Grime

Grime sits at 138-140 BPM, double the tempo of most US hip-hop but felt as a half-time pattern so MCs can rap over it without the bars sounding rushed. The drums lean on a sparse kick-and-snare pattern descended from 2-step UK garage, but the harmonic content is much darker: square-wave or sawtooth basslines, eight-bar synth riffs, and very little chord movement. Vocals are MC-led, delivered fast and with strong London accents, and the genre values lyrical 'wordplay' and 'sending' (battling) over melodic singing. Production typically uses cheap software tools — early grime was built almost entirely on PlayStation 2 music software and FruityLoops on home PCs.

Grime took shape in East London — Bow, Hackney, Tower Hamlets — between 2001 and 2003 out of the UK garage scene's harder, MC-led wing. Pirate radio stations Rinse FM and Deja Vu, and crews including Roll Deep, More Fire Crew, and Pay As U Go Cartel, were central. Dizzee Rascal's 'Boy in da Corner' (2003) and Wiley's productions established the template; the genre then went underground for several years before re-emerging around 2014-2015 with Skepta's 'Konnichiwa', Stormzy's 'Vossi Bop', and the BBK label's international push. Drake's public co-sign of Skepta in 2015 was a turning point for the genre's US visibility.

Listen for the bass: grime almost always has a single, very prominent synth bassline that carries the harmonic content for the whole track, with very little else underneath. The drums are sparse and snappy compared with US hip-hop — the kick and snare give the rapper space rather than filling every beat. The vocal delivery is much faster than most American rap, partly because the underlying tempo is twice as fast.

For an early classic, Dizzee Rascal, 'I Luv U' (2003), and the full album 'Boy in da Corner' (2003). For the modern peak, Skepta, 'Shutdown' (2015). For a recent crossover hit, Stormzy, 'Vossi Bop' (2019).

A lot of early grime was made on a PlayStation 2 — specifically the 'Music 2000' / 'MTV Music Generator 2' software that sold for around twenty pounds. Wiley and several other founding producers built their early instrumentals on it before any of them owned a proper studio computer.