Soundtracking Austerity Britain: Grime and the British Economy

An understanding of the British economy doesn’t require a Times subscription, but instead a Spotify one. Grime is a distinctly British genre of music, but it is also an explicit reflection of the state of the British economy. 

Where does it come from?

Grime emerged in the early 2000s mainly in East London. The genre is a response to the gentrification and brutalisation of post-war London. In parts of London, life became so miserable because of the Brutalist, square, concrete buildings and lack of community areas that young people, whose lives were dimmed by London’s urbanisation, sought community. To the young, working-class, British people, grime was a collective response to the adversities they all faced, caused by a government who did not care about improving their schools, their homes, their financial experiences, or their lives. Grime could be made by anyone at any time, and it brought a generation together. In council estates, where grime surfaced, communities co-created the grime sound. Raps would be freestyled one by one, someone would mix a beat on a laptop and record it on their phone. People, driven by a desire to create and counter the expectations of society around them, worked together in illustrating their own identity through sound. 

Pioneers and Lyricism

The lyricism of grime breathed through it the racial and class struggles in London, as a predominately black British genre. Richard Bramwell, a professor of media studies at Loughborough University, called this intertwining of politics and music ‘a moment in which the grime aesthetic socialised the subjective feelings of a generation of working-class youth in London. Artists like Wiley, Dizzee Rascal, and Lethal Bizzle, pioneers of the genre, all grew up as black, working-class young men in East London and emerged around the same time. This shared experience with one another and their audience created a relationship between artist and listener that was new to British music. These artists were rapping about experiences and struggles that the listener could identify with. Les Black argued that beyond mutual class experiences, neighbourhoods and council estates provide listeners with an even more particular and personal identity that would often be reflected in the music of local grime artists. This genre was created by the people, for the people. Wiley, an ex-drug dealer and Dizzee Rascal, who had been kicked out of multiple schools and was never treated fairly by his teachers, rapped about these experiences that were linked to their own economic hardships, and thus was relatable to an audience that shared these experiences and hardships. 

Origins of the Sound 

Grime’s sound itself is a product of the economic climate in which it was created.

Early grime artists had little access to professional studios, or the resources to get their music on mainstream radio. This meant that pioneers of grime widely produced and crafted their music through devices like PlayStations and school computers, and then distributed the sound through pirate radio in council estates. Pirate radio stations like Deja Vu and Rinse FM were centred in council estates using homemade transmitters placed on deteriorating flat buildings, and the radios themselves in abandoned homes. Because of the lack of care from the government and local authorities about council estates, pirate radios functioned often without interruption. Pirate radio perfectly enabled grime to expand within the areas of London where it was best received. As a lo-fi and gritty sound with heavy and often distorted basslines, current grime music is a reflection of the travails of its creation. Initially, this raw sound was not intentional, it was necessary; now, this is a distinct attribute of the genre, despite grime artists having access to professional production. 

All in all, grime emerged as a tool to fight against the institutions that ignored young working-class Brits and escape economic marginalisation through creation. Starting DIYed with pirate radio, grime spoke to the people in a way that the government never had. Grime offered opportunity and the recognition of shared adversity in the form of art. Grime is Britain.