Sounds Like London

by Lloyd Bradley

  ‘We approached it in a completely different way from how the BBC normally would launch a station – we did it actively. Rather than just put an advert in the Guardian Media saying “Come and work for us”, and only get a certain type of people applying, we went around the country to colleges, community centres and things. We would set up and announce “We would like some staff to work at the BBC, we are starting this new station and if you’re into black music come and find us and we’ll tell you more about it.”

  ‘That meant we were much more approachable. It was the case of people coming up to us in a community centre and saying “I’m a local deejay”, or “I write a fanzine”, or “I run a website”, or “I do local community film work”, or “I run a pirate radio station”, and us saying that your skills are authentic skills that would be valued in our environment, you can come and work for us. If we started off by just getting a bunch of university kids in to run it, it just wouldn’t have worked.

  ‘It didn’t matter that they didn’t have conventional radio experience – that wasn’t the point. I seriously believe you can teach radio quite easily, but you can’t really teach the passion, and we just wanted people who had a real passion to make the station work. That’s what the station was really based on, and that’s what really drives it – they really believe we should have this station on a national platform.’

  The actuality of making contemporary black music available across the whole country, 24 hours a day and presented in a sympathetic manner, became the turning point for this London-based industry. No longer did you have to be living on the Stepney estate from which Roll Deep was broadcasting to hear some authentic grime; suddenly kids as far removed as the Hebrides or Penzance could feel part of things. Similarly, if you were already a fan, you knew exactly where to find it on the dial – and it would always be there, with no need for retuning and without any chance of an Ofcom raid. The real value in the BBC’s apparent legitimisation of a street style lay in how it subliminally changed perceptions among the mainstream industry and a wider audience alike. The former could no longer ignore it; the latter became more likely to accept it. Of course, the last thing anyone wanted to do was turn this into Radio One Mk II. For 1Xtra to be sure of not losing the all-important core audience, it had to strike a balance. That, Ruby explains, brought its own set of problems:

  ‘Once we got the right foundations in place, that generated so much because those people had connections with artists within their areas, some of whom were by then quite big artists. So there were people at our station who would know the Kanos and the Dizzees already, so when they’re talking to them they’re talking to them on a level, not with a kind of BBC-speak. The trouble with that, when we first started, was some of those artists came to the station and treated it as if they were coming to a pirate station. You’d get artists coming late – often – or not turning up, whereas on something like Radio One that just wouldn’t happen.

  The original 1Xtra staff: far more reflective of licence-fee payers across the board than had previously been the case at the Corporation.

  ‘For the first few years of 1Xtra you never knew if somebody was going to turn up, when they were going to turn up, or who they were going to turn up with, like how many people they were going to bring! But that kind of created the energy about the station, it made for loads of gossip, it made for loads of unions in terms of surprise artists – like Wiley would turn up with somebody who you didn’t think he would turn up with, and they’d go on air together.

  ‘It created great radio, really exciting, so it kept that kind of pirate vibe, but we realised we had to put some measures in to make sure that things were a bit more formalised. Funnily enough, the time we started thinking about that was the time when some of these artists were becoming much more known, and they were actually working with record labels who were saying to them “You have to be here at this time … you have to hold yourself in a certain kind of way”, so they kind of worked hand in hand. A few issues did remain with the younger artists, but that wasn’t difficult. Where it would have been difficult would have been in audience perception, because that was always like “How much of a cutting edge station are you going to remain?”’

  A SIGNIFICANT PART OF 1XTRA’S CONTRIBUTION to contemporary black music lay in how it walked that line between underground cool and mainstream acceptability. Immediately, it provided a conduit between the two, as its staff were immersed in the underground, digesting it all to create a more accessible version. They went to the raves, surfed the internet and tuned into pirate radio, so you didn’t have to – which benefitted the major labels as much as the station’s listeners. 1Xtra also served as a short cut to the more mainstream Radios One and Two. All were in very close proximity at the BBC, and One and 1Xtra shared their own building. It was not unusual for acts enjoying daytime exposure on 1Xtra to make the jump to Radio One, with its considerably larger national audience. Marc is entirely enthusiastic about this function:

  ‘1Xtra definitely helped us, and the really cool thing about it is it gave Lab a core bed quite quickly, and then he jumped through the transient layers quickly. It is possible to get stuck on 1Xtra, and a lot of artists do, but if you’ve got the material then it’ll give you the chance to be heard and transcend genre-based radio.’

  The truly liberating aspect of all this was that 1Xtra gave a platform to the full breadth of the new black music that was bubbling through, as it absorbed a spectrum of British influences. Almost as a by-product of how the station had set itself up, it was allowing black music that might have sprung from a strictly urban environment, but had pop/rock aspirations, the opportunity to move forward. Music that might have been too black for Radio One, and not black enough for the pirates, could now reach a sizeable audience, many of whom wouldn’t be locked into preconceived ideas of what grime ought to sound like. This motivated artists to display the sort of ideas that helped to establish UK black music as the new pop music – Jammer’s Jahmanji album, Dave Jones’ Biasonic Hotsauce (as Zed Bias), and virtually any later stuff by Tinie Tempah, Wretch 32 or Tinchy Stryder being cases in point.

  As far as audiences were concerned, the new station played an even more important role. By pitching itself between the anarchic world of pirate radio and the more, er, grown-up approach associated with the BBC, it defined an audience that had fallen between everybody’s cracks, so to speak. This is what enabled contemporary black music to fulfil its pop potential, by opening up two influential demographics: those who thought they ought to be into the style but didn’t think it was speaking to them – much as lovers’ rock fans had approached roots reggae – and pop fans who liked a bit of grime but weren’t sufficiently committed to go hardcore. Reaching these swing voters had been a deliberate part of 1Xtra’s brief:

  ‘We realised there was a big potential audience out there that loves urban music but they may not like – or even have patience for – some of the more underground-y bits. If we had remained completely underground all the time, tried to be like the pirates, then we were going to really alienate a lot of people, when the potential for this music was to spread a lot further. In the daytime we were much more mainstream, yet still urban enough to keep fans happy.

  ‘Also you have to remember that something that’s seen as underground one minute, in a year or two will be completely mainstream, and people understand it. Nothing remains like it first was, as far as being accepted is concerned, it just takes time to get used to the sound of a new music. 1Xtra gave so much of the music that time. And with some of the grime artists, I’d question whether it was actually authentic grime in the first place, because it was essentially pop music they were creating. But it’s all part of the same thing, so we needed to make sure we did the more mainstream stuff as well as we do the more hardcore stuff.

  ‘Whenever we got a story like Tinie Tempah or somebody going to number one in the album charts, it kind of justified our position and the work we were doing. Tinie came on 1Xtra when he
was fifteen, and it was the first legal station that he’d done anything on; now he’s 23 and a pop star, so you could say we launched his career.’

  It’s interesting that in the same way as Dizzee Rascal and Wiley continue to make mixtapes to keep in touch with their original fanbases, so those who kicked off on 1Xtra don’t move far away. Even if they have to put some effort in doing so. Marc laughs at the apparent irony of Labrinth’s double life:

  ‘Because “Earthquake” was such a massive track, and it affected people so much, it allowed us to be accepted by Radio One straight away. Then the challenge that we had with our album, Electronic Earth, was it had such a breadth of sound, only a small percentage of it are 1Xtra records. “Last Time” is a little bit 1Xtra, but because 1Xtra wants it a bit harder than we’re inclined to do, we’ve been having to come up with 1Xtra mixes for songs that are essentially not 1Xtra tracks!’

  IT WAS THE COMBINATION of a nationally accessible conduit, and the self-sufficiency discussed in the previous chapter, which allowed London’s black music, in the form of grime, to reach critical mass in the mid-noughties. Around long enough to be able to draw on its own heritage, it has become established enough to be a genuine movement rather than a trend or a fad. Marc explains the difference, and why it means so much for the future:

  ‘Now, you’ve got new kids coming up and they don’t allow it to sleep, one falls away or is away working on music and another comes through, it’s like a constant scramble to the top of this mound they’ve got. And they’ve got this mound because there’s been so much of it for so long. That’s the difference now, that’s what makes it a very strong movement and what encourages me.

  ‘We’ve done this before, and every time we’ve done it the back-up hasn’t been there. With jungle or drum’n’bass, Goldie forged ahead getting a beautiful album done which went all the way [“Timeless”, a top ten hit in 1995], but there was nothing that came with it. So what had been underground with jungle, when it matured into drum’n’bass it matured to chart status but there was no back-up, no follow-up. There was no group mentality, and nothing coming through to take it further. What’s happened with these guys is they done the same thing, started very young, very raw, very gritty and it’s matured, then the likes of somebody like Labrinth comes along, who is away from grime and takes it further.

  ‘We’d sit down and discuss how could you make a grime tune or a grime vibe, but something that’s musically expansive and clever and has a turn on it. We’d concentrate on the musicality of it – how can we apply music theory to these sounds, so you’re not just hitting up a beat, you’re doing a chord because you know it’s going to lift the spirit or bring it down. Then I’d add my old-school influences of jungle, drum’n’bass and all of that, and all of the stuff he’d learned hanging around.

  ‘I believe that’s what resonated in his head when he did “Pass Out” [Labrinth produced and co-wrote Tinie Tempah’s hit] and stuff like that. It’s my belief you sit down and think about these things, you theorise and you let go. You let it go, and then it comes back and it spools into your head when you’re not thinking about it. You can’t just sit down and say “I’m going to do this today”, and I think that’s how the likes of “Pass Out” and these really cool grooves started coming out. As the music matured, people started coming into it who were working in different ways.

  ‘Then when you come up with something as clever as “Pass Out” it then exalts Tinie to become head of this movement. But it’s not just one record, it’s not like it was with Goldie, it’s one record but these kids understand the importance of maintaining market share in the same way as hip hop does in America and they kept it coming and kept it coming. Tinie was backed up by Wretch 32 … then you’ve got Professor Green. You’ve got Caucasian kids coming through with the same vibe and the same energy … you’ve got Devlin and you’ve got Plan B who adds a different element, another angle to that kind of sound. Because they’re coming through like a movement, the radio can’t just play it off like a oneoff or a novelty track. That rave thing seemed too much like a novelty to the radio, but I think this generation have managed to transcend that.’

  Marc makes an important point about the people coming into the music lately as not arriving via the traditional nursery slopes of pirate radio and raves. Ben Drew, aka Plan B, started off playing Brit pop soundalike guitar before graduating to hip hop. Labrinth’s entry was even further removed; he came from a north London gospel-singing background. He and his eight siblings had a group called Mac-9, their family name being McKenzie. Hoping to learn what it would take to manage Timothy’s career herself, his mother attended a music business course Marc was running at the Chocolate Factory. After two sessions, she had enough confidence in Marc to sign her son with him instead. The soon-to-be-Labrinth’s influences ran from the Beatles to Bowie and Jimi Hendrix, then Marc ‘crammed him full of George Benson and T. Rex, plus my background from reggae, jungle and drum’n’bass’. At the moment, Plan B uses an actual band, while Labrinth deconstructs prospective samples and plays the various parts on real instruments.

  Add to all this the point that Jammer made about grime being around for so long. Although these days many of the people coming into it don’t know anything else as a format, that doesn’t make them immune to London’s myriad influences. They’re creating music that completely reflects their lives in the capital, happily disregarding the tyranny of street credibility to make what’s intrinsically black music while still proudly acknowledging that there’s more to it than that. That formula worked for Berry Gordy and Motown – a black style that wasn’t afraid to adjust itself for a wider audience, scrub up and made a fortune – and the potential rewards are particularly attractive. Kids see Dizzee or Wretch on television, clearly doing well yet just as blatantly still of the ‘ends’. Suddenly – and again just like Motown or, closer to home, lovers’ rock – black kids aspiring to the music have role models to whom they can relate, which makes the whole process a bit more attainable. This time, however, unlike those two examples, they can see how they can control it.

  Bringing extreme street fashion to a mainstream audience at the V Festival, 2012, Wiley demonstrates British black music has come as far sartorially as it has stylistically since the suits and hats on the Windrush sixty years ago.

  Also, on the social side, for the current wave of black kids in the capital, making music has become far more viable a proposition for their parents to cope with than it was for the generation before. Quite apart from being able to practise and pretty much launch yourself from your bedroom, as a sideline to GCSEs, their ‘born here’ parents are part of the nation, rather than having come from somewhere else specifically to work. That meant there was far less need to rebel against the factory or the clerical job – not that there were too many factories or clerical jobs by the 1990s. In addition, for mums and dads who have grown up around lovers’ rock or Soul II Soul sound systems, it’s easier to understand the growing relationship between their kids and their music.

  A mere two-and-a-bit generations on from Kitchener singing “London Is The Place For Me” on the quayside, London’s black music – grime – has achieved the same sort of cultural status as hip hop in the US. While hip hop is obviously a pop music, and informs other styles to such an extent that it’s not really thought of as a left field music any more, whatever it absorbs, and whatever form it takes on, it’s still hip hop. Jay-Z and Beyonce are true pop stars, yet they will always be hip hop. Over here, Tinie Tempah and Wiley are pop stars, yet everybody knows they’re grime. That’s total integration, not some kind of minstrel-style assimilation – hence the rush of prospective, largely self-sufficient and self-controlling black pop stars.

  THE FUTURE FOR LONDON’S BLACK MUSIC, at the time of writing, looks even more exciting than its past. While the conventional music business has been falling apart, these guys – from Lloydie Coxsone and Dennis Bovell onwards – have developed the skills to progress without any bigmoney safe
ty net. Now, more than ever, that unique black community experience, the sound system, will really come into its own. Thanks not merely to its self-sufficiency alone, but to the fearlessness that has seen it succeed in so many of the environments described in this book. Former soundman Marc sums it up precisely:

  ‘These days [2013] people are a lot more scared. There’s been a level of fear in the mainstream music business for a while, but with there being so little money about, everyone’s a lot more scared to make moves. It’s such a small cake now – with sales, HMV’s done now so forget it, it’s all about online – there’s a lot less optimism in the mainstream industry.

  ‘Which actually leaves the door open to the sound system operators, or those who still think like that. Because what’s the one thing every soundman’s got in common? They’re not scared of nothing! Which is why, at this very moment, you’ve got Wiley killing it – he’s on every bloody track around … you got Skepta at number one, they’re banging them out left, right and centre because they ain’t got no fear at all … they’re banging them out, when everybody else is scared to make a move. We’re going back in to writing the second album, and everyone’s on tenterhooks about what Lab’s going to do on it, and I’m just like “Shut up, let him crack on”.

  ‘We’ll get in, we’ll write some music and we’ll get it done… people are like “Should we do this?” … “Are we going to make that kind of sound?” … “Could he just chose one sound and go down that road?” I’m telling them “No!” and they should let him just do the same thing again. It may be a risk, but …’