Looking back, you sort of had to be there. Growing up outside London while listening to grime in the early 2000s was strange, mainly because the scene as everyone knows it now didn't feel fully developed. There weren't that many poster boys and girls to take the genre beyond east London's tight network and people like Skepta weren't headlining summer festivals. But as underground as it was then, grime was still as accessible to a teenager like me, living in the muted, meandering countryside of Suffolk, as to someone of the same age in east London's Bow.Through the emergence of the internet and legally dubious file-sharing sites like Limewire, I could get my grubby little hands on any Sidewinder live PA, Lord Of The Mics clash or Heartless Crew Rinse FM set. Since this was the early 2000s and broadband in rural England moved like an asthmatic horse, It took about two or three hours to download. I could still get the tunes though. I would burn them onto a CD and then geek out to Crazy Titch, Kano and Wiley, usually while in the car on the way to the shops, or to school.Grime has now barged its way into pop culture's hallow sanctum, its influence resulting in newer scenes popping up – in Blackpool, Manchester, Drake's warmest dreams. But before the genre's current wave dominated the charts and asked you to vote Labour, back when grime went through its first wave of nationwide popularity, a group of guys seemed to put Ipswich on the map. Now, 13 years later, I'm making it my mission to track them down to find out where Suffolk's finest have gone.
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