Starting in London in the early 00s grime was a genre that was initially spread through pirate radio stations and the underground scene before gaining prominence through artists such as Wiley and Dizzee Rascal. It was in fact Dizzee Rascal’s debut album Boy in Da Corner winning the Mercury Prize in 2003 that was considered a turning point for the genre. Here writer Jesse Bernard explores the transmutation of grime and how it is finding new audiences in an ever more connected world.
“Light travels faster than the speed of sound. But music, one of the many vessels through which sound travels, moves in unorthodox, non-linear trajectories. Before I started my career as a music writer, I was always buoyed by the ways in which a sound, or genre, from the farthest corners of the world, found its way to the otherside.
Before the internet, music moved around the world at a much slower rate. Big hits and albums would often be released months or even a year later in the US and Europe, and vice versa. Underground scenes would rely on tastemakers to purvey the sounds across the world but even then, music was still far more localised than it exists today. We have platforms such as MySpace and YouTube to thank for the homogenising of music and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. These are the platforms that helped a homegrown Black British sound such as grime grow wings and fly the coop.
To witness grime grow from being a sound no one knew what to call to being present in various cultures and countries across the world is much like watching a younger sibling grow through adolescence into maturity. Relatively speaking, it’s only about 15 years old and in that time, grime has taken many forms as well as morphing into hybrid sounds in other parts of the world.” ~Jesse
Light travels faster than the speed of sound. But music, one of the many vessels through which sound travels, moves in unorthodox, non-linear trajectories. Before I started my career as a music writer, I was always buoyed by the ways in which a sound, or genre, from the farthest corners of the world, found its way to the otherside.
Before the internet, music moved around the world at a much slower rate. Big hits and albums would often be released months or even a year later in the US and Europe, and vice versa. Underground scenes would rely on tastemakers to purvey the sounds across the world but even then, music was still far more localised than it exists today. We have platforms such as MySpace and YouTube to thank for the homogenising of music and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. These are the platforms that helped a homegrown Black British sound such as grime grow wings and fly the coop.
To witness grime grow from being a sound no one knew what to call to being present in various cultures and countries across the world is much like watching a younger sibling grow through adolescence into maturity. Relatively speaking, it’s only about 15 years old and in that time, grime has taken many forms as well as morphing into hybrid sounds in other parts of the world.
Light travels faster than the speed of sound. But music, one of the many vessels through which sound travels, moves in unorthodox, non-linear trajectories. Before I started my career as a music writer, I was always buoyed by the ways in which a sound, or genre, from the farthest corners of the world, found its way to the otherside.
Before the internet, music moved around the world at a much slower rate. Big hits and albums would often be released months or even a year later in the US and Europe, and vice versa. Underground scenes would rely on tastemakers to purvey the sounds across the world but even then, music was still far more localised than it exists today. We have platforms such as MySpace and YouTube to thank for the homogenising of music and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. These are the platforms that helped a homegrown Black British sound such as grime grow wings and fly the coop.
To witness grime grow from being a sound no one knew what to call to being present in various cultures and countries across the world is much like watching a younger sibling grow through adolescence into maturity. Relatively speaking, it’s only about 15 years old and in that time, grime has taken many forms as well as morphing into hybrid sounds in other parts of the world.” + Jesse Bernard
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All Luhv,
