Sam Willis
Every punk fan will remember the January 1977 issue of Sideburns in which the fanzine taught its readers three chords – A, E and G – and told them: “Now form a band”. That DIY self-governance resulted in one of the most influential forms of music ever created on either side of the Atlantic. Fast-forward to East London at the turn of the millennium and an unlikely descendant of punk was being forged – in a melting pot of poverty, disaffection and a similarly belligerent selfdetermination – and heralded by many as the most original frontier of UK urban music for decades: grime.
2017 was the peak of what many called a renaissance in the genre and, after a significant dip in quality and consumption at the tail-end of the 2000s and into the early 2010s, the numbers certainly seem to prove that it has arrived once again, with a vengeance. Last year saw grime streams reaching an all-time high of one billion a week and a 109% increase in physical album sales, according to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). Although many of these second-generation releases were predominantly CD and download only, they are now also widely available on wax, reflecting the format’s renewed authority.
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