A few weeks ago, I went out and saw Jammer and Skepta perform in Williamsburg and was amazed to see a room full of wispy young Brooklynites lose their minds to oddball shit like Straight by DJ Mondie. This sort of blew me away, as for the last ten years of so, playing any grime songs at a party in NYC has been a great way to stop it dead.
In fact, outside of a one year period in 2004-5 when it was the Next Big Thing among urban Anglophiles (aka Craig David groupies), XLR8R subscribers, and non-cracked out junglists, Grime had no impact here. There were plenty of magazine articles and you heard “Boy In Da Corner” out and about for about 6 months, but as a genre it never had any traction whatsoever. Trust me, I should know. In 2005, I helped start what was probably the first weekly grime party in the world, Pure Fire, in the basement at SubTonic. The only people who would respond to grime with any consistency were IDM kids, who were used to hearing stuff a whole lot weirder than Wiley.
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Back then, the music was hard to find. RinseFM’s stream was broken most of the time, there were no mp3’s of this stuff, and often the only way to hear these tunes was to buy the vinyl yourself.
Skepta, live, somewhere
But, up until a few years ago, you could get basically any grime record online for cheap, usually from a kid in Essex who just finished his bedroom DJ phase, and was now selling all his “vinyls” on some forum for money to fly to Ayia Napa or to put new wheels on his Ford Fiesta. Grime records were a buyer’s market.
Fast forward to today, where every slob on Discogs wants 40 pounds for a Syer Barz record. If you’re looking for any big records from Ruff Sqwad, Wiley, DJ Oddz, Dizzee Rascal, Jammer, etc, you better have deep pockets or a lot of patience.
There’s definitely a new type of buyer out there, someone who doesn’t particularly care about the MCs, and just likes off-kilter minimal beats. The focus is definitely on stuff from 2005 or earlier: the more weird, lo-fi, and melancholy sounding the better. I am guessing a lot of these people got turned on to grime from listening to people like Kode 9, Zomby, Mumdance, or Slackk (which is not a bad thing).
This rags to riches vinyl story can be summed up by Functionz On The Low by XTC, which once sold on Discogs for 5 bucks, and now can’t be found for less than a C-note anywhere. But, if you can look past getting the same 50 records that everyone else wants, you can find some great stuff cheap. All of the following records can generally be found for 10 bucks or less.
Sticky made countless variations on this beat in the next few years, but this was the first. When I saw Roll Deep Crew at Knitting Factory in 2005 this was the only beat they spit over that wasn’t produced by Wiley or Danny Weed. Copies on Discogs start at $1.61.
Flow Dan – “Skydiver” Kano – “Boys Love Girls” (Prod. by Jammer) // Jammer – N.A.S.T.Y4. Scratchy – “Shangooli”
famous pirate tape of Riko Dan basically burying Demon 5. Wiley – “My Mistakes/Sorry Sorry Pardon What”
6. Dizzee Rascal – “Dream/Trapped”
7. Jon E Cash – “War”
Jon E Cash was based out of West London and aligned with BBC 1Xtra’s DJ Cameo and somewhat removed from the more youth oriented East London scene focused more around pirate radio and MC clashes, so he gets written out of histories that focus on Deja Vu and Rinse FM. Jon E Cash just made great bass music for clubs. “War” was his biggest tune in the grime scene, and you can pick it up for under 5 pounds. Almost all of the records on his Black Ops label by himself or DJ Dread D are worth checking for, and most are cheap. Copies of “War” start on Discogs at $5.00.
10. DJ Wonder – “Shower/Waterfall”
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