This article addresses the linguistic policing of grime and UK drill music. Existing studies often focus on the immediacy of the penal system. This article will instead explore the extent to which institutional bodies uphold and maintain a programme of racialised censorship across radio broadcasts, seeking to understand how these value judgements impact upon creative practice. It presents an ethnographic study of three radio shows that aired on BBC 1Xtra, demonstrating through interviews and analysis how the broadcaster's censorship practice unfairly renders Black artists as dangerous with criminal associations. Lyrical assertions of musical skill are misread as direct threats, while evocations of the quotidian are seen to cause violence rather than reflect artists’ surroundings. Importantly, it will show how artists’ work and words are adversely discriminated against owing to a legacy of racialised public morality that imposes greater sanctions and restrictions on artistic output: radio personalities must strike a balance between presenting voyeuristic excitement about a genre, and the need to meet (racialised) editorial standards; producers assiduously monitor new slang to make sure that it is censored; and artists are encouraged to self-censor and alter their musical output, to protect themselves from unwanted ramifications.

Pirate radio is one of the pillars of grime music. This arena acts as both a communal and artistic space for musicians to coalesce and create on a regular basis. Its recordings, however, are rarely utilized as part of musical and historical enquiry. Prior investigation has principally focused on studio recordings, specifically the album. This paper makes the case for listening again to pirate radio, demonstrating how these artefacts act as a historical and musical referent. This is achieved through the analysis of recordings from 2001-2005 alongside ethnographic interviews with practitioners, examining the intense locational claustrophobia, communal conviviality, and entrepreneurial spirit possessed by these artists and their listenership. Pirate radio captures music as process and-unlike static recordings-is a medium that allows for long form extemporisation and extra-musical assertions, consequently offering an unparalleled insight into the sociohistorical state of play in London at the turn of the millennium.

Grime music is an Afrodiasporic performance form originating in London. While artists such as Stormzy and Skepta are now international stars, its gestation took place within a grounded network of record shops, radio stations and raves. This article argues for grime pirate radio’s role as both an oppositional channel and site of creative practice. Based on empirical work undertaken from 2017 to 2019 in London’s grime scene, it demonstrates how artists harness radio’s communicative power to engender a Black counterpublic, before outlining a framework for creative agency: afforded by a network of stations and practitioners; made meaningful through its community of listeners; and realized through improvisatory practice. Existing studies focusing on pirate radio often present these fora as domains for dissemination. In grime, however, its creative function highlights the potentiality of radio as a performance medium: a space for quotidian belonging and co-presence, but also for musical development and grassroots practice.

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