Hip-Hop Or Dancehall? Breaking Down The Grime Scene’s Roots

Let's get one thing out of the way: grime is NOT a sub-genre of hip-hop.

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When talking disaster Azealia Banks finally imploded via social media last month on account of her virulently racist and homophobic comments about Zayn Malik, most were content to chide her for being an awful person, full stop. For grime fans however, the real stinger was her later response tweets taking UK artists to task over their flows and the roots of grime as an art form.

The backlash was swift, with most emcees taking the opportunity to cuss out Banks or mock her removal from Rinse’s Born & Bred, but Novelist, the rising star who took her headline festival spot incidentally, had a more salient point to make, claiming grime’s roots go back to ragga rather than hip-hop. Which begs the question: what are grime’s roots, and how does the London genre relate to dancehall and hip-hop music outside the UK?

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First, let’s get one thing out of the way: grime is NOT a sub-genre of hip-hop. While this should be obvious to Londoners who’ve seen the genre evolve from garage-rap to its current state, Azealia Banks is far from the only American who’s gotten this key fact twisted. It doesn’t help that even grime ambassadors like Dizzee Rascal have buckled under pressure when pressured to acknowledge that grime is basically “a sub-genre of hip hop.” I don’t necessarily resent Dizzee Rascal for glossing over the details in this interview; ​for one thing, he still explains genre politics better than I can spit bars and he's got records to sell, so cozying up to backpack gatekeepers like Peter Rosenberg isnt a bad strategy. Nevertheless, that doesnt change the fact that grime isnt hip-hops sub-genre.

The story of London is far longer than can be covered in one article, but at its simplest, grime developed through the collision of a number of elements pulled from various genres and countries. Jungle musics rhythmic energy and emceeing culture was itself a continuation of dancehall's live tradition and patois, and a younger generation then merged these concepts; garages beats and tempo, and hip-hopemphasis on storytelling and street culture. Conversely, England has long produced its own hip-hop scenes, from the backpack-oriented UK hip-hop of the 90s to millennial road rap and more recently London drill by crews like 67. That's not even touching Londons longstanding dancehall scene, which is another standalone entity. 

To outsiders, its easy to conflate anyone spitting with an English accent as practicing a variation on hip-hop, just as it isn't always obvious how jungles manic dance music or dancehall’s sensibility is directly linked to grimes gunman bars. If anything, these twisting links are what make grime culture such a wellspring of innovative music, and its this synthetic approach that marks it as neither hip-hop nor dancehall, but its own art form entirely. But lets put that conclusion aside for a second, for a quick thought experiment. We chose six criteria on which to evaluate grime, contrasting dancehalls influence with hip-hops to see which had more of an impact, historically and today.

Beats

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Let’s start with a tough one. On one hand, early Wiley riddims like “Ice Rink” sound like high-speed answers to millennial dancehall, but they also sound like localized versions of Timbaland, The Neptunes and other turn-of-the- century super-producers. It’s close, but the DJ-friendly nature of grime riddims, their sheer sparseness and that massive bassweight, has us leaning towards ragga. We could imagine Popcaan lacing “Ice Rink”, but US artists still can’t quite catch UK beats unless the script is flipped.

Verdict: Dancehall

Content

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Ragga has its fair share of gunman talk and party lyrics, but what separated grime from its garage-rap antecedents were the emcees’ focus on street narrativesa storytelling aspect that owes a very large debt to millennial hip-hop. So while spitting on sets is a quintessential dancehall move, classic LPs like Boy In Da Corner and Home Sweet Home follow the US rap template to a tee, with multiple tempos and a variety of styles.

Verdict: Hip-hop

Flows

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Another tough one here as it varies with each MC. Sure, grime has a strong contingent of ragga-tinged flowsFlowdan, Riko, Gods Gift, Killa P and Jamakabi all immediately spring to mindbut mic riders like Ghetts, Kano, Chip and Skepta all owe more to rap music than ragga, at least on the sonic surface. Ultimately, the genre's acknowledged forefathers, like Wiley, all came out of garage and their 140BPM party-starting flows come from the live arena strongly indebted to dancehall music.

Verdict: Draw

Structure

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Grime’s songwriting reflects the live show, with flows structured around bars that get reused, reworked and recycled on a constant basis. Hip-hop artists might drop three or four mixtapes a year, with half of the tracks being throwaways, but grime emcees will perfect a flow before unleashing it across several beats. I mean, we’re still waiting for a D Double E album! Dancehall falls in the middle, but its riddim-centric approach is a clear precursor to grime’s, and both share a love for non-album formats.

Verdict: Dancehall

Live Shows

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A complete blowout. Anyone who’s gone to a rap music concert has had to sit through insufferable “is real hip-hop in the house?” chants and cloying attempts to divide the crowd in half to see who can make the most noise. Meanwhile, grime pulls directly from dancehall’s continuous mix, with the DJ controlling the vibe and the emcees riding the selection. A grime rave is just that, a RAVE, and it’s all the better for it.

Verdict: Dancehall

Fashion

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Both dancehall and hip-hop tend to favour fashion statements too outlandish or ostentatious for grime, whose monochrome tracksuits celebrate utility over attention. Nevertheless, the antecedent is clear: Run DMC were rocking Adidas tracksuits in the ‘80s and Boy Better Know’s fashion sense is/was a smarter, European-cut reflection of the all-over prints Dipset were famous for in the early noughties. That, or just head to toe in Nike. 

Verdict: London




And there we have it. Obviously there’s an argument for hip-hop’s massive influence on grime, but look past the surface to the way the music works, and it becomes clear that Jamaican music lies at the heart of what makes grime tick. Of course, grime’s also far more than an English flip on ragga: what would the genre be without Plastician’s industrial experiments, DaVinChe’s R&B grooves, Youngstar’s electronic noise, Royal-T’s 2-step bounce and even contemporary efforts by the likes of Mr. Mitch to expand into slower, more emotional territory? Grime’s been fighting a battle for respect since day one, and the scene has always had a love-hate relationship with hip-hop’s massive international success. But whatever its chart fortunes, the genre can stand tall with pride as its very own ‘ting.

 

 

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