Mention grime, aka, one of the fastest growing musical genres of the moment to many in the US and they're likely to look more than a little confused. That's all about to change, though. Up until now, US 'grime' came mainly in the form of big shot superstars along the lines of Kanye and Drake, a far cry for the British pioneers of the genre: Skepta, Stormzy and Lethal Bizzle, to name but a few.
Crowdfire, in conjunction with SBTV and Beats 1 decided to step up the grime game and educate the masses, well, the US masses, at least. Ok, maybe I should take a step back actually: Crowdfire, you say? Well, it's a social media platform launching this May, a platform that lets you discover music via your friends and family all in the form of a very handy little app, you say? This is the sound of the future people and it's right up next, loading, about to kick in on the shuffle play.
Back to the task at hand though, taking grime to the US and everything that that entailed in itself. The guys decided that the best way of infiltrating the US was to head to SxSW in Austin, Texas and in turn, to bring some of the UK's top grime Gods over with them, think Stormzy, Skepta, Ghetts, Lethal Bizzle, Little Simz, and that's just the icing on the cake.
Grime is growing rapidly in both popularity and recognition across the world and Crowdmix decided that the way to best capture this exciting time of change within the music industry was to capture it all perfectly into one explosive mini-documentary, filmed on the ground in Austin, Texas, during the SxSW festival itself.
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This may be a mini documentary, but I assure you, you'll come away feeling informed and inspired, in awe and more than a little envious at the very god given talents of some of the artists you'll stumble upon in the documentary. Crowdmix explores the roots and the rise of Grime as seen via the eyes of the artists themselves. We're shown everything from behind the scenes footage to performances, to artist interviews and all, should I mention, within the space of five little minutes. It's raw, it's real and it's exciting, much like grime itself, really.
Most interestingly of all, though, as a viewer you'll ask yourself whether Grime can really develop and grow in the US, something that the Crowdfire guys most certainly think is the next step given the sheer interest grime artists sparked at SxSW, not to mention the rate at which Grime is exploding, and it's been said that this may be most significant invasion of British music in the US since the Beatles came onto the scene in the '60s.
Interested? We know we are, so take a look at the mini-doc below and see where you stand on the whole 'Grime' scheme of things...
For more information, see the Crowdmix website.
