In case you missed the fact that “German Whip” debuted at #13 on the UK charts, Skepta won a MOBO (with a music video that cost eighty quid), and the entire week of crazy great shit Noisey dedicated to it, grime did alright in 2014. Anybody with even a passing interest in grime will tell you that any thinkpiece involving the words “grime” and “revival” is bullshit because it never went away, and they have a point, but you’d have to be mental to deny that the genre saw an upsurge in quality activity this year.
From Wiley’s unfathomable lack of world domination to The Square stepping up as the new generation of grime artists, to the role of independent record labels and the lesser-addressed issue of why grime never went right for women, 2014 sparked a level of conversation around the genre that hasn’t been seen since Dizzee Rascal spat his first OOOIIIIII.
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I mean, Noisey even threw a grime karaoke party featuring many cardboard masks of Big Narstie’s face, which is surely the statement of validation everyone had been waiting for.
