The Origins of Grime

Grime is a style of music that emerged from Bow, East London in the early 2000's primarily as a development of UK garage, hip-hop and dancehall. Pioneers of the style include Dizzee Rascal, Newham Generals and Wiley. In the beginning it was primarily on pirate radio and stations such as Deja Vu Fm, Freeze 92.7 & MajorFm.com were essential to the evolution of the genre. At this point the style was known by number of names, including "8-bar" (meaning 8 bar verse patterns), "Nu Shape" (which encouraged more complexed 16 bar and 32 bar verse patterns), "Sublow" (a reference to the very low bassline frequencies, often around 40 Hz). This indicated the movement of UK Garage away from its House influences towards darker themes and sounds. Among the first tracks to be labelled "Grime" as a genre in itself were 'Eskimo' by Wiley and "Pulse X" by Musical Mob.

The first grime artists to recieve some wide sacel attention, especially from the media, were Dizzee Rascal and Wiley with the 2003-4 albums 'Boy In Da Corner' and 'Treddin on Thin Ice'. Dizzee Rascal garnered broad critical acclaim and commercial success with 'Boy In Da Corner' winning the 2003 Mercury Music Prize. Grime has received exposure from television stations including Channel AKA (formerely Channel U) as well as from radio stations like BBC 1Extra that was created for the growing 'urban' style of music that would soon be sent around the world.

As time has progresses Grime has become more and more widespread in popularity, and today there are thousands of young artist making their own grime tracks as a hobby, they then post the tracks on various websites such as Facebook, Youtube and Soundcloud to gain exposure. This genre shows no signs of slowing down on it's take over of the mainstream and break through into the world markets.