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COPYRIGHT 2005 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
Pop-music purists invariably tell the same story about their favorite music. Whatever the genre--R. & B., classic punk, dance-hall reggae, Celtic lullabies--a purist will say that it was better at its inception, when the sound was an expression of something local and unique, before the terrible money came, and strangers corrupted the music with their embrace.
The purists are not entirely wrong. When a new sound sprouts on pop's tree, invisible to passersby, it is a wondrous thing. But what happens next is often more interesting: the music begins to find an audience, record companies offer to pay musicians to make their sounds, and someone gives those sounds a name. The music is now a genre, and it grows willy-nilly, borrowing from other genres, which it may eventually resemble, while announcing itself as something you've never heard before.
Electronica and crunk passed through this stage not long ago, and grime, a British genre, has now entered it. Grime emerged from the rave culture of the late nineteen-nineties, and will sound to most Americans like hip-hop performed by m.c.s with English accents and really fast raps. Hip-hop, even at its harshest, is dance music. By contrast, grime sounds as if it had been made for a boxing gym, one where the...
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