#grime4Corbyn and #grime4Grenfell: The Performance of Grime artists’ Political Involvement

Grime music1 appeared in London at the turn of the new century, and soon became a reflection of black British youths’ life in the margins of British society. The new genre combined sonic and lyrical elements that all contributed to the artists’ expression of identity and marginality and conveyed a feeling of being left out of the British political life, and even discriminated against by British political elites. Between the start of the century and the late 2010s, Grime’s political dimension could be found in the musical elements of the genre and in the way it was developed and performed. Indeed, it was given birth by groups of East London teenagers in their bedrooms, trying to escape the reality of life in deprived neighbourhoods, and performed by the same youths at raves or through pirate radio stations. The sonic elements and lyrics in themselves provided a vivid description of this environment, that combined daily violence, police harassment, racism and economic hardships.In Grime’s second wave in the mid-2010s—after its birth around 2000 and a commercial decline around 2008, Grime rose again from a commercial and artistic perspective around 2014 (Garofalo)—artists began to use their newly gained popular status, although this status had not been achieved by the entirety of the scene. A few names rose to fame, such as Stormzy, Dizzee Rascal or Wiley, whilst other artists remained less famous. However, the Grime scene as a whole was becoming increasingly successful—with artists raising their voices about their conditions of life through more direct political channels and started taking stands in the name of their communities using other means than just their music. In 2017, political participation2 emanating from the Grime scene took the shape of the #grime4Corbyn political campaign—launched and led by Grime artists to support the Labour candidate Jeremy Corbyn in the run up to the general election—and of the #grime4Grenfell movement to support the victims of the tragic fire of the Grenfell Tower in West London. Even if this foray into relatively conventional styles of political participation was short-lived, it served to highlight the political dimension of Grime music and its use by artists to raise awareness about the ‘forgotten’ communities of the British capital, and more largely of the United Kingdom.