Conventions of Grime Music

AudienceFrom prior knowledge and research we immediately began to find our target audience for grime music. I created tables and audience profiles based upon the main demographic of grime music. The table includes ones age as well as their reasons for love of a certain genre, the audience profile details a more in depth look at the audiences appearance as well as hobbies and what they do with their leisure time.

Digipak Like most genres there is no standard for what a single or album cover work looks like however in the earlier years it was common place for a grime/rap album to feature the main artist amongst simple text such as the name of the project, a mark to signify the content (parental advisory explicit content), name of the artist and production company.

Wiley’s 2004 album ‘Treddin’ On Thin Ice’

Giggs’ 2008 project ‘Walk In Da Park’

DigipakSimilarly to the hip-hop and rap genres contemporary grime albums and EP’s tend to display meaningful imagery such as symbols or objects that represent or signify something deeper as appose to one central figure like that of past notable album and EP covers. Below are a collection of recent grime projects from various artists. The collection shows how new album artwork is still simplistic yet in many ways more complex. Recent projects such as AJ Tracey’s EP the front and Dave’s Six Paths have opted for an animated cover whereas projects like that of veteran artists Wretch 32 and Kano have black and white covers displaying imagery concerning loved ones and relationships. Although album cover work is becoming more progressive and in my opinion more aesthetically pleasing what all these covers have in common is that they are unique and are striving to differentiate themselves from others as essentially they are aiming to stand out to their potential audiences. Skepta’s cover work is one that is symbolic of his journey as an artist and emphasizes his rise globally in the past few years hence the title of the album – Konnichiwa and the image of the stamp (fitted with a picture of Skepta in a cap) marked 1st class.

Magazine Covers/PostersAs grime has only recently become a widely commercially recognized genre of music after being underground for so many years, there really wasn’t many examples of existing grime magazine covers to go off of therefore inspiration was taken from hip-hop/ rap magazine covers as well as the few grime covers/posters we could find. Here are examples of two existing grime posters. Below is examples of slightly dated posters promoting the music of grime artists Kano and Wretch 32. In between is a recent poster promoting rapper Travis Scott’s project Rodeo, the colors are more eye catching yet the design is more simplistic making the poster look more professional.

Magazine covers/postersAs touched on before it was a lot easier to find magazine covers and content for the similar genre of Hip-hop and rap as appose to Grime, most likely due to the fact that hip-hop is more globally and commercially recognized and accessible however that is where grime is heading with it’s recent resurgence. I did find examples of grime artists belonging to publications such as ‘Fader’ and ‘i-D magazine’. Even though artists featured as the cover star for a magazine, the covers that I researched tended not to explicitly promote an album release for example the two covers to the middle and right starring Chance the Rapper and Skepta both featured artists who had just released a body of work (Chance the rapper with his album ‘Coloring Book’ and Skepta with Konnichiwa respectively) although no mention of it is included on the cover.

Music Video - LocationGrime locations have remained the same for the most part since it’s inception in the early 21st century. Locations rarely differ from urban streets, parks, food joints and domestic environments.We conducted extensive research on recent grime videos in order to get a flavour of what to aim to create in order to create a plausible product of this genre.

Music Video Narrative Traditionally grime videos don’t neccesarilly portray a story visually, the artists may speak of past experiences and narrate events however often the artist is simply featured framed centrally with a collection of shots in minimal locations. This is still something which is common place in the grime genre, however in recent years there has been a heavy focus upon the production value of grime videos. Konan’s track last night in L.A is the epitomy of a grime video of the past 5-10 years, there is few locations, he’s surrounded by multiple characters and is framed centrally through almost the entire video.

Grime Artist Costume/ PropsIn order for us to embody what a grime artist would be like and act like throughout our video it was essential for us to be aware of how they present themselves and a huge part of this was through the way they dressed. Research tasks such as costume and mood boards were useful in helping us gauge what to include in our music video including props.

Grime Artist Costume/ PropsGrime artist Skepta was a great example to take inspiration from, his 2015 music video for Shutdown depicted the mise en scene of the urban youth of 21st century London brilliantly through the urban location, props consisting of phones, cigarettes, a dog and a car. The video is simplistic which is why it is so successful in accompanying a grime anthem in a such a way, the brands are easily seen as nearly everyone is draped in black and white therefore the clothing is easily identified therefore for audiences who were foreign to grime it was a lot simpler for them to relate to it or recognize this culture.

The mix of races and characters was also apparent to see in the video with a variety of ethnicities displayed throughout the video alongside Skepta. The shared culture of grime was effectively defined through the costume as everyone was dressed pretty much in black and white yet through accessories such as gold earrings and chains, through nail color and brands such as Nike, Adidas and Stone Island each characters individuality was able to shine whilst staying true to the culture as it displayed familiar brands and logos within it.