Received wisdom has long held that grime, the attitudinal amalgam of garage, jungle, rap and electro that ripped out of east London’s sink estates at the turn of the millennium, is primarily a niche concern, too edgy and parochial to cross over to the mainstream. In 2016, Skepta has prompted a major rethink of this glib assumption.
For somebody making supposedly uncommercial music, this year’s successes of the Tottenham MC, rapper and producer born Joseph Junior Adenuga have been prodigious. Self-released and distributed from his front room, his fourth album, Konnichiwa, charted at No 2 and scooped the Mercury prize. Breathless endorsements from Drake have seen him make inroads into the US. This 10,000-capacity Ally Pally gig was long sold out.
Fittingly, it’s a remarkable tale grounded in grime’s most enduring subject matter: overcoming adversity. Skepta’s rise has not been plain sailing. Signed to a major label five years ago in the wake of Dizzee Rascal and Tinie Tempah’s chart success, he lost his way and spluttered out a string of vapid pop-rap singles before being dropped and dispatched back to presumed oblivion.
His response was to fire out 2014’s That’s Not Me, a riled rejection of the compromises that had been forced on him by his corporate paymasters: “I used to wear Gucci, put it all in the bin ’cause that’s not me.” Alone but for a DJ, he unleashes that track early tonight, prowling the stage in a hoodie and spitting its resentful bile over harsh, jittery breakbeats like short-arm jabs to the solar plexus.
Skepta’s virulent strain of grime invariably sounds brutal, belligerent and incandescent with ire. Taking its lyrical cue from gangsta rap, the muscular, abrasive Corn on the Curb’s minimal production exudes dark, brooding menace; on the sparse yet resonant Crime Riddim, he balefully relates being arrested for beating up a stranger in a club.
Yet while grime’s jagged rhythms and malevolent beats are electrifying when absorbed via headphones or in a claustrophobic cellar club, some of its visceral thrill is inevitably lost in Alexandra Palace’s wide-open spaces. Pharrell collaboration Numbers, explosive on record, is reduced here to a low bass grumble and hints that, like stadium house, arena grime may be an intrinsically flawed concept.
This cannot be blamed on Skepta, who is bursting out of his skin to connect with a hyped-up crowd (“More energy!” he insists, relentlessly) and to pay his respects to the insular scene’s founding fathers. The evening sees a procession of guest appearances from grime’s prime movers: Wretch 32, Giggs, Skepta’s brother Jme, Kano, Novelist, Shorty and, on a ferocious revisit of his own 2011 hit Pow, Lethal Bizzle.
The night ends with an army of 30 of these hooded rappers and MCs bobbing in silhouette behind Skepta as he spits Man from the bonnet of a burning car, as if attempting to recreate a tableau from the 2011 Hackney riots. It’s a jaw-dropping end to an uneven gig, but Skepta views it as one giant leap for grime: “Tonight,” he bellows at the frenzied crowd, “we put a fucking flag in the moon!”
