‘The industry’s the new road’: Crime,commodification and street cultural tropes in UK urban music

Urban music, rap and street cultural tropes

The term ‘urban music’ is not without its ambiguities and controversies, which must be briefly considered at the outset. The term has been used in reference to the musical expression of marginalised groups which were censured and excluded at different points in history, e.g. jazz and blues. For the purposes of this paper, the term is used in its contemporary sense, as music industry shorthand to denote the genres and styles of musical expression popularised and linked to disadvantaged, urban and ethnic minority populations – usually rap music and R’n’B, but stretching to include various forms of niche dance music. The use of ‘urban music’ as a term has been criticised for being deracinating, obfuscating of the undeniably black origins of the music and its particular role in black cultures (Henry, 2006). The racism of Western society and its imposition of exclusion and control on black populations has served at various points in time to construct their cultural expression as ‘low’ at worst and ‘exotic’ at best (Ramsey, 2003). This has been compounded by the marginalising properties of poverty. Consequently, all forms of urban music originally serve to provide a performative space for the expression of aesthetic tastes and relevant themes which speak to the marginalised communities which house both artistes and audiences together. They tend to be the subject of wider condemnation but eventually are appropriated by the mainstream music industry as ostensibly ‘authentic’ products to capture the interest of youth markets, arguably sanitised and diluted, mass-marketed and sold (see similarly, Hebdige, 1979/2005).

As the predominant form of contemporary urban music both culturally and commercially, it is important to discuss ‘rap’. Rap music emerged from the South Bronx area of New York in the mid-late 1970s; bound up with a broader ‘hip-hop’ culture, it takes the form of rhythmically chanted lyrics over a composite backing track (Chang, 2005; Rose, 1994). From its niche origins, rap is now a major component of both the mainstream music industry and specialised local scenes around the world (Kitwana, 2005; Neate, 2003). The music has produced a raft of household names (notably the white rapper, Eminem). Rap’s exponential growth has seen the genre fragment into a number of categories which Krims (2000) classes as ‘party’, ‘mack’, ‘jazz/bohemian’ and ‘reality’. The latter variety, he explains, ‘undertakes the project of realism, in the classical sense, which in this context would amount to an epistemological/ontological project to map the realities of (usually black) inner-city life’ (2000: 70). Thus rap, in common with many other forms of urban music, addresses a variety of themes which can range from whimsy to the harsh realities of ghetto living.

Central to popular perceptions of rap music is that section of the reality oeuvre which focuses on issues of criminality: so-called ‘gangsta rap’. Criminology has long recognised the relationship between crime and the inner city (Hayward, 2004), a dynamic born of the same experiences of poverty, racism and exclusion that has informed various varieties of urban music. Gangsta rap, through the first-person narration of lived and contrived instances of crime and violence, offers a critique of the social circumstances which give rise to the phenomena (Kelley, 1996). It provides a discursive grammar to explore the ‘code of the street’, those cultural values and norms that inform life in the economic wastelands at the margins of late-capitalist America, where a lack of reasonably paid employment, negative experiences of policing and competition for consumerist self-realisation define existence (Anderson, 1999; Kubrin, 2005). This ‘street culture’ comprises a normative logic which emphasises the attainment of status and ‘respect’ within local communities, where necessary through the use of violence and acquisitive criminality, and a particular aesthetic which is tied to a ‘street style’ that celebrates conspicuous consumption. Contemporary urban music styles such as rap are both a facet of the street aesthetic and expressive of the logic of street culture as a whole.

The ‘authentic’ and ‘exotic’ nature of ghetto music imbues it with a ‘subcultural capital’ which drives its popularity among a mainstream audience while prompting connoisseurs to delve for ever more obscure (even extreme) variants (Devereaux, 2007; Thornton, 1995). Bakari Kitwana argues that the anti-establishment nature of rap music has contributed to its popularity among an alienated youth demographic (2005). Its association with street cultural tropes such as hedonism, toughness, consumerism and the will to violence, while granting the music an amount of illicit appeal, has seen it labelled as crude, nihilistic and misogynistic, corrupting of morality and conducive to criminality. These accusations are part of its appeal to a youth demographic living in the sanitised environments of suburbia and mass consumption. Thus, for cultural criminologists ‘contemporary rap music embodies the evolving fusion of crime and consumerism, of transgression and popular art’ (Ferrell et al., 2008: 139). Were there any doubt that American rappers have commercially succeeded in part through their links to crime and controversy, one need only consider the posthumous record sales of murdered rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls (see Diehl, 2000).

The embodiment of street culture and the commodification of transgression aside, rap and wider street styles are intertwined with broader processes of criminalisation. First, street aesthetics, from music to clothing, can be read by agents of control as transgressive and indicative of criminal involvement (Ferrell, 2004). Given hip-hop’s wider appeal, this is problematic. Second, American rap artistes have been successively persecuted both legally and rhetorically by establishment institutions such as politicians and police forces. Records have been ruled obscene, concerts shut down and cancelled and moral entrepreneurs have lobbied government for further action (Keyes, 2002). Urban music, with rap as its most ubiquitous example, is intertwined with crime and criminalisation because of its connection to street cultural tropes. Moreover, the moral panic which arguably surrounded this music was most likely connected to its broader youth market appeal.

British urban music and ‘road’ culture

British urban music has developed in a distinctively different manner to its US counterpart, although it has nonetheless been shaped by a relationship to marginalisation, perceived transgression and criminality. Contemporary US urban music’s history encompassed movements from blues to soul to funk to rap and is ultimately rooted in the black culture of the southern states, which was brought to urban centres through successive waves of migration (Ramsey, 2003). Britain’s black population, on the other hand, initially constituted primarily Afro-Caribbean immigrants arriving from the 1950s onwards. They brought with them their own musical and cultural tropes. In musical terms, Jamaican reggae and its later incarnation as ‘dancehall’ was immensely popular among the newly arrived communities and indeed generated a number of commercially successful releases in the British charts (Bradley, 2001). Thus, while the reach of popular American urban musical forms certainly extended to the UK, it did not have the same status as a foundation influence.

Britain’s own distinctive urban musical forms emerged in earnest only in the early 1990s. In this regard, British artistes drew heavily on the ‘house’ or electronic dance music emerging out of Chicago, New York and Detroit in the late 1980s (see Thornton, 1995). Britain played a key role in the development of later forms of electronic dance music where the initially underground but all-encompassing ‘acid house’ scene fragmented into a range of styles (Reynolds, 2008). The ‘rave’ culture stemming from electronic dance music and its relationship to illegal drugs generated public opprobrium (see Redhead, 1993), although this controversy was ultimately harnessed by the industries connected to marketing the music (McRobbie and Thornton, 1995). A number of branches from its evolutionary tree became quickly associated with inner-city London, particularly ‘garage’ and ‘jungle’. Developing throughout the 1990s, these genres are characterised by their bass-heavy production and street aesthetic. They drew on the tradition of Jamaican ‘toasting’ and American ‘rapping’ to embrace the use of the ‘MC’ (master of ceremonies) vocalist.

British urban music has associations with distinctive street cultural tropes, subtly distinct from those linked to their American counterparts. Reggae, which exercised a fundamental influence on UK urban music, has for many decades discussed the ‘badman’ culture that formed in Jamaica’s unique cultural crucible (see Gunst, 2003; Stolzoff, 2000). In a state that experiences high levels of political and criminal violence, American western and gangster films have proven both popular and influential. In particular, the trope of the rugged ‘shoot first’ gunslinger resonated strongly with the tenaciously criminal ‘rudeboys’ who dwelled among the ‘sufferahs’, the ghetto dwellers of Jamaica’s deeply impoverished slums who struggle for dignity and material sustenance. ‘Badman’ tropes provide a cultural grammar to attain both of these, through embracing the will to violence wrapped in sartorial cool and consumerist distinction. These tropes animate what has been termed the ‘road’ culture of contemporary marginalised urban youth in Britain, ‘characterized by “spectacular” aggressive/hyper masculine modes of behaviour, incorporating violent and petty crime, fraud/personal identity theft and low-level drug dealing’ (Gunter, 2008: 352). Similar to Kubrin’s analysis of street cultural expression, Gunter notes that for most urban youth ‘badness’ represents an ideal of identification as opposed to an inventory of behaviours. The style of the ‘badman’ is to be emulated, not necessarily his actions. Nevertheless, UK urban music’s relationship with road culture is central to its position in the popular imagination and the manner in which it has been marginalised and criminalszed.

The development of UK urban music was shaped by its initial exclusion from the mainstream industry (both performance and recording related). The imposed isolation from the white and middle-class mainstream had allowed black British/Afro-Carribean music to constitute a space in which the everyday concerns of its artistes and audiences could be openly discussed (Henry, 2006). Given that this often involved a certain amount of badman rhetoric, the controversy surrounding the music could serve as a repository for wider social anxieties tied to race, class and youth. Much as earlier forms of black cultural expression had influenced white subcultural styles and tastes (see Hall and Jefferson, 1976; Hebdige, 1979/2005), urban music, despite its controversial associations, impacted on mainstream cultural trends. The jungle and garage genres, misconstrued as a soundtrack to criminality, faced public condemnation in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This controversy became intertwined with the music’s illicit appeal. Garage stars So Solid Crew secured a number one chart hit with ‘21 Seconds’ in 2001 but were soon the subject of controversy when their lead member Megaman was charged with conspiracy to a murder (but subsequently acquitted), for which one of the goup’s associates was ultimately jailed (BBC News, 2006). Meanwhile, ‘artists and repertoire’ staff at major labels continued harvesting the genre’s less menacing output to populate daytime radio and MTV playlists. Garage was to decline under the weight of its own mainstream success, but innovative impetus produced new genres from its harder and more road-orientated fringes.

The ‘grime’ scene lock-off

From 2001 ‘grime’ music began to emerge from East London’s Bow, stemming from a number of tracks produced by practised garage artiste Wiley, who began to construct a faster, stripped-down sound:

Grime producers (who make the beats that m.c.s rhyme over) have developed a fierce, frantic sound by distilling the polyrhythms of drum and bass or garage – the music of choice at many raves – to a minimal style sometimes consisting of nothing more than a queasy bass line and a single, clipped video-game squawk. (Frere-Jones, 2005)

In grime, much like US rap music, lyrics take a prominent role. Grime, however, is distinctively different, distinctively London, and it grew organically and independently among a tightly connected cohort of inner-city artistes and audiences (Hancox, 2009b). Adam Smith’s short documentary on the origins of the genre, Wot Do U Call It?, demonstrates that its roots lie within the marginalised inner-city communities of London – and that the character of its aesthetics and lyricism are heavily steeped in the logic of road. ¹ Grime was unique as a source of identification, created by musicians influenced by British garage as much as American rap and Jamaican dancehall. Grime’s creativity received brief mainstream recognition when one time-Wiley protégé Dizzee Rascal won the prestigious Mercury Music Award in 2003 for his ‘Boy In Da Corner’ album, but for the most part the distinctively road elements of grime made it unattractive to major label investment:

Grime comes from Britain’s own orient, the poor east of capital, exoticised but unappreciated – and the exceptional talent behind the hype about ‘Britain’s own hip-hop’ was quickly forgotten. Since then the music has been abandoned by record labels unwilling to ‘gamble’, derided by kneejerk critics as too violent and nullified as a live music form by the Met’s discriminatory and clumsy approach to policing clubs. (Hancox, 2009b)

As grime journalist Dan Hancox points out, however, the scene’s artistes and fans possessed the means and strategies to create a vibrant and successful force on their own. The initial grime scene was essentially based on a hidden economy (Frere-Jones, 2005). CDs and DVDs were sold informally. Artistes favoured the ‘mixtape’ format, which could be independently marketed through the street, internet and specialist retailers without the need for mainstream industry involvement. London has a long tradition of pirate radio, with improvised antennae atop tower blocks broadcasting a range of urban music to cater for local taste. ² Among them, stations like Déjà Vu FM and Rinse FM (the latter has since been licensed) provided a platform for established and upcoming MCs to ‘pick up the mic’. Teenage artistes collected schoolyard accolades, earning themselves local fame through their vocal dexterity on the illegal airwaves.

Grime’s advance was inherently tied to the growth of information and communication technology. The emerging media of digital television and internet radio provided specialist platforms for grime artistes to flourish: on Channel U (now Channel AKA, ³ a digital television station dedicated to UK urban music), BBC 1xtra (Britain’s public ‘black music’ digital radio station), as well as the online incarnation of the pirates. Thus, the scene run by and for urban youth, operating outside mainstream media institutions, was unknowingly embracing the modes of communication and commodification that would become increasingly significant as the decade advanced. Grime, for much of the first decade of the 2000s, however, occupied a space tantalisingly close to commercial success then blocked by the reaction of industry and policing agencies to the music’s road aesthetic.

As illustrated by the Smith documentary, grime artistes often live in violent environments, bereft of opportunity but alluringly proximate to the fabulous wealth of the City of London. Such areas foster both road culture as an interpretative logic and grime as a form of cultural expression. ⁴ Grime is thus liberally dotted with violent metaphor: to lyrically beat a competing vocalist is to ‘merk’ (kill) him; to show appreciation for a track it is customary to shout ‘brap’ (in imitation of gunfire). Grime often articulates the violent code of the street/road and contains references to criminality, exemplified here by the lyrics of grime luminary Crazy Titch:

You musta felt real strong that day,

To think you coulda ever do me a wrong that day,

When I phoned, you said beef [a dispute] was on that day,

Trust me, I woulda brung it on that day.

Blood [term of familiarity], you woulda got a slap that time,

You’re lucky that I never had my gat [gun] that time,

And my two fists and a baseball bat that time,

And you still ended up on your back that time. (‘I Can C U’, Aftershock, 2003)

Here Titch warns an adversary that he should show proper deference and respect and not seek a dispute, otherwise he will be overwhelmed by a violent response which could escalate to include the use of weapons. Titch’s adversary, however, has such shortcomings of road acumen that he fails to impinge on the lyricist and there is no need for violence to be deployed. While certainly aggressive, such lyrics must be understood in rhetorical terms.

Grime lyrics frequently reference criminal acts from theft and drug-taking to stabbing and shooting. As Kubrin notes however: ‘Lyrics are discursive actions or artefacts that help construct an interpretative environment where violence is appropriate and acceptable’ but ‘the code and rap music do not cause violence; violence is far more complex than that’ (2005: 366). Grime lyrics often contain strong elements of braggadocio and projected violent potential. The badman snarl and tough talking serve as signifiers of an elevated status within road culture and thus become part of grime’s vernacular, a means of generating ‘street capital’ (see Sandberg, 2008). Such status must be maintained and guarded. Among artistes this occurs through competitive lyricism or ‘clashing’ (a process shared with reggae and rap music). Lyricism is often, however, entirely separate from the actualised ‘armshouse’ or violence of road. Links do arise between grime artistes and concrete incidents of criminality: for example, Crazy Titch has been jailed for murder (Muir, 2006), while Dizzee Rascal was the victim of a stabbing (BBC News, 2003). It is important, however, to see the music as a form of cultural expression underpinned by the same systemic and structural problems of inequality, poverty, racism and exclusion which give rise to criminality. There is no basis to infer anything but a coincidental link.

In their work on ‘gang talk’, Hallsworth and Young view questions around the existence of a ‘moral panic’ stemming from sensationalist reporting on youth violence in Britain’s inner cities as moot (2008: 182–4). Sensationalist media coverage of disadvantaged urban youth subcultures is to be expected, but I argue that this is not automatically a resource which can guarantee the commercial success of their cultural expression. As will be discussed below, the response of institutional authorities in the UK has arguably been to interpret grime music as symbolic of danger and transgression, further marginalising the music and impacting on the means by which it might be commercialised.

As grime increased in popularity, promoters involved in staging its live events increasingly articulated a perception that London’s Metropolitan Police Service (the Met) were applying discriminatory measures in order to ‘lock off’ venues and exclude artistes from performing. Hancox (2008, 2009a) interviewed prominent grime promoters who report that, despite running numerous events without incident, venues were increasingly imposing more stringent conditions or simply refusing to allow gigs to proceed. On one occasion, a promoter was asked to lodge his passport with a venue, the implication being that he might try and flee the jurisdiction in the event of violence occurring at his event. Treating an entrepreneur much like a bail applicant is indicative of criminalising processes at play. Hancox’s reportage argues that behind the caution and reticence of venue owners was pressure from the Met, who exercise considerable power as part of the liquor licensing regime. One promoter explained to Hancox:

[I was at] a meeting with Council officials and the Met last year when I was involved in putting on [a festival in an area of inner-city London]. The police told us categorically that we weren’t allowed to put on music that was either ‘grime, garage, rap, reggae or r’n’b’. Funny that they knew what grime was when some of my friends don’t. (2008: 3)

It was felt that discrimination against urban music in general had been inbuilt into the Met’s controversial ‘Form 696’, a risk assessment form issued to venues with a view to determining safety at specified events. Such was the wording of the form that UK Music, the British musicians’ rights association, staged a campaign against it (Hancox, 2009a). In particular, the form asks if particular ethnic groups are expected to attend, asks as to the ‘music style to be played/performed’ before supplying the arguably leading examples of ‘(e.g. bashment, R&B, garage)’ and cites ‘DJs, MCs, etc.’ as examples of the musical artistes that might appear at particular events. Thus the entire risk assessment form seems predicated to judge the threat posed by urban as opposed to rock music, whose live shows entail a very different format. Grime artistes report experiencing unwarranted police investigation when performing at clubs (Hancox, 2008). The Met have since amended the form on the basis of these criticisms and maintain that they ‘will never assess somebody just on the genre of music they are performing’ (Independent, 2008). On the other hand, a Met spokesperson has explicitly linked Form 696 to ‘assisting the process of identifying potential gang conflict’ (Youngs, 2009). Hancox argues that the Met has effectively announced that it will continue to focus on grime nights and the scene ‘has been forced back into its bedrooms, away from the club nights that sparked its original creative impulse’ (Hancox, 2009c).

As will be discussed later, grime music features in YouTube video clips where grime MCs exchange lyrical fire and ‘rep their ends’ (associate with particular parts of the city in a manner that some would construe as ‘gang related’). Questions remain as to whether the police are always accurately interpreting what may be rhetorical gestures and rehearsals of street tropes that do not necessarily find expression in concrete criminality. Indeed, the grime industry figures who spoke to Hancox dispute witnessing any crimes that would not occur among any other large gathering of people for any kind of music event. The criminalisation of grime serves as another layer of both commercial and symbolic social marginalisation, premised on judgements around the nature of the music’s audience, its embodiment of street cultural tropes and aesthetics and ultimately its relationship to criminality. Whether connected to broader moral panics around urban violence or not, this stance has arguably complicated the means by which grime as a form of street cultural expression can be commercialised. The attitude, moreover, may both misunderstand the relationship between rhetoric and reality and overlook the degree to which grime also articulates an alternative narrative to the logic of road.

‘Respectable’ tropes in grime music

Alongside street or road cultural tropes, grime music has frequently embodied what can be termed as ‘decent’ or ‘respectable’ cultural tropes (see Anderson, 1999). Such cultural values emphasise the merits of remaining law-abiding, engaging with mainstream routes to success such as education and legitimate entrepreneurialism, and refusing to participate in street violence. These are essentially norms that resonate with the values of the included middle classes. While not as incendiary as street tropes and therefore less likely to capture the mediated public imagination outside the grime scene, such respectable messages are part of the ‘positivity’ grime artistes frequently embody and communicate. Grime artistes, given their young age, are often still in education and often show pride in their achievements. Chipmunk, the artiste whose lyric forms the title of this paper, appeared on BBC 1xtra radio to discuss his A Level (school-leaving exam) results. Tinchy Stryder, an artiste who has achieved number one hits in the British charts, has spoken in positive and encouraging terms about his time at university (Katbamna, 2009). JME, a distinguished underground grime MC, has discussed his educational ambitions in detail, lyrically:

I stayed in school got my degree,

Even if I get a 2.2,

I’ve done it, time waste for no-one,

This year I was 2-2,

My dad wants me to do a masters,

And my mum wants me to too. (JME, from ‘123’, on ‘Famous’, Boy Better Know, 2008)

An emphasis on education is linked to the acumen grime artistes feel is necessary for them to achieve financial and commercial success within an industry that has grown organically and independently out of their own ingenuity. JME is said to have eschewed major label deals, instead releasing his material independently, designing his own artwork and running his own T-shirt business which has sold approximately 30,000 units as of February 2009 (Hancox, 2009b). JME and his Boy Better Know (BBK) crew have created a brand that is ubiquitous across the urban scene. While referencing luxury clothing brands to some extent in their lyrics, they more significantly take pride in their ability to ‘wear my own garms [clothes]’, palpably demonstrating their entrepreneurial nous. In contrast to the illicit routes to financial gain referenced by US gangsta rap, significant voices within grime explicitly shrug off the ‘gangsta’ label and reaffirm the importance of legitimate commerce. As Skepta, another member of BBK explains of some of his detractors within the grime scene:

Everyone seems to have commented ‘ah Skepta think’s he’s gangsta because he’s making money, he’s talking like he’s rich, and he’s not even rich’ and I actually said on the track ‘I’m not saying I’m rich I’m just saying, get money.’ They’re really naive about things: in the music you’re not allowed to talk about money, clothes, wearing your own Boy Betta Know T-shirt. They want us to talk about guns and fights and shanks and clashing for the whole thing. So I don’t really see myself like that and I try not to care what people say, and I just do me and live how I want to live. (Blackdown Blog, 2008) ⁵

It is important to understand the relationship to consumer culture being articulated here. Those associated with American rap culture have been described as over-identifying with displays of conspicuous consumption in response to their exclusion from other mainstream signifiers of power and status (Hayward, 2004: 181–2). Grime artistes frequently reference luxury brand goods and expensive cars. For many in grime, however, conspicuous consumption is not presented as isolated from the means required to participate in it: legitimately realising the means to consume is celebrated. ⁶ Here respectable values are being expressed, not simply a desire to sport the symbols of affluence. Thus a less socially excluded perspective is articulated albeit couched in the argot of road. Indeed, the violent metaphor of grime must often be understood as rhetorical when many artistes are at pains to dissuade inner-city youth from using violence.

Here, where the mainstream speak about British urban street violence in dramatised terms (see Hallsworth and Young, 2008: 182–4), grime artistes offer an alternative narrative, supporting their audience to make choices which will ultimately decrease their exclusion. This is exemplified by grime crew Roll Deep’s participation in the ‘Stop the Guns’ campaign sponsored by the Met’s anti-gang Operation Trident. Their 2007 track ‘Badman’ and the video that accompanies it highlight the negative consequences of street violence and caution against allowing minor disputes to escalate into events which will profoundly affect perpetrators, victims, their respective families and entire communities. Grime artiste Bashy has featured on BBC3’s innovative ‘Jail Tales’ ⁷ online video project which involves numerous grime artistes discussing the problems associated with prison. Bashy argues in his acapella lyrics that ‘real’ men are not those who are willing to undergo incarceration for violent crime committed to maintain respect, but those individuals who reject violence. Ultimately, it was a move away from discussing issues of crime in any detail and an embrace of the entrepreneurial role that would propel grime music into the mainstream through the emergence of ‘electro-grime’. This arguably represents a case that runs counter to the standard commodification of crime through urban music and signals a shift in the cultural dynamics of symbolic exclusion in contemporary Britain.

‘Electro-grime’, cultural and commercial inclusion

There are significant observable differences between the commercial function of street cultural tropes in American and British urban music. While in the former, associations with criminality contribute to the notoriety and persona of successful artistes, in the latter, concerns around violent imagery served to stymie the commercial viability of a genre. Thus, the general public, even in Britain, have been routinely exposed to reports of violence and criminality involving US rap artistes while few outside particular niche audiences would even have had a particular awareness of grime. The murders of rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls and hip-hop mogul P Diddy’s firearm possession charge were widely discussed in the mainstream media, if anything contributing to the strength of their respective brands. On the other hand, the jailing of grime artiste Duurty Goodz or the contribution of a verse to the remix of Lady Sovereign’s ‘Random’ by incarcerated artiste Riko via telephone from prison failed to reach mass public consciousness. Indeed, grime’s niche existence ensured that such occurrences failed to generate either public opprobrium or illicit commercial appeal.

Public awareness of grime music very rarely strayed beyond the exceptional case of Dizzee Rascal, whose profile was significantly boosted by signing to the ‘major’ independent record label XL. Such coverage he generated tended to see him frequently misconstrued as a ‘British rapper’, ⁸ cast in the role of young, angry, urban male and occasionally mentioned with mild disapproval by government politicians (see Chang, 2004). Ultimately, grime would eventually reach mainstream consciousness and markets through an alternative route that defies the general existing model by which urban music has been commodified: ‘the more ghetto, the more marketable (provided the requisite artiste charisma and major label capital is in place)’.

The emergence of ‘electro-grime’ in 2008 opened up considerable scope for previously marginalised grime artistes to cross over into the mass market. From early in the year, pirate and urban radio stations began to air a distinctively fresh track by the paradigm-shifting Wiley: ‘Wearing my Rolex’. Bless Beats, who produced the backing track, astutely drew on the resurging popularity of electronic dance music among the urban audience to produce a sound that was significantly more polished, melodic and dancefloor orientated than the usual rumbling, staccato menace of grime instrumentals. Lyrically, the track eschewed grime’s characteristic seriousness in favour of content that playfully discusses dancing, partying and relations with the opposite sex. Including a catchy female vocal hook, the song embodied a pop sensibility which had rarely been present in grime. The track’s underground popularity and clear mass appeal saw it signed to a division of the major label Atlantic Records. Formally released in April/May 2008, it reached number two in the British charts, an unprecedented achievement for grime.

Poised advantageously at the crest of the zeitgeist, the electro-grime genre allowed grime artistes a route to success. Within months, Dizzee Rascal’s collaboration with popular dance music producer Calvin Harris, ‘Dance Wiv Me’, reached number one in the British charts and remained there for four weeks. Employing the soon-to-become formulaic strategy of fusing a light, up-tempo backing track with lyrics that centre on dancing, romance and alcohol, the track clearly signalled the ability of grime artistes to participate meaningfully in the pop music market. As of August 2010, there have been ten electro-grime singles which have reached the top of the British charts, including releases by Tinchy Stryder, Tinie Tempah and Chipmunk. These teenage artistes began their careers within the traditional grime paradigm, advancing into the cultural mainstream while still in their teenage years. Their earlier outputs were independently released but they have secured record deals as the major labels rushed to capitalise on the vitality of the electro-grime sub-genre (see Hancox, 2009c).

The pop music sensibility of electro-grime has prompted some traditional grime artistes to criticise it, accusing it of ‘blanding out’ the potency, authenticity and road reality of the music’s initial incarnation. There are a wider body of grime artistes, however, who have imported a greater degree of electronic dance music and whimsical party lyricism into their output. It is common even for commercially successful artistes to produce content both ‘for the charts and for the streets’ (Hancox, 2009c). Within urban music globally, a tension has long existed between ‘keeping it real’ (maintaining authenticity) and diluting orthodox forms for commercial benefit (see Keyes, 2002: 40). Electro-grime, however, draws on a long tradition of party tropes within urban music and has not necessarily jettisoned road aesthetics entirely, but instead maintains them in a muted, ephemeral form in the vocal style of its artistes. Unlike the model of mass appropriation described by Hebdige (1979/2005), the maintenance of a dual repertoire is an example of artistes exercising their agency within the late-modern culture industries. They reflexively craft one batch of music to speak to traditional grime fans, and another to speak to a wider audience. Indeed, how can artistes be accused of ‘selling out’ when even their street-orientated repertoire frequently lyrically references the importance of ‘making it’?

Electro-grime’s success as a hybrid sub-genre lies in its ability to ‘code combine’ as opposed to ‘code switch’. Much of its oeuvre is built on the collaboration between a grime artiste and another figure, be it a producer, singer, or actor-comedian (in the case of Dizzee’s ‘Shout’), whose influence imbues the final product with a pop music aesthetic. The grime artiste projects sufficient authenticity from their road origins to generate a scintilla of illicit appeal, without explicitly referring to road themes or courting controversy. Moreover, such artistes tend to highlight the entrepreneurialism of their project both in lyrics and interviews to respond to their scene-based critics. They can maintain that they are the embodiment of those respectable values present in grime. They are achieving commercial and cultural success, selling music and clothing in a manner that is unprecedented both within their scene of origin and the wider music industry. Arguably, it is the industry nous of the young electro-grime artistes that has contributed to the interest now shown in them by the mainstream music industry.

Grime’s origins as a genre built on scene and virtual networks, independent entrepreneurialism and multi-platform content has rendered its pop music orientation ideally placed to navigate the late-modern media industry. Its artistes have mastered the use of social networking, online vending and directly connecting to its audience and market. In this regard, the demographic proximity of artistes and audience in terms of age and aesthetic tastes serves as another key advantage. The new media acumen of this generation of artistes is illustrated by such examples as Bashy’s sale of music, directly downloadable to mobile phone via SMS, or Dizzee Rascal’s Dirtee Stank record label’s expert policing of the internet. Their knowledge of, and connection to, their audience and ability to provide them with both complementary and purchasable material has enabled them to commodify their output in an era of declining major label revenues.

Grime artistes frequently reversion charting singles from across the musical spectrum to entertain the fans who follow them on various digital platforms. This process has since been co-opted by the mainstream music industry, with Dizzee re-versioning pop act Francis and the Machine’s ‘You’ve Got the Love’ and Skepta producing the first official grime remix of an American rap hit, P Diddy and Dirty Money’s ‘Hello Good Morning’. By judiciously dampening their road personas, embodying the respectable trope of the educated entrepreneur and demonstrating industry-leading marketing acumen, electro-grime artistes have stepped across the boundaries of marginalisation that they had previously faced. Less likely to be constructed as dangerous pariahs, electro-grime artistes no longer face concert bans but instead perform in high-profile music festivals which notably once included a younger member of the royal family in the audience (Hattenstone, 2010). Such developments are likely to have implications for the cultural identities and imaginaries of disadvantaged urban youth. The new online mediascape and music industry democratisation have redrawn the lines of symbolic inclusion and exclusion, creating new opportunities for those possessing the requisite aspiration, fluidity of identity and entrepreneurial acumen, whereby street cultural expression is commodified in a counter-typical manner.

‘Road rap’ and persisting street cultural tropes

Street/road cultural tropes continue to find expression in traditional grime music and its variant ‘road rap’. This latter sub-genre is exemplified by the work of Peckham artiste Giggs who continues to be defined as a problematic figure by both music industry and policing agencies (Morley, 2010). He cites American gangsta rap as a broad influence and, unlike his electro-grime colleagues, routinely draws on themes of crime and violence in his lyrics. Giggs delivers his material at a languid pace, in deep tones which hint of menace. He has been jailed for possession of a firearm, but in interview is candid around his perceived need to protect himself in the violent world of road. For Giggs and his SN1 (Spare No One) Crew, there can be no dilution of road realities in search of greater commercial and cultural inclusion, and success must come on the back of loyally representing what it is to be a young man living on the social, economic and cultural margins of the British metropolis. Thus, the lyrics from ‘Don’t Go There’, the first single on his 2010 album, ‘Let Em Ave It’ (XL), make clear that few in the mainstream understand the logic of road, which demands illegal entrepreneurialism to maintain the desired level of consumerist distinction:

You don’t know where my people coming from cause you don’t go there.

We’re jus tryna make dough [money] here,

Feds [police] on our case so we moving mad low here…

Brown [heroin] went dead so I invested in coke shares.

I started seeing shit so clear…

This single peaked at number 60 in the charts, despite featuring popular American singer B.O.B., indicating the degree to which British urban music forms, steeped in the imagery of street culture, remain less commercially viable within its domestic market. Indeed, Giggs has faced exclusionary tactics similar to those experienced by hardcore grime artistes. Laced with references to the ‘black flags’ and hand signals that have become part of the visual symbolism of London’s internecine street violence, Giggs’s material is said to have concerned policing agencies. The role of the Met in banning his concerts and attempting to obstruct his record deal has been the subject of media commentary (Jonze, 2010). Giggs has given interviews in which he opines that commercial urban music programmes on radio and television have been reluctant to air his material. Now signed to XL Records, however, his articulated vision of building a successful music career on the basis of street narratives would seem more attainable.

The boundaries between musical material discussing the logic of road and actual occurrences of criminal behaviour have arguably become difficult for the authorities to disentangle. Traditional grime and road rap are continuously burgeoning with amateur and semi-professional content produced and posted on YouTube by disadvantaged urban youth with professed links to street crime and violence. These ‘hood videos’ represent a window into the normative world of road culture and become a discursive space in which the boundaries between the real-world manifestations and virtual representations of crime and violence can appear blurred and indistinct. Online self-produced grime videos allow urban youth to ‘rep their ends’ or proclaim allegiance to a particular unit of territorial demarcation and thus enter themselves into the conflicts that exist over such spaces on the streets.

In November 2009, two young men were jailed for threatening witnesses to a murder via the medium of a grime video which they had made themselves and posted on YouTube (Raif, 2009). Two other young men convicted of a murder had made a street-level music video laden with violent imagery and metaphor (Local Guardian, 2009), while another has been issued with an anti-social behaviour order for a clip he authored which was judged to be ‘glamorising the gangster lifestyle’ (Pears, 2009). Such instances represent problematic sites of interpretation for legal authorities who would require extensive subcultural acumen to accurately distinguish material linked to criminality from material produced as artistic expression by professional grime artistes, who author informal online material including ‘beef’ videos which may ostensibly appear more connected to real violence than they are. Indeed, grime and other UK urban music artistes make continual contributions to the various anti-crime and violence campaigns which have become another competing voice in the new mediascape, an ever-increasing part of young people’s everyday lives. These themes represent important subjects of study for future British cultural criminology.

Conclusion

The proliferation of relatively inexpensive audio and visual production technology and the democratic nature of new media platforms have greatly expanded the scope for street cultural expression to directly connect with a wider audience. This challenges the traditional means by which transgression in street cultural expression has been variously commodified and controlled. Where the UK demonstrated a limited market for domestic street music, certain grime artistes attained commercial success through muting the aggressive tone of their earlier works to fuse a glimmer of road aesthetics within a more publicly palatable, respectable pop sensibility. Crucially, this is not a case of the mainstream culture industries diluting and commodifying street/road style, but the product of independent creativity and market acumen which the mainstream music industry could no longer afford to ignore. For some, grime has become a lucrative ‘subcultural career’ and a route to material and symbolic inclusion (see Snyder, 2009).

The success of electro-grime artistes provides important counter-narratives to the logic of road and contributes to an imaginary that hints at transcending the limits which structural conditions impose on the aspirations of disadvantaged youth. Where one section of the grime scene are deservedly paraded as role-models, another section dedicated to accurately and/or rhetorically representing their harsh lived experiences face continued scepticism from British industry and policing agencies. The existence of street-level music and video productions has to some extent blurred the lines between the rhetorical functions of street cultural expression and the concrete consequences of following the street code, creating an ambiguous body of media content. Such ambiguities arguably contribute to the perceived threat that street cultural expression can appear to embody. This draws on the wider emotive issues of anxiety and condemnation which cling to the marginalised in late-modernity and specifically to urban youth violence in Britain. Perhaps then the commodification of street cultural tropes in British urban music cannot occur in a direct manner, given the geographic and cultural proximity afforded to such threats by high population density and the new media. For the USA’s foreign and indeed domestic suburban markets, the realities of urban crime and violence are perhaps sufficiently distant to constitute an ‘exotic’ and commodifiable cultural resource. It will be interesting to see to what extent this latter model endures evolving trends in the culture industries.