Grime

Quora Answer : What is grime, and how is it different to garage?

Jul 26, 2020

Grime is a UK genre of music with prominent rappers.

It evolved out of the UK's 2-step garage genre, and was strongly connected with the garage scene in the early days.

The history goes like this. At the end of the 80s, UK reggae sound systems were getting into playing house and rave. Putting a reggae spin on it.

Out of that mix evolved jungle which became drum'n'bass. A music of accelerated break-beats, heavy bass and ragga influenced MCs exhorting the crowd to dance.

Then d'n'b split into jazzier / loungier versions, or harder, faster and more intense versions for harcore dancers. But in both cases, it kind of lost any sense of being a more sensuous fun party music.

So garage came back on the scene, with its diva vocals and more upbeat melodies. For people who liked to dance and socialize.

Of course, a lot of people from the jungle scene got involved, and so UK garage started having the heavier bass and live MCing that had accompanied jungle.

This is UK garage from the late 90s

And here's what garage MCing was like

And then in a couple of years, the kids growing up in and around garage were creating a music where the MCing was more prominent, and the beats even more frenetic :

And that's what eventually got labelled "grime".