I don’t agree with everything in this article (the notion that grime riddims cannot be danced to is misguided if you ask me) but I have been enjoying Dan Hancox’s work on grime for a long while and I think his book, Inner City Pressure, is the high water mark of cultural criticism on grime (with a nod to Target’s Grime Kids which, in its first handed-ness, completes the picture of the inception of grime). The linked essay is Hancox’s response to D.S. Marriott’s 2018 book Duppies which collects some of the grime poems Marriott has been writing in recent years, and to which I’ve made mention elsewhere on this site.
In the coming months I’ll be reviewing the available litearture on grime, sharing snippets from events in which I will be talking about grime, and featuring new music.
Keep you ear to the ground.