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Tuesday, 31 January 2006 04:30

Although grime has yet to break as big as expected in the States, the past few years have seen an influx of bass-heavy hip-hop permutations from abroad (reggaeton, dancehall, baile funk, etc.), which diminishes some of the pleasure associated with how shockingly different grime sounded when it first hit.

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Grime is the takeover that never was. Or still has yet to happen.

Sprouting from the electro sounds of U.K. garage and fusing various shades of American hip-hop with the grittiness of East London, grime has seen its poster boy (Dizzee Rascal) and flagship compilation (Run the Road) fall largely on deaf ears in the United States. This is not to say the rapid and aggressive music has completely failed to cross over—New York’s grime week this past summer gathered substantial hype despite lackluster performances from several of the U.K. scene’s biggest artists—but rather that the challenging genre has had difficulty overcoming its own uniqueness in a way that allows individual performers to thrive as opposed to the scene gaining attention as a whole.

And unfortunately, Vice’s sequel compilation, Run the Road Vol. 2, finds the scene assimilating rather than innovating. Although grime has yet to break as big as expected in the States, the past few years have seen an influx of bass-heavy hip-hop permutations from abroad (reggaeton, dancehall, baile funk, etc.), which diminishes some of the pleasure associated with how shockingly different grime sounded when it first hit.

In response, the scene should be forced to evolve, but Run the Road Vol. 2 conveys a stronger incorporation of many aspects of American hip-hop rather than pushing grime’s signature rough choppiness to its next logical step. Songs such as Sway’s “Up Your Speed Remix” ape the overdone southern rap fads, and several other tracks, when not recycling the standard grime formula, scream the sounds of Queensbridge or Biggie-era Diddy. Plan B’s “Sick 2 Def” marks the records biggest wrong turn with its strained acoustic guitar accompaniment and rap-rock vocal cadence. Grime is supposed to be hip-hop’s next level of innovation, not something some porker did in a red fitted hat last decade.

But what’s really missing from Run the Road Vol. 2 is such tracks that overcome the feeling of being hip-hop’s “other.” Opening the album, Low Deep’s Run the Road posse cut of “Get Set” conveys what a second stage of grime should sound like, and Kano’s “Mic Check Remix” establishes the intensity we expect with a beat that’ll sonically clamp your heart and constrict your lungs until complete submission is the only option. But neither of the tracks can turn heads like Vol. 1 cuts such as Lady Sovereign’s jaw-on-the-floor “Cha Ching” or Jammer’s inimitable “Destruction V.I.P.”, and no MC emerges, as Kano and Wiley did on round one, as a surprise talent.

Vice’s original compilation showed artists molding their obviously influences and limited talent to create something so dramatically different that it spews parallels to the emergence of punk rock. Reliant on pirate radio rather than mainstream attention, grime has made tremendous accomplishments of its MCs’ amateurish flows and stifled lyrical skill much like how three chords became all you needed to start a band. But if no one is willing to push these limitations, all potential will be squashed.