UK Hip-Hop, Grime and the City

Policing the beats: The criminalisation of UK drill and grime music by the London Metropolitan Police

“…While the launch of Form 696 was prompted by incidents of fatal shootings in UK garage concerts (BBC News, 2006), it was grime that became the real target of the form (BBC News, 2003; Muir, 2006; The Independent , 2008). Unsurprisingly, the introduction of Form 696 caused much consternation among grime artists, venue promoters and fans, who perceived the Form as a ‘key instrument in suppressing the scene’s growth in the capital’ by ‘disproportionately affect[ing] black artists’ (Bramwell, 2015, p. 63). This eventually led to a revision of the Form by the London Assembly’s Metropolitan Police Association in 2009, followed by its removal in November 2017, after an intervention from the London Mayor Sadiq Khan (News Met Police, 2017).…”

“…Setting aside the prejudicial attitudes that were imprinted in the wording of Form 696, a series of sanctions have also accompanied its use. Examples include: the withholding of event promoters’ passports, prison sentences and hefty fines (Hancox, 2009), as well as numerous event cancellations (Bramwell, 2015, p. 127; Channel 4 News, 2017; Jonze, 2010; The Independent , 2008), ‘bashment bans’ (Ellis-Petersen, 2017) and club closures (Grierson, 2016). Worse still, grime videos posted on video-sharing and social networking websites such as YouTube and Facebook were used by the Met’s Gangs Unit ‘to identify and map potential “gang members” ’, without any evidence that the targeted grime fans were ‘involved in criminal wrongdoing’ yet finding themselves ‘at risk of being profiled and monitored by police Gangs Units’ (Amnesty, 2018, p. 46).…”

“…Yet, a number of issues militate against such an optimistic assessment, the most important of which being the fact that isolated incidents aside, there has been ‘no basis to infer anything but a coincidental link’ between crime and grime (Ilan, 2012, p. 46). On the contrary, the relevant literature on the topic exonerates grime but finds the police guilty of misconduct (Barron, 2013; Bramwell, 2015, pp. 63, 127, 141–144; Fatsis, 2018; Talbot, 2011).…”

“…All other relevant research on the topic fails to address the criminalisation of Black ‘urban’ music in the UK, specifically or at any adequate length, focusing instead on other aspects of grime, rap and hip-hop. Much of this literature discusses the cultural ethics and aesthetics of UK hip-hop and grime (Bramwell, 2015), the entrepreneurial streak of grime artists (White, 2016, 2018), rap culture’s subcultural belonging (Dedman, 2011), the cultural activism of hip-hop, rap and grime (Perera, 2018; Turner, 2010, 2017), the links between ‘race’, spirituality, class and gender in grime (Charles, 2016a, 2016b), or the intersections between urban multiculture, marginalisation and youth politics (James, 2015).…”

Geographies of aesthetic labour and the creative work of grime DJs

“…More generally, the work of DJs is understudied, notwithstanding existing studies of the music industry and creative work (e.g., Gibson, 2003;Hracs & Leslie, 2014;Watson, 2015), especially when, as Brewster and Broughton (2006) note, the inherent multiplicities of a DJs' labour practices and workspaces mean that they have a particularly important role within the contemporary music industry. Certainly, the past decade has seen DJs playing a critical role in developing, supporting, and organising the grime music scene (Bramwell, 2015).…”