There is a prevailing belief among music journalists that grime has fizzled out, leaving the likes of Kano standing alone
"No matter what anyone might say, grime - the London-bred bastard child of hip-hop, ragga and garage - is a stylistic dead end."
As an opening gambit, it was always going to rile me. Angus Batey's review of Kano's Jazz Café gig in the Guardian last week fell for one of the most phoney bits of received wisdom in the music business. There is a prevailing belief among music journalists that grime burned brightly in 2003-4, and then fizzled out completely, leaving Dizzee Rascal, Lethal Bizzle and Kano standing alone. It is no coincidence that these are the same journalists who stopped paying attention to grime when the major label press releases stopped coming through.
Grime music is still thriving, more so than ever - it's being made by teenagers on council estates everywhere. Youngsters like Maniac, Chipmunk, and Tinchy Stryder grew up listening to Dizzee's Boy In Da Corner and watching Roll Deep on Top Of The Pops, rather than obsessing over Biggie and Tupac and desperately wishing they could be be American too.
The traditional music industry infrastructure (and often, the traditional media) has written off grime because it's safer and easier to plump for another derivative indie band, or a commercially proven US hip-hop import. But thanks to web 2.0, grime is finding ways around traditional music industry support, and the artists are selling straight to the fans.
Grime MCs like Skepta can sell out substantial London venues like Cargo without ever having been signed to a label. Queues for FWD>> at The End in August stretched for half a mile out into New Oxford Street. Never mind CDs, the unsigned north London MC JME has sold 6,000 T-shirts this year. Meanwhile the only grime show on a legal station - Logan Sama's on KISS FM - continues to lay waste to all of its time-slot rivals, from Radio 1 to Radio 5 Live. Sama's most recent RAJAR figures show him getting 59,000 listeners on the FM dial alone. The executives at KISS are reportedly stunned, but anyone that knows grime is not.
The likes of Kano and Lethal Bizzle have disappointed many grime fans this year because of their craven (but arguably commercially necessary) collaborations with the likes of Kate Nash, Babyshambles and Damon Albarn. Black artists can only be black, it seems, if they have been legitimised by established white artists. I don't begrudge the MCs pursuing this 'crossover' route at all (though it has yet to produce a single good song), and of course musicians have been reaching new audiences through collaborations for years. But there came a point after Run DMC and Aerosmith's 'Walk This Way' when the former were accepted by white audiences on their own terms.
The lack of major label interest in grime has had a creative upside though: it's meant there is no fixed blueprint for success, which has helped keep the music evolving rapidly. Grime's stylistic breadth never fails to astonish me: from Lady Ny's stirring harmonies, to Tempa T's blitzkrieg energy, to Durrty Goodz' dazzling lyrical dexterity, there's pretty much something for everyone. Saying that grime is a stylistic dead end just proves that you haven't got your eyes on the road.
