What The Fuck Is Post Grime?
A new term has risen out of nowhere, describing an experimental, aloof sound deriving from Grime music. But what exactly does it mean?
In an age of evolving sonic exploration and endless Spotify playlists, I have some questions:
What exactly does melomania mean?
How does the music of James Blake fit into ‘sad boi’ and ‘ethereal’ at the same time?
What the fuck is genre?
Grime music has been a much-celebrated genre within the UK. Through the valleys of Channel U, SBTV, GRM Daily and more, Grime’s place in British music has shaped a large part of the cultural landscape. It’s provided an unofficial national anthem via Giggs, the first rap album to win the Mercury Prize and a historic performance at Glastonbury. And what of it now? The musicians within this genre and its founding fathers find themselves in a different environment to which these sounds were first created in, and within an industry where UK drill, afro-swing and trap music reign heavy in popular music of today’s Britain, that same energy and output of Grime is no longer present within today. In its place is a sound that sits more towards the back of UK music, behind the aforementioned poplar genres, but by no means does this suggest that its placing is an indicator of quality. A term so sparse and without investigation into its meaning and features, an invisible and slow building movement has been circulating on internet circles and NTS radio shows. The rise in other rap genres in the UK has not stopped the output of the OGs within the genre, but definitely has not witnessed the birth of any new grime stars. In the face of it all, we have arrived at Post Grime.
To talk about Post Grime is to acknowledge a supposed death to the Grime genre. Its arrival through early 2000s pirate radio stations and Wiley’s genre defining single “Eskimo” birthed multiple successes and monumental milestones in UK music and UK Black music’s history. Nights out centred around the emceeing abilities of young boys in tracksuits, who perfected their craft within the confines of their bedrooms and in the company of friends who also attempted a bar or two. With this came the often racially tinted messages of concerned government MPs, making crass suggestions that this type of music would incite rage and fighting.
We witnessed the potential grime had to expand and merge with other genres. Wiley’s 2011 single “Wearing My Rolex” was a sonic departure to his previously released songs but demonstrated the genre’s commercial appeal. Fast forward to 2015, a 6ft 5 man in an orange Adidas tracksuit is surrounded by his friends in a South London car park. This video would go on to attain 127 million views on YouTube, and at the time of release, would further cement Stormzy’s position as the face of Grime. Alongside displaying his talent, his sincere smile and honest personality won over new fans and in the years since, welcoming him into an alluring and difficult-to-attain, national treasure status. The 2017 album ‘Gang Signs & Prayer’ would be his first commercial release, entering number one on the UK Albums Chart and winning him the ‘British Album of the Year’ at the 2018 Brit Awards. What would’ve been a peak at the time (I feel though this man most definitely has more to offer despite the delivery of two acclaimed albums), the 2019 Glastonbury headlining performance said a lot about the UK at the time. That rap music was of national appeal and importance. That we had gotten to a place in regards to representation where we could witness the collective support of Black art from all creative realms on the Pyramid stage. That the contested politics around this genre was still a conversation being acknowledged by someone who had come to success but not forgotten his roots. The power and conversation around the performance holds true three years later. That is where the death of Grime lays, and it’s probably best it ended that way. It’s a perfect ending, the dream season finale.
A simple way to go about defining Post Grime is to look to other genres based in this idea of the after. The aftermath of a genre is usually a response to the rules it had in place, and subverting that sound for a more renewed, and tends to have a more radical feel.
In an interview with The Quietus, the artist Coby Sey, went on to acknowledge ‘Post punk was after punk, and in what I have read there are always comparisons between grime and punk in terms of its roots and it being a response… people doing things themselves in a DIY manner’. A key component to the Post Grime sound is the accomplished production that boasts about the audio crackles and rawness it has to offer. The crisp, clean finished sounds of grime is often side-tracked for leering, expanding notes that abandon the fast tempo for something more atmospheric and persistent. This D.I.Y sound proves integral to the definition, especially when you consider the social conditions musicians face in Britain today. A Brexit deal, global pandemic and cost of living crisis later, touring expenses and living costs have created a difficult area for musicians to operate within. In recent research released, nine out of ten (90%) are worried about affording food over the next six months, with 84% concerned about paying their mortgage or rent. The Post Grime sound lends itself to affordable techniques in order to achieve the sound, making it more accessible to those who cannot go out of their way to improve their sound by purchasing a software out of their budget or hiring out a studio.
If wanting to dip your toe in this ‘new’ genre, a wise pathway to take is through the music of Coby Sey. A figurehead in underground music, working with the likes of Tirzah, Brother May and Mica Levi, his presence existed in the throes of the late 2000s underground scene within the UK at the time. A lot of Post Grime musicians have been operating within the UK Underground for over a decade as the undercurrent on the opposite side of the Grime genre that was highly present in the UK Charts at the time. Yet the death of Grime has potentially made more room for these artists to be noticed on a wider scale, or at least act as an updated version of the energy that Grime held.
Coby Sey’s single ‘Petals Have Fallen’ achieves a moodiness that has a resonance with the general attitude of the younger generation. The omission of words provides a space for an itchy drumbeat and jazz like swells to take you into a sort of dystopia or alternative scape of any familiar city clouded in an unknown darkness but in the same vein could be easily likened to a grizzly dark morning in London. Crackling voice recorder sounds creates a certain atmosphere, enforcing the DIY nature of the sound, providing sonic grit. This is also reached in the six-minute poetic ‘Response’ that travels through an evolving instrumental, into a repetitive pleading and bewitching mantra. His album is the perfect example of post grime, creating a haunting sound with ambience and ghostliness, atonality, the discordant.
Post Grime music isn’t so concerned with the creation of stars or stardom. Rivalries and diss tracks are replaced with a connected ,collaborative community of individual musicians who lend themselves to one another and vice versa, to achieve a certain sound. Assurance and confidence is imperative to an emcee’s performance, that often commands an assertive and defined vocal, which is on the contrary with the display of doubt or uncertainty within the Post Grime. Like John Glacier’s ‘Green Elephants Freestyle’ that offers profoundness in the introspection that takes place, evaluating the true nature of her emotions against the bass feeling of sadness, ‘Feelin' sad again, but I'm high/Feelin' sad again, but I'm happy/But what does that mean,”. This familiarity of aimlessness wondering in anxious thought subverts the boastful and charismatic tones of Grime, offering an appreciated act of vulnerability. Another aspect to John Glacier’s music is the collaborative process, linking up with producer VEGYN for her 2021 album. Known for working in the realms of electronic music, this partnership proves the Post Grime sound to borrow from the sounds of affiliated genres.
Post Grime music does not necessarily have to be a full departure from the grime genre. Take the track “Black Ting” by Lorraine James. The seed of Wiley-isms are within the instrumentation of this song, the post-eskimo beat offering icy synthesis, atonal drums and futuristic elements. The vocal performance of Le3 bLACK affirms to a coolness whilst embracing a sense of collectiveness and brotherhood. There’s a chill and slight mystery suggested through lyrics like ‘What do you know about council facts in the darkness’ and ‘Jump on the stage/Do it for days/So damn icy’.
To answer an earlier posed question, genre can be a way to describe the context the music was created in as opposed to if it fits the credentials of a certain genus or not. The only people who truly benefit genre titles are the labels in effort to push the music towards a specific audience. This can be heard in Post Grime music, the reflections of a general attitude adopted by the younger generation in a post Brexit Britain. Within the lyricism there are often tellings of a modern life in its slog and joy, a realistic depiction of the everyday, going into expressions of simple happiness, gratefulness and providing a space to be introspective.
As for the future? Well, we’re barely in the meagre beginnings of the birth of this genre. That puts us in an exciting position as an audience. Much is to take place as the constraints of a society where creative pathways are being dismissed as potential avenues to support the economy by the current government. Britishness and Britain has formed influential musicians over history on a global scale and this constant export is simply not good enough for the STEM hungry politicians at No10. Ditch that mini mouse degree for something with a vocational outcome, it seems to be the message. Yet from your 9-5 straight into your bedroom, with GarageBand and a midi keyboard, the D.I.Y aesthetics prosper on. In chasing a career in music, the risk and reward dances on a fine line, where financial support as an artist is finite and overly sort for. From a Gen Z kid’s perspective, history has a funny way of repeating itself in this country. Yet I also look to history and see the same thing, an alliance between those Thatcherite days and ours. Devastating decisions made by prime ministers have everlasting effects. But counterculture and expression also lasts forever. What fruitions out of hard times and government austerity is something quite bold.