Prancehall

Stoolhenge

The midget and the manatee

There won't be a person in the UK who hasn't heard the story of Alfie Patten, the 13-year-old father. But what a truly gripping and constantly evolving story it is.

The credit crunch's overlooked victims

My friend Cherise was in a cafe on the corner of Kingsland Road last week

Do It!

UK urban music is in the best state it's been in for a decade. Ten-year-old girls are throwing their Bratz dolls out the window and breakdancing in their wheelie shoes when a bassline tune comes on daytime radio.

Locked Off

People still try to make out that grime is based in three highrise blocks in Bow, when in reality other parts of London, particularly north, are home to a lot of the more productive MCs such as Chipmunk, Skepta, JME, Scorcher etc.

Do It!

I was in the Russian Bar on Kingsland Road ONE recent chilly January night for some after hours drinking. As the mist gathered down outside, I became acquainted with a young Polish girl who told me tales of a new type of music called crunkczar coming...

Gully-sidal Tendencies

Mavado is the best thing to have happened to dancehall in years. He has the premier new catchphrases ("Anywaaaaayeeeeeee" and "Gangster for liiiife"), if you look into his eyes you'd swear it was the devil looking back at you.

Leeds Garage

If you’re a teenager living in a council estate anywhere north of Grimsby, you won’t be spending your weekends at home practicing WCW wrestling moves on your terrified cat, smoking weed, and listening to Ghetto’s new mixtape. No, instead the chances...

Do It!

I was going through some CDs t’other day and I found a grime compilation that my friend Matthew made for me at the end of 2003. What a great time for music it truly was. The best of times, the worst of times. Oh sorry, we’re talking about grime here...

On The Trail Of Fishscale

It's pretty gay (and very, very lazy) when people write an intro to a piece that is basically the highlights of the interview rewritten in a few lines. Therefore, I totally refuse to mention anything I talked about when I interviewed Philadelphia's...

Do It!

We're just back from Jamaica where VBS filmed a massive dancehall documentary. We spoke to literally everyone. On the first day we met Sizzla in his fortified compound called Judgement Yard, where he lives with about forty guys that just spend all day...

Fifteen Nuts In Two Days

Getting off the DLR in the concrete carbuncle that is the Isle of Dogs, it hits you how dull and uninspiring the poorer parts of east London really are. It’s surprising that people can even motivate themselves to stumble out of bed in the mornings. You...