Grime Research Paper

Grimes Historical Reservoir:

Grime, like every sub-culture before it, is an amalgamation of preceding cultures, sub-cultures and musical genres.

The Musical Background:

When viewing Grimes historical reservoir from a musical perspective it is important to portray it chronologically, starting from when the figureheads of the sub-culture were first born. It may seem unnecessary to start this far back but this is the point in which the social individual starts to form their place within the world, forging connections others will not be able to obtain.
In Grimes particular instance it was the connection between Wiley, Jammer and Footsies dads which created part of the foundations of which Grime was built upon, Wiley and Footsies dads preforming within the same Reggae band and therefore their
children living under their influence and also this connection being their path to form a musical relationship with one another.(reference) Within Hattie Collins’ book Wiley states “All this just came from wanting to do what him and his mates were doing.”(reference) This statement, from the ‘godfather of Grime’ himself certainly implements Jamaican music as a huge factor within Grimes historical reservoir and gave the youthful musicians the ambition to delve into other related-genres, which reign through with more influence on Grime than Reggae itself. For example the musical landscape of sound-clash culture within Jamaica; which is explored thoroughly in Grime through the use of the ‘reload’, in which the DJ will pull up the track if the MC’s lyrics are good enough to generate that foreseeable energy, and he will then, reload the lyrics for a second time. Clashing was especially prevalent in the early stages of the culture but also exploited within the later stages, with events like Red Bull Culture Clash; essentially a watered-down version of an original Grime clash to create income and spread Grimes market.
Progressing forward in time to the mid 90’s will open up another key benefactor within Grimes historical reservoir, and that benefactor was Jungle. Jungle was another Genre derived from Reggae alongside other styles. Early Grime MC’s would MC over Jungle, as far back as 1994 remembers Breeze (reference) and Wiley was also MC’ing over Jungle before his Garage affiliations and Grime stardom, he states his opinion that “I love Garage equally, but without Jungle there would be no Grime.” (Reference) This statement referring to the fact that Jungle was the genre which was taken by early Grime DJ’s like DJ Slimzee and slowed down from 170 BPM to 140 BPM which furthermore went on to be the staple BPM for Grime music.
Arguably Garage was as big of an influence on Grimes output than its predecessor, Jungle, depending on the source who provides the insight. The term Grime was thought to have been coined by DJ EZ on his Kiss Radio Show, describing a certain type of Garage as ‘Grimy Garage’ (reference) and around the same time as this distinction was being made, DJ’s were starting to mix Garage into slowed down Jungle and MC’s preforming over the top of these beats, Garage would be live chopped and looped into its best 8-bar arrangement (reference) and by doing so the DJ’s began to formulate the genre of which we now know as Grime.
Whether it was Jungle, Sound-Clash Culture, Reggae or Garage which had the most impact on the Grime scenes music, London’s culturally-based music scene is a continually shapeshifting mechanism gauging influence from the variety of cultures that live within it, this therefore helping the expansion of creativity within musical outputs across the city.

The Fashion:
The fashion of Grime has followed more than one form throughout its current fifteen year history, starting with individuals who had veered from the Garage scene in the early 00’s.
Garage was about excessive spending and generally showing off your current wealth, with designer brands like Moschino and Valentino being flaunted on a regular basis at all of the club nights, so at the start the select few people within Grime kept this expressive-style for a short period before the realisation set in that it was not at all fitting with the scene it portrayed.
The Grime scene needed to individualise itself, by forging its own maps of meaning and an important section within those maps would be a sub-cultures outfit. “Early grime was never about urban excess, but about being honest about the daily struggle. As such, its sense of style was born from a feeling of disenfranchisement from the cultures that came before.”(high snob reference) It wanted to detach itself from Garage as a polar opposite, it adorned different ideals than Garage, Grime was an ethnographical form of music and their ethnography was the struggle of daily life in deprived inner-city
estates.
The outfit fitted parallel with the music, it was also ethnographical in its own way; the trainers being agile Nike Air Max’s so that they could run from encounters with the police, of which have been documented within the culture on a regular basis. (reference nike vid) Also sportswear including tracksuits are items that the artists felt most comfortable in and therefore were going to wear the majority of the time, a true reflection of estate culture and a pure utilitarian aesthetic. (reference nike vid)