{"id":33865,"date":"2019-11-23T15:00:54","date_gmt":"2019-11-23T15:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevoiceoflondon.co.uk\/?p=33865"},"modified":"2019-11-23T15:00:54","modified_gmt":"2019-11-23T15:00:54","slug":"from-uk-to-mainstream-the-growth-or-drill-and-grime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/from-uk-to-mainstream-the-growth-or-drill-and-grime\/","title":{"rendered":"From the UK to mainstream: The growth or drill and grime"},"content":{"rendered":"

In terms of popular culture, the US has always dominated the market. The biggest film and entertainment companies in the world were founded by the US; such as Warner Bros, Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Studios and other subsidiaries like 20th Century Fox, Pixar, and Walt Disney Pictures.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The US is also home to the three biggest music companies in the world. Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group are known as \u2018The Big Three\u2019. They\u2019ve signed some of the biggest artist known worldwide, such as Rihanna, Beyonc\u00e9, Kanye West, Michael Jackson, Jay Z, Nicki Minaj, Drake, Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Britney Spears, Biggie Smalls, Tupac, Mary J Blidge, Madonna, Justin Timberlake, Whitney Houston and many more.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The US has the largest distribution of entertainment across the globe. So as you can probably tell, America has a lot of influence on entertainment culture. But in the past five years, UK music culture has started making a notable impact, to the point where there is now what could be called \u201ca musical integration\u201d with America. In the past 4 years, UK rap music genres Grime Afro beats \/ Afro Swing and Drill have all made an appearance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Grime is derived from electronic dance music. It began in London during the early 2000s and developed out of earlier UK electronic musical styles such as UK garage and Jungle. The music genre is also influenced by dancehall, ragga and hip-hop. Grime typically has rapid, syncopated breakbeats and encompasses an aggressive, jagged electronic sound. Rapping is also an important element in the style and the lyrics are often gritty illustrations of urban life. <\/span><\/p>\n

Richard Kylea Cowie Jr. who\u2019s better known by his stage name \u2018Wiley\u2019 is<\/span> considered<\/span> a key figure in the creation of Grime music and is often labelled as the “Godfather of Grime”. <\/span>Other artists who are considered pioneers of Grime music and it\u2019s attached culture include Kano, Dizzee Rascal, and Skepta. They all started writing and producing at a time where social media wasn\u2019t as popular as it is today. Instead, they had UK pirate radio stations such as Kool FM, Point Blank FM, D\u00e9j\u00e0 vu FM and the most popular one, Rinse FM.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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2011 was the first time we saw a mainstream collaboration between a UK artist and a US artist, which garnered a lot of success. It was back in 2011 when British rapper Chipmunk released the song, \u201cChampion\u201d which featured American singer Chris brown. It was released as a second single from the rapper\u2019s second studio album \u201cTransition\u201d. The song was then later added to the international Deluxe edition of Brown\u2019s fourth album \u201cF.A.M.E.\u201d (2011). <\/span><\/p>\n

The song peaked at number two on the UK singles chart and became chipmunk\u2019s second highest charting single.\u00a0 It was a global hit and gained so much attention because it was also broadcasted on American music channels. Chipmunk later collaborated with Trey Songz on the track \u201cTake Off\u201d. Which was released as a third single from his studio album \u201cTransition\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Grime only really took off in late 2014 – 2015, and one of the first grime songs to gain a lot of mainstream success was \u2018That\u2019s not me\u2019 by British MC Skepta, which also featured his brother JME. The song peaked at number 21 on the UK Singles Chart and is also a throwback to the earlier era of Grime music.<\/span><\/p>\n

Other examples of major successes for UK musicians in that period included 2015\u2019s \u2018Man Don\u2019t Care\u2019 by JME featuring British rapper and songwriter Giggs. Shortly after, \u2018Dem Boy Paigon\u2019 followed by J Hus, a British singer-songwriter\/rapper who\u2019s been credited for pioneering the genre Afro-swing. He went onto release other singles such as \u201cPlaying Sports\u201d, \u201cLean and Bop\u201d and the most popular, \u201cFriendly\u201d<\/span>. <\/span><\/p>\n

On 11 September 2015, British rapper and singer Stormzy released \u201cShut Up\u201d which was originally released as a freestyle video in May 2015 but gained popularity over the course of that year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Grime music was being played all over the UK. Music videos were uploaded onto social media, spreading rapidly across other countries. France, Italy and Australia had their own Grime artists rapping in their language, uploading music videos and Grime cyphers on Facebook and YouTube. Grime at long last had become a trending music genre.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Drill music derives from trap music and originates from south side Chicago during the early 2010s. American Rapper Keith Farrelle Cozart, better known by his stage name \u201cChief Keef\u201d is widely referred to as the pioneer of drill music, which has a very distinctive trap-influenced beat, violent rap, nihilistic and dark lyrical content about gangs and inner-city crime.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Drill music slowly progressed in the mid-2012 and into American mainstream music. The subgenre that emerged from it, known as UK drill made its way to London in the early 2012. It was very popular, especially in district of Brixton.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

UK Drill music has only become very popular in the past two years. Daniel Lena, better known by his stage name \u201cUnknown T\u201d is a British Drill rapper and songwriter. His single titled \u201cHomerton B\u201d peaked at number 48 on the UK singles chart back in October 2018. <\/span><\/p>\n

The song was originally released without a label but its impressive chart performance got him signed by Universal Music Group. \u201cHomerton B\u201d then became the first UK drill to be certified Silver by BPI. In April 2019, Unknown T was one of Drake\u2019s supporting acts at the O2 Arena London.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Social media played a very big part in the elevation of the UK\u2019s music scene. Social media is the UK\u2019s equivalent to America\u2019s \u201cBig Three\u201d. Its quick, easy to use, cheap, no contracts and it\u2019s available to many. Through social media and sharing media, many have been signed to record labels, landed gigs and featured on each other\u2019s tracks. Through social media, new artists have also started to make an appearance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPerforming with an artist from the American market was made a big deal all over social media. It gave the UK so much exposure in the music industry. We got artists like Geko now making music with French Montana, Steflon Don on a track with Sean Paul. Giggs being one of Drake\u2019s supporting acts. D-Block Europe collaborating with Offset. \u201cJeremiah, 22, CMP Student.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Words: Sharon Lola<\/p>\n

Images: Spencer Imbrock on Unsplash,\u00a0Simon Noh on Unsplash,\u00a0Hanny Naibaho on Unsplash, Marcela Laskoski on Unsplash,\u00a0Alexander Popov on Unsplash,\u00a0Aaron Paul on Unsplash,\u00a0Kieron Mannix on Unsplash<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In terms of popular culture, the US has always dominated the market. The biggest film and entertainment companies in the world were founded by the US; such as Warner Bros, Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Studios…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":476,"featured_media":33869,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,135],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/476"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}