Mellow Grime: A result of the gentrification of East London?

Skepta and Jme

Gen Z is known for taking old popular culture and rehashing it into something new. Nostalgia is prevalent in every aspect of today's culture. Vinyl was reinstated as a major form of consuming music, old films from the 90s returned with new entries, and Y2K fashion continues to grip the younger generation. Grime isn’t an exception to that rule, but a DIY ethos is built into the blood of the music genre, and it’s naturally set up to adapt and bring new artists onto the scene. The accessibility of Grime has brought about its next chapter, Mellow Grime. 

Mellow Grime replaces the genre’s foundation of aggressive, jagged 140 beats (birthed out of dark garage) with calmer waters, such as soul, jazz, and R&B samples and influences. The genre, technically, isn’t new. Ten years ago, in 2015, KwolleM dropped ‘Baddest Boy Ft Skepta’ which replaced the harsher fast beats with a soulful and house-y melody. Since then, the genre has grown in popularity. KwolleM began making Mellow Grime tracks on his laptop as an adolescent; now 31, the musician has settled into his music career. In a conversation with MixMag, KwolleM explains how Mellow Grime is creating a juxtaposition: “it’s taking super hard-hitting, gritty, fast MCing, and then adding a mellow touch to it. The whole idea was to bring new life to stuff that people might’ve forgotten. My approach from the very start was to never call these songs remixes. I wanted to create a whole new song, a whole new concept.” The line between Grime, Hip-Hop, and UK rap is blurred to such a significant extent that it’s hard to know where Grime ends and UK rap begins. 

Artist KwolleM

With the advent of AI in the last 3 years, Mellow Grime has truly begun to flourish from the once obscure offshoot genre into a widely enjoyed sub genre of music. The producer WIZE, who also makes Mellow Grime edits, started using a tool called “iZotope Rx” to extract vocals from the originals made in the mid to late 00s. KwolleM, at the time, didn’t have access to these AI tools. The producer relied heavily on networking with rappers to find the acapella versions, if they existed at all, and convince them to hand them over so an edit can be made. Otherwise, it was a case of building a song around the original video.

Since the creation of these AI tools, it’s allowed a new generation of producers to take these old Grime vocals and place them on top of soulful and housey back tracks. KwolleM, Oakland, WIZE, Douvelle19, and Wilfred, to name but a few, have built their careers from this genre. Some producers have moved on from these edits and begun working with Grime artists themselves, as their popularity soared, and create original tracks. KwolleM’s most recent album, ‘Melo’, jumps between the recognisable soulful backing tracks and the hard-hitting, known beats of Grime, featuring prominent figures in Grime such as AJ Tracey. Suffice to say, this album blurs the line between Grime, Hip-Hop, and UK rap further. The line between producer and MC. The majority of Mellow Grime’s existence has been retrospective, which is both its creative foundation and biggest weakness. YouTube and Soundcloud have been flooded with Mellow Grime edits of videos MCing on the street from the mid-2000s, the majority from old videos posted by Grime Daily or RiskyRoadz. 

Publications have referred to the genre as pushing UK music culture forward. Other than launching the careers of producers, such as KwolleM, a genre that is pushing UK culture forward can’t always be retrospective and stay relevant. Relying on the AI extraction of acapella grime verses from 10-20 years ago limits its ability to stay relevant in a music scene that changes direction every day. Nowadays, a single TikTok posted by the correct crowd can influence a song’s relevance for months. There are legitimate questions to ask regarding its survivability as a genre and its purpose within the music scene. For example, does Mellow Grime break the purpose of Grime itself? The DIY element runs in its blood, and the sub-genre is certainly a product of that. However, Grime began as an offshoot of dark garage, with Dubstep and Grime taking two distinct paths away from each other. The seminal track ‘Wot Do U Call It?’ By Wiley was released in 2004, a reference to the range of names that Grime was labelled at the time, such as Eskibeat and Sublow, before it was officially known as Grime. Wiley was known for MCing in the Garage and Jungle scenes, and his unique production style of Garage-esque 140bpm music.

In short, the rawness and aggression of Grime is the whole foundation, and the dark, 140 fast-paced beats are built into that for a reason. The lyrics described the lives these MCs were living, and it wasn’t easy. So it's important to ask, is this sub genre a continuation of gentrification? London increasingly suffers from the destruction of communities and is being replaced with high-rise luxury flats. East London, where the genre was born, has been eroded by the displacement of its original infrastructure, increased costs, and the removal of traditional spaces where the genre thrived, effectively "gentrifying" the environment that fostered it and pushing artists and communities out. Mellow Grime appeals to a wider audience who may enjoy the lyricism of Skepta or Jme, but not the hard and fast beats that come with it. Younger audiences, therefore, have moved to Drill. UK Drill seems to have filled the void as the ‘aggression’ of Grime seems to be left behind. It’s been referred to as a violent genre, and there have been legitimate references to the music in court cases. The wild statements found in Grime, the lived experience of street culture, and the violence endured in communities are now found in UK Drill. The moral panic the middle class has experienced since the 90s has now found its new genre to focus its fear upon. 

Mellow Grime, nonetheless, has found its own niche and has comfortably held itself for the past 10 years. KwolleM’s most recent album has provided a tasteful balance of a slower and soulful backing track to more fast-paced MCing while holding the very same features that made Grime. The track ‘No Heart - feat Joe James, Novalist, & Ashbeck’ captures this feeling perfectly. Starting as a soulful track flips into a completely new song ¾ of the way through, returning to the heavier basslines and prominent claps that are often placed off the beat to create energy and tension that’s known in traditional Grime. The short song ‘DND interlude’ is another example of harping back to this energy. The DIY bloodline of Grime has set up the next generation of producers and only time will tell if Mellow Grime will hold its relevance or slowly be swallowed into the all-encompassing genre of ‘UK Rap’. In the meantime, the mellow edits found on YouTube and Soundcloud are a vital time capsule that describes the street life of London in the mid-2000s. Pumping in a whole new lifeline of interest into the genre.

Written by Zak Hardy.