It’s pirate radio cipher music, and it’s best with a raw, simple beat and a ton of MCs passing the mic every 8 or 16 bars. One of the reasons grime needed to compromise to blow up as a genre (as opposed to having the odd shock hit), is because this era rarely suited conventional song structure. So although Agent X’s ‘Decoy’, More Fire Crew’s ‘Oi’ and several others would fit in with the rest of this list in aesthetic, they came slightly too early for me to consider them for inclusion.ġ3: N.A.S.T.Y.

Quick disclaimer: as #1 here explains, I’ve taken Musical Mob’s ‘Pulse X’ to be grime’s year zero. Rather than a dismissal of grime’s current state, this is intended as a celebration of one stage of its lifetime. Music evolves – hip-hop left the vinyl format behind a while ago now, and its creativity has only grown as a result. This feature spans grime’s evolution to a genre sold on vinyl from car boots and small, specialist record stores, to one focussed on mixtapes and UK Record Shop exclusives, to one dominated by YouTube and iTunes. But, I would argue that current grime doesn’t bear much resemblance to the period I’m charting here (all records on this list, bar #20 were released between 20). There’s still great grime being made, and for the first time in several years, there’s more than just a couple of labels putting it out on vinyl. The other thing that makes it hard, is that writing a feature like this implies that the genre’s dead. Grime’s often so much about instinct, feeling and physical catharsis, and instrumentally, is so powerful in its simplicity, that it doesn’t always lend itself well to writing. On page three of this piece, you’ll see what I mean. It’s also hard because, inevitably, you run out of things to say. I love Ruff Sqwad’s ‘Anna’, ‘Lethal Injection’ and ‘R U Double F’ pretty much equally, but if you feature all three then you’re killing the chance of other worthy tracks’ inclusion.

When it’s a genre that you care about as much as I do grime, then picking records can be like choosing between children. This is the first one I’ve done, and it was a nightmare.

Writing a 20 best feature, I presume, is always hard.

Ghetts Momentum Mixtape Zip