Listening to grime now you're old.

benjybars

benjybars

village elder.
I found my old hard drive the other day with about 900 grime sets from pirate radio..
Started playing some having not really listened to any in ages. It was weird being reminded that this was pretty much all I listened to for a couple of years.
Made it feel like it was music from another lifetime or something.
Anyone else had this experience?
Are you still enjoying grime as you slide into middle age??
 
R

RWY

Well-known member
I'll still listen to 2003 era radio and rave sets from time-to-time, and still buy the odd second-hand record off discogs, but I struggle with listening to anything post-2006 nowadays, including the Butterz/Boxed revival stuff of the past decade. I don't know exactly why this is, it's not that the music is necessarily bad (although there's been a marked decrease in interestingness and experimentation over the past 5 or so years - I'm really not a fan of that whole White Peach Records scene of producers) but I guess the main reason is that Grime reminds me strongly of the period of my life I spent living in London during my teens and twenties, and my life has moved on considerably from that time. I had some of the best nights out of my life at Butterz at Cable and Boxed at Birthdays/Corsica, however I'm not quite ready to be wallowing in nostalgia for this period.
 
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benjybars

benjybars

village elder.
Been working my way through some of these sets. So many rushes of nostalgia.
Anyone know what the following MCs are up to now:
Bruza?
Mr Wong?
Syer B?
Ears?
Manga?
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Manga is still doing music. he pops up on my twitter feed occasionally. me and ach! saw bruza a few years back and drunkenly accosted him. sharky major posted some recent pictures of `dogzilla and OT the other day
 
DLaurent

DLaurent

Well-known member
For me it's not so much getting old although that's part of it. It has always felt like a London thing to me and I don't think it translates well to Birmingham. I have always felt like I should try to develop a sound in my head that sounds more like where I'm from so I never really got into grime in the first place. I was surprised when I went to London for a few jobs, I don't know it well but went to a few different places like Wapping for example, it all felt quite cosmopolitan, I suppose you could call it gentrified but I don't think it translates well to areas round by me, and feels like copying when I do.
 
R

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
i did stumble on a newham gens set a few months back and found it fun and exciting and it def took me back to that period of being totally obsessed by it, but i dont feel a great urge to saturate myself in grime again.
i can enjoy watching rap game with krepz n konan but the desire to go on youtube and immerse myself in this stuff isnt there anymore. though if i hear it on the radio, i do enjoy it.

its a bit like hip hop actually.
i still like certain stuff, but i think its just not for me anymore.
some of that is prob self consciousness, but its also just that i think id rather listen to something else.
its also that as i get older, possibly due to a creeping conservativism or lower threshold for inanity, im less into a) shitty lyrics, b) morally moribund lyrics. its def a young mans domain.

i prob should have gotten more into the boxd and instrumental stuff, but cant really be bothered 'keeping up' anymore, ha.

have been wondering what to do with all my grime records actually. i like the fact i have them, but not sure if there is any point as i have not pulled them out in years. ditto all the grime dvd sets. not sure i need risky roadz etc anymore!
 
C

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
I feel guilty for encouraging Drake fans to get into grime tbqh. Looking at a Ruff Squad set makes me feel slight tinges of shame and regret.
 
woops

woops

is not like other people
rubberdingyrapids said:
its also that as i get older, possibly due to a creeping conservativism or lower threshold for inanity, im less into a) shitty lyrics, b) morally moribund lyrics. its def a young mans domain.
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yeah. it strikes me when i watch the killa kela podcasts that it might have been acceptable to big up everyone all day etc 20 years ago but if i were still doing that today, bit sad. i found the misogyny and $$$ a bit much at times back then but i don't have time for it any more, i'd like to think i'd moved on a bit.
 
version

version

Well-known member
woops said:
i found the misogyny... a bit much at times back then but i don't have time for it any more, i'd like to think i'd moved on a bit.
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I ran into this listening to Scarface/Geto Boys the other day. I still like Scarface, but some of the stuff he says is terrible and embarrassing to listen to.
 
C

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
rubberdingyrapids said:
Pretty sure drake fans got recommendation enough from drake himself so there is no need to shoulder the guilt.
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Drake didn't like grime Publicly until grime nostalgia converted into a newfound value for a rap audience that was slightly left enough to take a newfound interest in grime.

I'm being facetious here but the fact is I know so many hip fashionable blogger types (proto-influencer people) and the 'vintage' quality of old-school grime in the early to mid 2010s was not unlike the hipsterification of stuff like juke/footwork and Memphis Rap for them. I myself had liked grime since far earlier and was happy to constantly share gems as I learned and discovered, but I was naive to how that process makes something become fashionable and thus it has more value even than when compared to when it was at it's actual form of being 'hot'.

If it wasn't for that nostalgia, Drake would've never touched grime. But because grime was so eagerly desperate for some sort of approval outside of the UK Urban Music Scene which was (and has always been) fairly stifling of actual new development in favor of professionalism and 'worthiness', of COURSE going to Drake was the proper move to make. And of course when Drake discarded them after that sense of aesthetic 'cool' got burned up to sell Converses that was inevitable as well.

I'm not saying I Literally did this by myself of course. But given that I had a genuine enthusiasm for grime and still do (albeit somewhat dampened thanks to this sense of dismay) I do feel regret at how things played out.
 
F

forclosure

Well-known member
CrowleyHead said:
Drake didn't like grime Publicly until grime nostalgia converted into a newfound value for a rap audience that was slightly left enough to take a newfound interest in grime.

I'm being facetious here but the fact is I know so many hip fashionable blogger types (proto-influencer people) and the 'vintage' quality of old-school grime in the early to mid 2010s was not unlike the hipsterification of stuff like juke/footwork and Memphis Rap for them. I myself had liked grime since far earlier and was happy to constantly share gems as I learned and discovered, but I was naive to how that process makes something become fashionable and thus it has more value even than when compared to when it was at it's actual form of being 'hot'.

If it wasn't for that nostalgia, Drake would've never touched grime. But because grime was so eagerly desperate for some sort of approval outside of the UK Urban Music Scene which was (and has always been) fairly stifling of actual new development in favor of professionalism and 'worthiness', of COURSE going to Drake was the proper move to make. And of course when Drake discarded them after that sense of aesthetic 'cool' got burned up to sell Converses that was inevitable as well.

I'm not saying I Literally did this by myself of course. But given that I had a genuine enthusiasm for grime and still do (albeit somewhat dampened thanks to this sense of dismay) I do feel regret at how things played out.
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makes you sick to think about this i share this dampened enthusiasm if only becuase i felt like there was genuine enthusiasm and interest but the fact so many conversations about grime kept going back to how it started or whether it was it was its own genre or just another part of rap? at a certain point i decided i was done talking with Americans about it.

Its funny though in spite of all this i remember when they cottoned onto UK drill being a thing and alot of the comments in that 3 way Chicago/NY/London thing could all just be reduced down to "go back to making grime and go find your own culture" even if from my vantage point they never liked it or ever understood it, it was just the novelty of "it was your own thing, it was like rap but faster"
 
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