Grime Pays

Whatever it was, these guys were transfixed; their attention
completely held by this … nothing

By Santanu Bhattacherjee

I saw this thing the other day: there were two men in the doorway of a lock-up staring at a hole in the floor, a cavernous fucking hole in the floor, and these guys were there. Just stood. What the hell happened? How did this minor disaster occur? Whatever it was, these guys were transfixed; their attention completely held by this … nothing. I’m guessing that there used to be something there, something valuable that maybe these guys, and they looked like money, decided to pile some other stuff onto, you know, to give the “other stuff” some gloss, a reflected glow. The thing is, and this is only supposition, maybe the thing they had there first just couldn’t take the weight of the whole shebang. Boom. Cave in. And nobody knows quite what they’re looking at, but they’re looking at it all the same.

The East London homiez were in force at the Rhythm Factory for a Klashnekoff set that was fierce and had a sizeable section of the crowd jumping. Klashnekoff and his crew delivered blunted beats reminiscent of late eighties hip-hop, not too showy or poppy but tough and able to carry the rhymes, and a delivery that could stand toe-to-toe with most of their US counterparts. In fact, to make a lazy comparison, it was kind of like hearing what might happen if the Beatminerz worked with Rodney P. Let’s not make too many bones about it, Klashnekoff is top notch; and for UK hip-hop he is an absolute boon.

But here’s where I might have a problem. Klashnekoff is being lumped in with Grime, a scene that is getting disparate to the point of becoming irrelevant. This summer has seen a parade of new releases under the Grime banner (you might want to call it a Grime-wave) and, quite frankly, a lot of them have been ordinary. The Grime banner is looking a little, well, tarnished.

Grime first reached widespread attention through the double-whammy of award-winners Dizzee Rascal and The Streets, but while both took their inspiration from UK Garage they are individuals in their own right; Dizzee Rascal purveying an angsty vocal style over experimental dissonant hip-hop beats and Mike Skinner sounding more like a Garage update of Two-Tone and The Specials. In the bandwagon that has taken some time to follow, Grime or UK Underground music has found it easy to market itself but, in gaining a personality, it has lost some of its personalities who may find it difficult to dislocate themselves from the throng before the whole thing collapses. I hope Klashnekoff is not one of those because he deserves much better.