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B Y PA T S O N T

R A V E R S

• Rooted in U.K. garage and jungle, Jamaican dancehall and American hip-hop, grime grew from its base in East London (circa 2001) as a form of angst-ridden expression against the oppression facing these young voices on a daily basis. But it’s not all that deep: sonically—sharp-shooting flows, delivered on palettes of icy synths and guttural bass—it was new, exciting, full of bounce, and quickly garnered interest from fans and critics alike.

• One of the crews many grime artists believe paved the way for them, and the genre in general, is U.K. garage outfit So Solid Crew. The platinum-selling gang from South London took UKG out of the champagne-clad nightclubs and dragged it up and down the hoods of the U.K., lacing “dark garage” backdrops with their (sometimes) unwelcoming tales. And, here we are today.

• A term applied specifically to a style initially developed by Wiley and his collaborators, incorporating dance and electro elements. This indicated the movement of UK garage away from its house influences towards darker themes and sounds.

WILEY

Grime genre

• Grime videos are some of the most artistic and outside of the box style of videos around in a dark and dingy way. Grime was formed in London in the late 90s by the youth in order to convey their emotions and capture the rawness and reality of their lives.

• Therefore the artists of the grime genre usually wear tracksuits in their videos in order to stay true to themselves and not conform to normal rap and hip hop artists, who typically wear lavish over the top clothes such as big fur jackets.

• Grime was formed in London in the late 90s by the youth in order to convey their emotions and capture the rawness and reality of their lives.

• Dizzee Rascal, Wiley, Kano and Lethal Bizzle were among the first to bring the genre to mainstream media attention in 2003-2004, with their albums ‘Boy in da Corner, ‘Treddin on Thin Ice’, ‘Home Sweet Home’ and ‘Against All Oddz’

KANO

KANO

DIZZEE RASCAL

• Conventions of the Grime genre as all other genres are centered around costume, location, and specific shots which create meaning.

• Grime videos tend to focus and revolve around the one artist as there aren’t nearly as many groups as there are in other genres such as indie rock and rock. Very much like the rap genre, beats are made by usually one producer using computer equipment, therefore bands are not needed to create the music with instruments. This allows the one grime Artist to rap his lyrics or in colloquial terms ‘spit his bars’.

• The lyrics in many grime songs are about money, power and the corruption that the artist sees around them. They are reflecting what they see into the music. Grime lyrics also consist of violent imagery, as many of the Grime artists have grown up in an environment which consists of drug dealers, resulting in being exposed to violent behaviour.

Conventions of the grime genre

• The location we used was a housing estate which is typically where the majority of Grime artists have been brought up, therefore we conformed to the genre by filming on an estate, to connote that the artist lives on the estate. An estate is quite an impoverished area, it is a ghetto and the aesthetic of it creates an aura of rawness and grittiness which is why we included it in our music video.

Location

• Three music videos which are filmed on an estate are J – Hus’ song ‘Friendly’ and Hurrican and M-Lo ‘Empire’ and the popular Skepta’s ‘Shutdown’. These artists are proud to have grown up on these estates and ‘rep’ them in their videos. It is their territory. This is a big part of the Grime culture.

• As can be seen in the screenshot image of our music video, we used the location of an estate to display the urban environment my character has grown up in

• The inside of estate buildings provide a dark and gritty feel to music videos, which is what we were trying to achieve in our video.

• In relation to camera shots, movement and cuts, grime videos often have jump cuts, close up shots focusing on one person being the artist. This results in the video being very fast paced, exciting and impactful. Jump cuts often occur on the beat. This is perfect for Grime songs as they are mostly fast-paced in order to create hype and excitement. This represents the fast-paced nature of the youth’s lives

• A popular motif of grime videos is to have them edited to be black and white to portray the darkness of suburban London.

Camera shots

• The composition of certain shots in the video are coherent with the grime genre. The high-angle shot connotes the fact that the artist is trapped inside the system, and literally trapped on his own estate. Many people on estates are on benefits, minimum wage jobs or selling drugs so they never make it off the estates and live their lives there. This high angle shot represents the fact that the artist is a product of the estate.

• Another video which uses this camera shot (for the whole video) is Chipmunk’s ‘One take’ freestyle.

• The low-angle shot of the artist in the booth has the camera looking up at the artist. This makes the artist appear bigger and empowers him.

• Another video which uses a low-angle shot to empower the artist is Jesse Solomon – ‘The Ride Home’

• A typical convention of the grime video is for the artist to wear suburban clothing in order to represent the youth of the UK. This mainly involves the artists wearing a tracksuit. Or jeans and typically a hoodie. For our music video, I wore an Adidas tracksuit to conform to this convention. An example of a grime artist wearing an Adidas tracksuit is Stormzy in his immensely popular freestyle video ‘Shut Up’. Stormzy can be seen wearing a red tracksuit because that is his trademark colour, however, I decided to wear a black Adidas tracksuit to connote the corruptness of the dark underbelly of London, in particular the suburbs.

Costume

Digipak

• As can be seen above, my digipak was inspired by other grime albums such as Wiley’s “Playtime is over”. This digipak uses dark colours, the playground equipment has clearly been edited to appear as black, to connote darkness in the artists life and to metaphorically explain that ‘playtime is over’

• My digipak also includes dark colours. The images of the digipak were edited to lose colour potency in order to convey the darkness and violent nature of the album.

The poster

• I drew inspiration from J-Cole’s poster for his album ‘2014 Forest Hills Drive’. Despite J-Cole being an American rap artist and not a Grime artist, the position he sits in in the poster meshes well with the genre of Grime. As can be seen I am sitting on the ledge of the estate. The low-angle shot connotes the power and freedom my character has in his own estate.

• I edited the brightness of my poster to make it darker. As can be seen on the right, J-Cole’s poster is much brighter than mine, because his album does not contain serious issues such as violence and drugs, whereas a Grime album like mine does.

Conclusion

• The Grime genre is one that includes passion, art and freedom of speech. It reaches out to to the youths of England and invites them to relate to the music

• Through thorough research and planning, I used the conventions of the grime genre. This wasn’t too difficult of a task because I am a big fan of grime, therefore using real media texts to influence my product is something that felt natural and it has heavily impacted the overall quality of my media texts.