GRINDIE: FAD OR PHENOMENON?
Last year, one of the words on the streets (mainly those of Shoreditch) was ‘grindie’, which illustrated the outcome of when grime and indie music mixed during production.
Ever since, there have been many successful collaborations between grime and indie musicians.
Producer and pioneer of grindie, Statik was in NME’s cool list 2006. His mixtape, Grindie Vol. 1 featured remixes from trendy indie bands and top grime MCs. It’s evident that Statik thrives on working with any talented musician- he’s worked with Babycham and Babyshambles and many in between.
“Since my mixtape came out and I started using the word grindie, people thought it was a new thing, but it’s not,” says Statik.
There have been a few promoters and organisations such as Love Music Hate Racism putting on events to promote the coming together of artists from different musical genres. And artists like The View and Jammer and Babyshambles and Lethal Bizzle have also helped to establish this sound. But to some, grindie is a totally new thing.
Fad
Some don’t like it and others think it’s just a fad. Daniel Shepherd from The Idle Lovers and guitar player on Lethal Bizzle’s track, Police on my Back is skeptical about how the word is used and the legitimacy in defining grindie as a movement.
“People are calling it grindie, but in my opinion, descriptions are normally for journalists, not musicians.”
In some ways, grindie is similar to the punk and reggae movement of the 1970s. However, that was a time when punk and reggae music heads lived in the same streets, went to the same school, worked in the same places. So for them, working together seemed more natural. Those more involved in the indie or grime music scenes, at times suggest that grindie can sound artificial, and question whether it can be a new ‘type’ of music.
Statik says: “The style needs to be less formatted. There needs to be more ‘feeling’ of the music.”
A few years ago grime music was on lockdown. But that’s almost been turned around with MC’s such as Dizzee Rascal, Lady Sovereign and Kano playing at UK festivals like Glastonbury and Reading which are typical indie havens, and working with more mainstream musicians such as Kate Nash and Bloc Party. Such MCs have also been signed to major record labels and have had A&R moguls eager to take them on.
Fantastic
But although it’s fantastic to have lots of fans and sell lots of records, it seems that the industry is indicating that grime music, in its original state, needs to be watered down. So, in effect, grime with a touch of indie popular culture is pretty much the way forward. Shepherd feels that reaching the masses is the main thing.
“All artists, deep down, want a big audience for their work,” he says. “That’s true of everyone- poets, painters and preachers. Musicians are certainly no different.”
Grime has also become cool for those who wouldn’t have been into it say, five years ago. It’s like hip-hop music and its biggest consumers being young white adults.
“It’s funny when you see a black guy at an indie gig,” says Statik. “You can see people thinking: how can this guy understand our music? I think more black people should get involved in indie. It’s good to be into different music, and after all it’s all just music - normal music.”
