A Quick Ting On Grime

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277 TO LEAMOUTH

NEEDLE DROP: DIZZEE RASCAL, 'CUT 'EM OFF'

'My name is Raskit, listen to my flow,' declares Grime pioneer Dizzee Rascal on his song 'Cut 'Em Off'. His voice has not yet shed altogether the higher frequencies of adolescence. 'Cut 'Em Off' is track 7 on his debut album, Boy In Da Corner. Released in July 2003 by XL recordings, the 15 track album would be a commercial success and garner critical acclaim. Almost entirely produced by Dizzee, Boy In Da Corner stands as a seminal moment in both Dizzee's career and the evolution of Grime music as a whole. More than two decades since its release, the record is hailed as a bona fide classic in the rich archive of British music. Its influence and impact is so pervasive, that Dizzee Rascal has occasionally voiced frustration with the nation's fixation on his historical work.

It is rare for a body of work to be so enduringly celebrated by audiences that it merits a live performance of every track, decades after its release. Yet the excellence and success of Boy In Da Corner is such that Dizzee Rascal has been able to perform the record in full not only in London at the Copper Box Arena, but also in New York, a city where British music traditionally garners less attention.

It remains remarkable that Dizzee Rascal was just about 17 years old when he produced and recorded the bulk of the songs that would constitute the album. Although his tender age is apparent upon listening, the breakthrough MC delivers his lyrics with a reflective passion beyond his years. The album would come to be widely analysed as an incisive and vital piece of social commentary, a raw reflection of the challenges of inner-city life.

I was just about to enter secondary school when I received the Boy In Da Corner CD as a gift from my older sister, Cella. Cella loved music; she sang in her school's choir and avidly listened to everything from Gospel and old school Soul to R&B and Rap. Albums like Beverley Knight's Who I Am and Nas' God's Son are examples of the staples that could be heard blaring through our house at any given time. Also on Cella's palate were the rapidly mutating sounds of the UK underground, freshly ripped from pirate radio sets and recorded onto tapes and minidiscs. A 7-year age gap meant that I was too young to accompany her to the raves where UK Garage reigned. Instead, I lived vicariously through my big sister, inheriting and fusing some of her music tastes with my own. With its spacey synthesis and pulsing bass, UK Garage classics like Sia's Little Man would become some of my forever faves. The arrival of Grime as a genre, however, would prove trans-formative for my generation.

'I socialise in Hackney and Bow,' Dizzee continues to rap on 'Cut 'Em Off'; his voice unsettlingly shrill, his delivery animated and authoritative. Much of the rich history of Grime music is rooted in the post-industrial valleys of East London. While the widespread recognition the genre would eventually achieve owes to contributions from across the capital and wider country, it is the inner-city enclaves like Bow and Stratford in boroughs like Newham in Tower Hamlets that are especially central to Grime's story.

The Hackney secondary school I attended in the early 2000s neighboured the housing estates that Grime figureheads like Dizzee Rascal and Wiley traversed. Growing up, I was blissfully ignorant of my local area's notorious reputation as a deprived hot-spot for crime. Before my beloved borough became the coveted zone-2 location it is romanticised as today, it was considered by many as an area to be avoided. For me, though, Hackney was always just home-and ain't no place like Home Sweet Home.

Long before the area would become infamous, and nightclubs like Palace Pavilion emerged along what became known as the 'murder mile', neighbourhoods like Clapton and Mare Street were once the favoured residences of monied elites and the political class. They settled in grand dwellings. Sutton House on Homerton High Street stands as the oldest surviving example. Built in 1535 by a colleague of Edward VIII, the impressive manor house once hosted diplomats before becoming home to a succession of merchants and church clergy.

Today, Sutton House is a Grade II listed building owned by the National Trust. While concrete is all I have known, the building's brickwork at the time of its construction would have been an extraordinary display of wealth and status compared with the feebler wattle and daub homes which were common. Despite being built of similarly sturdy materials, and situated just a short walk from each other, the scale and grandeur of the private, 3-storey Sutton House is incomparable to the humble public housing estate I was raised on.

Hackney continued to become more populous over time, with areas like Kingsland and Dalston Lane being among the first to develop. The region grew into a bustling hub of manufacturing and commerce with the industrialisation of the 19th century. In 1872, train stations were built by Great Eastern Railway in locations like Stoke Newington, Cambridge Heath and London Fields, where Hackney's leather and shoe factories flourished. The furniture district, meanwhile, was based nearby in South Shoreditch. Economic migrants flocked seeking financial opportunity, diversifying the demography of the East End. Abundance and deprivation would, for a time, live side-by-side, per the inevitably unequal and unsustainable advancement of capitalism.

By the arrival of the 20th century, East London was more definitively working-class. London's overall population had surged at an unprecedented rate, leaving the city's infrastructure unprepared for such rapid growth. The housing situation became desperate; destitute individuals and families seeking affordable accommodation found themselves living in impoverished pockets of town, so-called slums, where disease was rampant, and both infant mortality and crime rates were high.

Similar circumstances befell increasingly urban areas across the country. Profiteering landlords left properties in states of dangerous disrepair. Some slums were makeshift shanty towns, whose shaky buildings had no drainage systems and were liable to fatally collapse. Others featured unsanitary tenements crammed with as many people as physically possible.

By the end of the Victorian era, the landscape and character of the East End of London had transformed. The earliest settlers in rural Hackney were attracted to the fresh air and spring waters of the marshland. The fresh air and spring water of old gave way to a distinct 20th century griminess as clouds of industrial pollution enshrouded the capital. The changing times are as ever archived in cultural artefacts like literature. Dickensian portrayals of slum squalor illustrate the abject poverty and crime that plagued areas like Bethnal Green, contrasting the images of monarchic opulence commonly associated with England. The stunning, spacious homes that surround Victoria Park today are a far cry from the grim realities of the workhouses that once operated nearby, where labourers were paid poverty wages to perform gruelling tasks.

Today, Hackney is well-known for its ethnic diversity, with records of Black residents dating back to 1630. It was key 20th century events, however, like World War II and the 1948 arrival of the HMS Windrush at Tilbury docks which significantly accelerated the transformation of the UK's cities into the cosmopolitan melting pots they are today. After the war, former constituents of the British Empire were invited to England to help rebuild the country and address labour shortages in the NHS and public transportation. Migrants arriving in Britain from the Caribbean throughout the '70s and '80s found employment at companies like Tate & Lyle which operated by East London's docklands, or Ford, whose cars were produced at a factory in Dagenham.

By the time I was born in the early '90s, Hackney had already become home to substantial communities from the Black diaspora so much so that I never truly felt like an ethnic minority during my childhood. It wasn't until ventured further out into the world that I realised how culturally specific my upbringing had been. I recall regularly being dragged along for example to Dalston Market with my mother to buy West African food produce. These Saturday morning pilgrimages were often met by my reluctance then, however wiser and older, I no longer take for granted the luxury of plantain being available for purchase nearby. Ridley Road memories are embedded within my brain's grey matter-the bellowing voices of sellers trying to attract custom; the hustle and bustle of the crowds meandering from stall to stall. My recollections are vivid and embodied-the pungent smell of meat and fish at the butchers; the vibrant reds and yellows of bell peppers and scotch bonnets.

While the ornate, semi-detached Victorian townhouses of the De Beauvoir area near Dalston starkly contrast the modest simplicity of the council flats where many of my peers and I were raised, as a child I was largely unaware of my working-class status. This blissful ignorance of race and class was both a product privilege and the enchantment of youth. Young people often have little to compare their experiences to; one may not challenge their circumstances if they've known and can envision no alternative. Yet, the boundless imagination of youth remains untethered. Unburdened by the cautious pragmatism...