Photo by Caught In Joy on Unsplash
Last week I found a show on Netflix called ‘The evolution of black British music’ and it instantly caught my eye because I love watching anything music related, and I knew that grime (genre of music), something that I am very passionate about, came from black British music so I knew I had to watch this show. This limited series just came out on Netflix with five one-hour long episodes that are each dedicated either to one genre or two genres that are very closely linked together (for example uk street rap and drill are very similar genres just performed in different ways over different instrumentals and beats.) that evolved from black Brits.
This series was originally released in 2022 and I’m very surprised I have not heard of it before, because I feel like I’ve watched everything and anything British music related. Each episode was very educational, and it provided me with so much more information about genres of music I have been listening to and writing about for years. For example I found out that most genres of black British music were born in East London and that East London has done so much for black British music, not only was it born here but most raves or performances were in East London, and one legendary venue where a lot of music events went down was ‘Rex’ in Stratford which was shut down in 2012 then became ‘Sync London’ then turned into ‘Zap’ trampoline (now shut down). However, there is talks of redeveloping ‘Rex’ and there are for sale signs stuck all around it. Seeing ‘Rex’ in the series was fascinating to me as I walk past ‘Rex’ so often when making my way to my Friday lecture.
There were also many legendary guests on this show which have contributed to the black British scene heavily, but I did notice that they also didn’t include some of the most legendary rappers and artists from the scene. For example, they showed videos of Chip/Chipmunk but didn’t speak about him, Without Chip the music scene would be completely different. Chip was known to have many ‘clashes’ (rap battles) with artists like Yungen and even Stormzy, these clashes were legendary, so not mentioning Chip was an interesting choice in my opinion. Then in the street rap episode they included K Koke and C Biz but no Nines, Skrapz, Potter Payper or Mover which have definitely contributed to the scene more than K Koke or C Biz in my opinion ( I think many people would say the same) and both of those names have a long history of disagreements (beef) with rapper Nines going way back, so I am assuming it is something to do with that. What also really surprised me was no mention of legendary N-Dubz, I feel like everyone knows who N-Dubz is especially if you are 20+ and went to secondary school in the UK.
Overall, I did love this show and would recommend binge watching it especially during black history month to educate yourself on how black British music completely changed Britain and how much it done for the current music scene in this country and where it all came from and the History behind it.
