E-Mail This Article to a Friend Here comes the neighborhood But can Dizzee Rascal get grime out of East London? BY NICK SYLVESTER
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Whether you saw one of the bright yellow billboards plastered around town to plug his US debut last year or one of a zillion New Yorker pieces written about him already, I trust that by now you’ve heard of Dizzee Rascal. Everything they say is true: Dizzee, a/k/a Dylan Mills, is 19, from the working-class neighborhood of Bow in East London, and the brilliant MC and producer who won Britain’s Mercury Prize in 2003 for his XL label debut, Boy in da Corner. And yes, Dizzee takes part in this brand new thing everyone’s talking about called grime, a localized outgrowth of British garage and jungle that began when crews like So Solid dropped dark beats that were equal parts dance-floor killer and MC-friendly. Americans say grime’s just British hip-hop (gosh darn, guys), but everyone else knows that grime borrows more directly from hip-hop’s own predecessor, the riddim-centric world of Jamaican dancehall. More than a few have said that grime is like rap from some distant planet, with its own impenetrable slang, Gameboy bleats, and near-always gruff delivery.

Dizzee, who was grime even in his pre-grime days as a bedroom jungle producer, then rave thrower and radio pirate, has become East London’s ambassador by virtue of his rare big-label backing by Britain’s XL Recordings, whose holdings include the Streets, M.I.A., and the White Stripes. With DJ Wonder in tow, he comes to perform for Americans who far from being fans are just finding out about grime. Meanwhile, Vice Records has just released the first stateside grime compilation through Atlantic, Run the Road, a jumpstart for anyone interested in (yes) the most exciting thing happening in music right now. Britain’s most important musical export in years is finally ripe for our discovery. But should we care?

Grime’s local nature remains its most fascinating quality. The world is smaller than ever, and the cross-pollination of ideas, fashions, and especially music is a given. The existence of some pocket of raw culture in a vacuum, with its own logic, symbolism, and system of values, is a fascinating anomaly. All the scene’s major players and crews — Wiley, Riko, Kano, and Roll Deep, N.A.S.T.Y., More Fire, Lethal B, Lady Sovereign, Jammer, Ears, Demon, Crazy Titch, DEE — still live within a couple miles of one another in East London. "We come from a place where we make big things out of the little that we have," says Dizzee over the phone from Portland, Oregon, on the tour that brings him to the Middle East this Tuesday. "At the same time, the whole grime scene is fickle. We’re all very different."

In its geography, grime resembles late-’70s hip-hop, which was confined to the Bronx and took years to spread even downtown. Each form grew out of its own sound-system culture, with peers providing one another a venue for party and creativity. Dizzee says that grime "is one of the best things to happen in England for a long time, as far as for inner-city youth."

But there are also telling differences. The hip-hop story is one of class and race struggle, and the music, when it became rap-centric, reflected the issues most crucial to the black public. Fans and critics alike valued an artist’s story or his "realness" over verbal technique. Only gradually did hip-hop settle into a more æstheticized, persona-driven art form, first as ghetto narrative and now as a powerful cultural currency in constant struggle with its own commodification.

Grime tells the occasional hard-hitting story, such as Dizzee’s own 2002 white-label tale of teen pregnancy called "I Luv U," but grime MCs seem to live more for the battle of skill in the DVD-documented and pirate-radio broadcasted "clashes" that take place almost daily. If you saw Eminem in 8 Mile, you’ll recall that clashing is when two MCs spit equal time over the same beat, hurling insults at each other and wooing the crowd’s approval for their snark and smart turns.

Although the genre is still in its infancy, looking to define itself but increasingly borrowing from others, grime MCs kill hip-hop MCs on the mike — they’re faster, cleverer, and less burdened by tradition. And since very few labels have poached the scene (apart from artists’ own upstarts like Aim High, Aftershock, Paperchase, and Lethal Bizzle Records), grime’s primary concern has remained the music. The scene can get fast-paced, ephemeral, and, with no recorded trail, viciously insider.

Which is why everyone is making a big deal out of Run the Road. Hand-picked by the respected music writer Martin Clark, the comp’s tracks represent the scene’s remarkable variety of voices and styles. Heavyweights Kano, Riko, and Wiley of the Roll Deep Crew dominate, offering archetypal grime backbeats and some of the scene’s confident flows and trademark lines, like Kano on "P’s and Q’s": "Wow you got your first rewind/But the second line sounded like the first line/I ain’t got punch lines I’ve got kick lines/And they ain’t commercial but I’ve got hit lines." Jammer hints at Miami bass on his nasty "Destruction" riddim, and first-timers might be surprised how much grime production shares with crunk when they hear Demon’s "Da Rush," which is built on thick electric guitar distortion, a monochrome hook, and lots of huffy Lil Jon–like "Yeah! Yeah!" outbursts.

Two highlights come from the scene’s two top female MCs, Shystie and Lady Sovereign. The 18-year-old Sov, whose cheeky flips have earned her Missy comparisons and a major-label deal with Island, has just enough in common with American hip-hop that she could end up bigger than Dizzee. Her "Cha Ching (Cheque 1, 2 Remix)" may be the best of the bunch, her rhymes inconsequential but way put-together: "You can’t handle this/The white midget the riddim vandalist/My dad had slept on an old mattress/Bangoda don’t smell like cat’s piss/Cuz I don’t have a cat it died/Understandably I just cried/Mewmewmewmewmewmew . . . " Yes, that’s Sov making cat sounds.

Dizzee and the Streets make appearances here too, though as Clark demonstrates, their distinct personalities and their worldwide appeal have by now put them outside the scene. With its rock-shuffle beat, verse-chorus-verse structure, and ’60s-beat guitar riff, the Streets’ stray-cat riddim "Fit But You Know It" sticks out; it’s redeemed only by the string of VIP freestyles atop it. Listeners could recognize the track from his 2004 LP A Grand Don’t Come for Free (Vice/Atlantic), so maybe Clark was underscoring the scene’s indebtedness to dubplate culture — in fact, much of what hits East London radio is freestyle over any given week’s choice riddim.

"Any given week" is key — grime keeps its turnover fast to keep itself interesting, but the scene’s hyper self-involvement keeps physical outsiders at a distance. The closest non-Londoners can get to grime is on the Internet. Blogs like Boom Selection, TofuHut, Chantelle Fiddy’s World of Grime, and Boston’s own Lemon-Red scour for pirate radio excerpts and post new grime tracks as soon they hit; writers like Simon Reynolds, Tim Finney, and most recently Jess Harvell at Pitchforkmedia put together grime primers for unassuming audiences. Writers, labels, and now radio may be eager to accelerate the grime takeover — New York’s Hot 97 just playlisted Lethal B’s "Pow (Forward)," grime’s first appearance on commercial airwaves — but does that mean grime wants out of East London?

"I see the road to success/I’m getting out of here," goes the chorus of Roll Deep’s "Let It Out." The crew, who bemoaned the loss of Dizzee to commercial aspirations, are now readying own official full-length; Kano’s 679 debut comes out later this spring. As grime MCs and producers seek out their own identities, they turn the "What is grime and why should we care?" question back on itself and the excitement starts anew. "Grime was a stepping stone," says Dizzee. "I make music that’s for around the world now."

Dizzee Rascal performs this Tuesday, April 26, downstairs at the Middle East, 480 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square; call (617) 864-EAST.