Background of Grime Music

Grime is a genre of urban music that first emerged in Bow, East London, England in the early 2000s, primarily a development of UK garage, dancehall, and hip hop.Grime is typified by complex 2-step breakbeats, generally around 140 beats per minute and constructed from "different" sounds. Stylistically, grime takes from many genres including UK Garage, dancehall and hip hop. The lyrics and music combine futuristic electronic elements and dark, guttural bass lines.

According to Sasha Frere-Jones, writer for The New Yorker, grime has developed a fierce sound by "distilling" rhythms to a minimal style resulting in a choppy, off-centre sound. Whereas hip hop is inherently dance music, the writer argues that "grime sounds as if it had been made for a boxing gym, one where the fighters have a lot of punching to do but not much room to move." Frere-Jones also states that grime has maintained a style distinct from American hip hop, with clear Jamaican and Caribbean influences. Writer Hattie Collins supports Frere-Jones' analysis by asserting that grime is "an amalgamation of UK Garage with a bit of drum'n'bass, a splash of punk and a touch of hip-hop thrown in for good measure."

Grime emerged from Bow, East London. The emergence of grime is intrinsically connected to its origins on UK pirate radio, with many performers honing their skills and achieving underground success before approaching the mainstream. Like other Garage variants or mutations, pirate radio stations such as Rinse FM and Freeze 92.7 and MajorFm.com were essential to the evolution of the genre. MajorFm.com was the first online station to support Grime music & gave Grime its first recognition to the international market. Grime was still at this point known as a number of other terms, the original artists involved in the scene initially resisted attempts to be classified as "Grime" artists, as a derogatory term created by the media and not the producers or artists who created the scence. Grime was eventually accepted and now alongside dubstep, represents innovative sound coming from the streets of London and the UK.

Grime, however, is a cross-pollinated genre, taking influence from a variety of different cultural styles as well as musical ones, and is therefore still in many respects considered to be underground music, even after mainstream exposure. It exists in a largely informal economy in which most artists make their debuts on independently-produced battle DVDs that, like mixtapes are sold out of barbershops and make their way around the city.

Dizzee Rascal is regarded as the first grime artist to gain international acclaim after winning the Mercury Music Prize, for his debut, Boy in da Corner. It was not until the release of his third album, 2007's Maths + English, that Dizzee experienced the same kind of international acclaim. Dizzee was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize again, and despite the fact that the album was not released in the United States in 2007, it received high praise from international music critics, magazines, websites, and blogs, By 2009, he had achieved three Number Ones in a row.


The international growth of the UK grime scene has also been evident in recent years with many of the popular grime artists playing on the Urban music stages of the big summer festivals such as Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds and O2 Wireless Festival in Hyde Park. For example Dizzee Rascal played at all these events in the summer of 2008 and other important grime figures such as Roll Deep, Boy Better Know, N-Dubz, Wiley, Kano, Skepta, JME, Tinie Tempah, Tinchy Stryder, Chipmunk, Giggs, Professor Green, Devlin, Example, Lethal Bizzle, Bashy, Ghetts, Ironik, Wretch 32 and Scorcher. Grime music continues to grow exponentially and is helped by the coverage the genre gets in the media, from sources like Channel AKA, BBC Radio1, Kiss's Logan Sama and dlmagazine.co.uk