‘The industry’s the new road’: Crime, commodification and street cultural tropes in UK urban music

Abstract

With original authors and audiences from the most disadvantaged and excluded communities across Western society, urban music has been equally scorned and sought out for its referencing of, and/or association with, criminal activity. Urban music (such as rap from the United States) can be understood as generating both 'respectable fears' and 'subcultural capital', appealing to youthful consumers who are seduced by its ostensibly transgressive character. This appeal is linked to the urban communities which incubated and popularised both the music and the 'street culture' of its underprivileged population. The wisdom has followed that the more 'ghetto' the music, the greater its ability to court controversy and generate record sales. Interestingly, the latest generation of UK urban artistes has bucked this trend, eschewing violent imagery and metaphor, courting a 'mainstream' aesthetic and actively referencing 'respectable' routes to inclusion such as engaging with education and running small businesses. This paper reflects on British 'grime' music, demonstrating that new media and music industry democratisation can alter the manner by which crime and street culture are commodified. It argues that where there is a perception of threat connected to street-level urban music authored by those with supposed links to criminality, the lines between real crime and its mediated representation can become blurred. The authorities and the music industry may respond by effectively criminalising and excluding an entire genre. In the case of UK urban music, artistes have adopted a strategy to succeed within the mainstream industry which, as opposed to US rappers, involves muting their links to street culture.

Cultural Criminology: The Time is Now

“…The meso level of 'shared meanings' is often an agora of claims and counter-claims, where discourses and ideas, problems and solutions, are bought and sold. Rolling 24 hour news (Greer and McLaughlin 2011), museum exhibitions (Thurston 2016), YouTube videos (Ilan 2012), social media posts (Yar 2012;Smiley 2015), programmed technologies (Wall 2016), reality TV (Presdee 2002), political debates (Schept 2015), criminal justice policies and practices (e.g., Wall and Linnemann 2014), contemporary art (Brisman 2018), notions of knowledge and appropriate research (Ferrell 2018), the nature of contemporary punishment (Brown 2009), youth justice (Petintseva 2018), history and geography (Fraser 2015), subculture (Snyder 2009(Snyder , 2017, websites (van Hellemont 2012), celebrity (Penfold-Mounce 2010), far-right organising (Castle and Parsons 2017) and maps (Kindynis, 2014)-all are sites of discourse, representation and performance that have been studied by cultural criminologists. These do not reflect a 'decorative' project à la Rojek and Turner (2001), but are testaments to the ways in which cultural criminologists have explored how meanings around crime and control are created and contested, enforced and challenged.…”

Grime music and dark leisure: exploring grime, morality and synoptic control

“…This style drew extensively on a synthesis between the Jamaican tradition of 'toasting' (singing to a rhythm), and American 'rapping', both of which embraced the central role of MC (Master of Ceremonies) vocalists (Baron, 2013). To many, the lyrical content of Grime makes the genre distinct from other urban sounds, providing artists and listeners with a vehicle to express their innermost thoughts and insights into life in Britain's multicultural inner-city milieu (Ilan, 2012).…”

“…Interestingly, and in many ways unsurprisingly, this distinct sound and the lyrical content associated with it allowed Grime to become uniquely related to the struggles of London's, and increasingly wider Britain's, disenfranchised inner-city communities (Wheatley, 2010). Artists tend to communicate their experiences of living in violent environments, bereft of opportunities, yet located near sites of wealth and prosperity, the consequences of which have led to Grime music becoming linked to the inequalities of poverty, racism and social exclusion (Ilan, 2012). Such areas foster a 'street' culture that has manifested itself as an interpretive logic, that uses the medium of music to forge a site of cultural expression.…”

“…point described byDedman (2011, p.519) as constituting a mentality whereby the genre has become linked to impoverished, ethnically diverse enclaves of inner cities and strongly perceived as: "their music. "Ilan (2012) explains how such negativity has led to record labels being reluctant to sign high profile Grime artists. Most notably MC's such as Skepta, JME, and Jammer, have found themselves falling victim to this cautious approach which continues to interpret Grime as problematic, and constituting an image that many recording companies feel might tarnish their reputation amongst mainstream listeners.…”

The Subcultural Imagination

“…Recent criminological studies have made reference to 'on Road' subcultures of black and urban youth (Hallsworth and Silverstone, 2009;Earle, 2011;IIan, 2012;Young et al, 2013;Glynn, 2014) but solely in relation to gangs and violent crime. However, this over emphasis upon deviance largely misinterprets and ignores the larger and more significant role that Road culture plays in the lives of poor and BAME urban youth:…”