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Questions about grime’s vitality have been a major talking point online recently, and as a platform that has strongly championed the genre over the years, we took it upon ourselves to address some of it.
The sound’s popularity, outside of the diehards, has ebbed and flowed as much any genre, but with the exception of maybe UK funky, the naysayers hellbent on ringing the death knell seem unique to grime. We’ve heard it all before, though. It came at the end of the 2000s before MCs like P Money and the Birmingham lot—as well as the instrumental-led Butterz crew—gave it a shot in the arm, and then a few years later right before Meridian Dan, Skepta, Stormzy and a whole new wave of young, hungry MCs and producers took grime global.
That mid-2010s explosion was arguably grime’s biggest yet. It was a heady, incredible time, so when drill rose up and the mainstream’s attention shifted from grime, it’s understandable there’d be a degree of bitterness. But nearly a decade later, and in certain corners of the internet—i.e. on Twitter Spaces, such as #HarshRealityNosis and #NOBIAS—those wounds seem fresher than ever and there’s a loud and vocal contingent eager to rub salt in the wound and declare grime dead and buried.
Granted, there aren’t as many eyes on the scene as there have been in the past, but since when was that indicative of quality?
Grime is now in its 20th year of existence, and from an artistic point of view, things are better than ever. We’ve got innovative MCs like Manga Saint Hilare and Novelist, producers like WIZE and Preditah, and DJs like Spyro and Oblig constantly pushing things forward. We’ve also seen elements of Afroswing, garage, jazz and more all stirred in, and no one can deny grime’s influence on drill. The Wrong And Strong crew are entitled to their opinions, of course, but grime cannot die at this point—its culture lives on in everything from drill to Top Boy—and musically, gems can be found if you look close enough.
Here are 22 MCs taking grime into the future.
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