the story so far, to crudely summarise: logan says 'eff the guardian', elgato says 'is that the best attitude to take to the media?', logan says 'what difference does it make? eff the guardian again', i say 'yeah the guardian weren't exactly about to run a 40 page piece on grime', then elgato says

this is obviously true, but it belies a fair degree of (justified) antagonism toward the media, an attitude that just struck me as a bit hypocritical when criticising mcs for not engaging with PR and the media appropriately. but i guess if practice differs from talk then its irrelevant

sure. it is irrelevant, because the media's gatekeepers barely (if at all) know that grime exists, much less care what anyone from the scene thinks. the majority of people in (relevant) positions of power in the media aren't aware that there is a scene, or a genre, called grime.

***********

two vignettes:

*i pitch a wiley interview to the guardian arts editor. i tell him wiley's return could mark a resurgence for grime, and will be a great story in its own right because wiley is insane and his music is brilliant. he responds to the word 'grime' like i've said 'romo' or 'new grave' or some other mid-90s genre that lasted for two minutes. he then asks me whether grime is still a going concern. the name jme draws a blank. i feel like i'm pitching grime as a genre, not merely pitching an article for my own benefit as a freelancer: it's journalist-as-p.r. man. really strange.

*i write a review of aftershock's 'shock to the system' for 'the word' magazine. i use the word 'grime' several times, and the word 'dubstep' once, very fleetingly: "xxxx is a dubstep-inflected song with...". when i pick up the printed mag, the section or sub-editor has given my review the following tagline:

AFTERSHOCK: Shock To The System (Aftershock Records)
Dubstep with a wide reach

effing embarrassing man.

 

[elgato]

that is shocking.

ive been behind some horribly underdeveloped thoughts today though so im gonna refrain from too much analysis!

my instinct is that when it comes to electronic/dance music the media generally are very much concerned with 'breaking' scenes or artists, it seems pretty rare to have consolidation... very much a matter of "news". i see a disgraceful amount of that... even in the likes of FACT magazine, the tone often propagates a very transitory view of things.

reading dance press in broadsheets regularly makes me feel unhappy, i hate the way its dealt with, so hyperbolic and ill-informed, generalised to the point of meaninglessness. and its that kind of things which further propagates the rapidity with which genres turn in on themselves, as i think i read simon reynolds saying... over-exposure before maturity, and exposure which wildly distorts

but its disgraceful that they rejected a wiley piece, hes like the ideal muse for a feature... the godfather of grime... erratic, eccentric, characterful, and widely acclaimed as a genius. i actually just struggle to believe it! they're idiots...not just narrow-minded, but evidently bad at their jobs - he's just very clearly excellent subject matter for a feature, for anyone with an interest in either music or people.

what about things like hhc and mixmag? are they all in-house?

 

[elgato]

oh yeh and that Word thing is terrible. not surprising, but terrible. it reinforces what i was saying above... very much interested in presenting the album as a further manifestation of the 'explosion' of dubstep

 

[mos dan]

reading dance press in broadsheets regularly makes me feel unhappy, i hate the way its dealt with, so hyperbolic and ill-informed, generalised to the point of meaninglessness. and its that kind of things which further propagates the rapidity with which genres turn in on themselves, as i think i read simon reynolds saying... over-exposure before maturity, and exposure which wildly distorts

well put. and don't be so hard on yourself ben! underdeveloped thoughts my arse - in any case that's what the net is for, surely

thing about wiley is.. they said yes. eventually. it was a feckin hard sell. but until i see it in print i won't believe it. i guess my point was that his reaction said a lot. i agree that 'the word' dubstep thing is - in its own massively trivial little way - a very significant indicator of the way emerging or niche scenes are viewed. dubstep... so hot right now.

this is a good point at which to reiterate that rahul verma (sic) is doing grand things in getting grime into the metro regularly - that is genuinely a lot.

 

[elgato]

thats decent that they took it eventually. they bloody should do, it'd be a ridiculous travesty otherwise. im glad its in the hands of someone who will do it justice.

i was reading about kuduro the other week, and it was pretty disgusting... one tagline... "forget about baile funk, Angola's Kuduro music is... etc" and another... "kuduro - the hottest music on the internet right now" - fuck, off. as if all this amazing cultural phenomenon, this free form of youth expression (which is 15 years old now) is worth is to be a flash-in-the-pan commodity for us culture vultures, only to be replaced soon enough by next season's ethnic/street music! eurgh. yet there i was, reading up on this, the next 'big thing'. not nice

 

[viktorvaughn]

Yeah it was like i said in another thread i said about Virus Syndicate being billed as Dubstep with MCS or some such. Then the Dizzee interview in OMM billed as a big hip-hop album or whatever.

For whatever reason, people are genuinely scared to endorse things unashamedly associated with the g-word.

Even articles 'supporting' grime, like that piece in Time Out about raves being locked down focus on a negative aspect (albeit in opposition to that negative) rather than some all-out positive.

 

[spotrusha]

if you're thinking grime has any chance of crossing over/blowing up in the states, believe me, you can throw that idea out the window and never think about it again. there's a core audience for it already but we've been let down by every top boy/girl because once they get a whiff of u.s, coverage they trade in their Y3 for rocawear and start flowing over lil jon beats.

as far as media coverage, what do you want? grime is a shakey scene. how are you going to cover a scene where each of the the main figures think they invented their own style of music and don't even want to be called grime?! didn't wiley put out like 14 mixtapes already this year? magazines reviews are usually like a month behind as it is. once the music gets a little less disposable (for example the first 35 seconds of "duppy". how the fuck many times does skepta say "doin it again" and "tiger"?) as a whole and the scene unites (boy better know is a step in the right direction) it can happen.

but dudes like ghetto and scorcher remind me of the philly/ny mixtape dudes over here like joey jihad/papoose/etc. they're practically running that scene, but they'll never be a big name mc with a successfull album. no disrespect to scorcher or ghetto cause they're great, i'm just sayin.

 

[viktorvaughn]

^ No, you're right.

Incidentally it was Wiley saying 'Tiger' in his verse....sorry for the nitpicking!

 

[Blackdown]

@ mos dan: print what the guardian arts editor really wrote to you. makes my blood boil.

i've had the "sorry we've done a grime feature this year" attitude from many magazines and newspapers. the fundamental injustice is when scenes like grime get treated like novelties while each band from scenes like indie have a passport to "next big thing" coverage every other week.

why? because indie bands have big PRs that ring journalists and tell them so. why do they have big PRs? because they sell loads. why do they sell loads? because they have big PRs... and so it goes on in a virtuous circle, perpetuating the inequality...

 

[Grievous Angel]

why? because indie bands have big PRs that ring journalists and tell them so. why do they have big PRs? because they sell loads. why do they sell loads? because they have big PRs

OK, I accept that various editors, and more importantly policeman, have a bad attitude to grime.

But I don't think people buy things just because of PR. I really don't think people are that sheep-like. Obviously it helps, but, without wishing to be irritatingly obvious, the larger issue is that youth taste has shifted back to indie rock. That's why the record companies and PRs focus on it.

As a side issue, if I was a music editor on a national and I was aware of grime stars unreliability when it comes to turning up and doing interviews, as has been documented here many times, I suspect I would decide it wasn't worth the effort.

I'm also not sure that grime is unique among dance music or urban genres in finding it hard to get interviews in the music press or the nationals. When was the last time a major figure from techno or house - genres that vastly outsell grime, and dubstep - got an interview in OMM?

I'm not being deliberately contrarian, but I don't grime's lack of coverage has a single simple cause, or is necessarily "unfair".

 

[Blackdown]

good points 2step fan. i'd happily broaden the debate to indie/rock/pop v many other smaller more vibrant but less covered genres.

 

[mos dan]

As a side issue, if I was a music editor on a national and I was aware of grime stars unreliability when it comes to turning up and doing interviews, as has been documented here many times, I suspect I would decide it wasn't worth the effort.

Your other points are perfectly valid (and welcome), but this is bs. As Logan has pointed out time and again, artists are always going to behave like artists. If Johnny Borrell or ANY ROCK STAR EVER had to do their own interviews/pr/management/self-publicity, do you think they'd turn up every time, on time, with a conscientious attitude and a smile on their face?

 

[mos dan]

grime is a shakey scene. how are you going to cover a scene where each of the the main figures think they invented their own style of music and don't even want to be called grime?! didn't wiley put out like 14 mixtapes already this year? magazines reviews are usually like a month behind as it is. once the music gets a little less disposable (for example the first 35 seconds of "duppy". how the fuck many times does skepta say "doin it again" and "tiger"?)

if you think duppy is disposable you're on a mad one m8. that tune tears up every single rave i've ever heard it played at, and has done so for the last 18 months.

 

[mos dan]

Okay, I wasn't gonna, but since Martin's asked me to, this is what I e-mailed him t'other day:

This is amusing in a sickening kind of way. I just called the Guardian Arts Ed (white, middle-aged, middle-class) to pitch a piece about Crime Mob, and he was interested, but explained why he had reservations, given that there's no UK release planned for their album right now:

"I think The Guardian, with its readership.. is not going to be so interested in hip-hop that we could run a piece without a release to base it on. I mean someone like The Arcade Fire, we could run a piece six months ahead of an album release and that would be okay, but our readership is predominantly white, predominantly middle-class. I may just be reflecting my own prejudices here..."

He basically quoted your analysis of the ingrained prejudices of the music media right back at me! At least he's self-aware I guess. I didn't really know what to say to him, given he was being so honest, so I just said "err, I'll see if it's getting a UK release then.." I mean never mind that Crime Mob's 'story' is way, way more interesting than The Kooks talking about what it's like to be a white 20something who lives in the south of England (who could conceive of such an exotic scenario?!).

>>>>
Martin yr response was pretty cutting and on-point if you want to post it up.

 

[gumdrops]

mos dan, i know people that have had similar probs with some urban mags. they dont like the grime name. it makes them feel awkward or just sick or something. its weird.

 

[baboon2004]

good points 2step fan. i'd happily broaden the debate to indie/rock/pop v many other smaller more vibrant but less covered genres.

isn't this exactly the point? Grime isn't special in being ignored in this way. Also, when you're selling to a demographic (as with the OMM, etc) without even a basic knowledge of hip hop (let alone the hardcore continuum), how can you hope to place Wiley within a tradition/lineage that the readership will understand? There's simply no context, and the way in which these magazines are written and marketed requires context eg Arcade Fire were placed within a certain tradition of sonically-challenging indie rock, etc etc.

 

[gumdrops]

sorry but i think this is just another thing to accept and move on. not saying we cant complain about it but its not changing. this is pretty much all urban music. even dance music acts dont really get covered by the big rockcentric mainstream outlets. its always been that way. occasionally someone will break through and grab the attention, which is great and necessary so more people get attracted to the artists who havent broken 'big', but most of the people reading those mags/papers probably arent going to wanna hear about the latest grime/baille funk/whatever artist, unless it fits the usual paradigm they use to cover it. its like that dizzee piece in the OMM where he says 'everyone loves a little urban story'.

edit - saying all that, it would be nice if there was at least some specialist columns like how most mags used to have. not sure when that dissapeared. i remember when even Q would have best albums of the year according to genre, including dance, rap etc etc.

 

[sodiumnightlife]

I think people are on the right tack when they say that this isn't a problem confined to grime, has anyone ever seen a piece on villalobos in a mainstream paper?

I don't know, part of me feels like that this is a great injustice but if you think about it mainstream mags are there to make money. They'll sell papers by having stories that appeal to their average white readership, and a story on the kooks or arcade fire is gonna shift more units than an article on wiley or skepta.

How is the coverage of grime in slightly less mainstream but still well circulated magazines?

 

[Raw Patrick]

Your other points are perfectly valid (and welcome), but this is bs. As Logan has pointed out time and again, artists are always going to behave like artists. If Johnny Borrell or ANY ROCK STAR EVER had to do their own interviews/pr/management/self-publicity, do you think they'd turn up every time, on time, with a conscientious attitude and a smile on their face?

My girlfriend is in a band which manages itself and has been interviewed by everywhere mentioned on this thread, as well as tons of other places, and they've always been punctual, conscientious and available to do stuff at the drop of a hat (ie backstage at shows for student and local papers etc) so this is bollocks.

People like Borrell are the most likely to be like this too, as they want to make it and are prepared to do what it takes.

 

[gumdrops]

lol@the word guy writing 'dubstep with a wide reach'