Though he’s probably best known these days as a key member of grime collective Boy Better Know (BBK) and founder of the iconic Lord of the Mics series, there are few things in grime that Jammer doesn’t know how to do.

One of the scene’s earliest producers and MCs alongside the likes of Wiley, JME, D Double E and Footsie, his early work helped to establish what would eventually come to be known as grime, and the original Lord of the Mics DVDs played host to MC clashes that have now become part of music history, most notably Wiley vs. Kano and Skepta vs. Devilman.

This past weekend Jammer was over in Berlin with SKITZ Beatz for 3’Hi (3 Feet Hi) an international event platform operating between Berlin, London and NYC that’s been building its name bringing grime artists to a city that’s best known for techno, techno and more techno. We met up with Jammer to talk about what it takes to build a scene, the struggles that come with it and how it feels to be doing grime on an international stage.

When Lord of the Mics first started with I & II, it seemed very “by the scene, for the scene,” and since its return it’s become a real platform for showcasing new artists from around the country. I was wondering what your thoughts were on that.

It’s funny you put it that way. People always ask me that question and I’ve never thought of it as by the scene, for the scene. Lord of the Mics has always been a platform for up and coming artists from the beginning, but back then it was just happening. Kano wasn’t known, you know? But because those guys are the big names today you don’t look at them as up and coming. You’ve followed the journey from that point, a big point in the history.

But now, when the DVDs come out, I concentrate a lot on the Midlands, the North, other parts of England where there’s so much more talent being discovered. It’s a breath of fresh air, but it’s still the same as those aspiring guys from back in the day, just a different era. Battling is about the music, about two people pushing each other to their limit, testing their abilities to see who’s the best, because that’s when you see the true colors — under pressure. In the modern era it’s not as spontaneous. With radio, someone might have said a lyric last week, so you come back to radio with a response this week, whereas now MCs might write for each other for a battle. They’re still pushing the best out of each other, but in a different way.

Lord of the Mics I, everyone was going radio together at the time, and I feel the scene’s come back that way. You’ve got Radar, Rinse, NTS, Boiler Room — there’s a unit, a community of people doing it. The hunger’s not the same, though. When we were coming up there were no opportunities. A lot of the people coming into the industry now have a blueprint to follow, platforms set up; YouTube, social media, everyone can find you more easily. Some people might think, “I don’t need to prove I’m the best, I just have to get coverage.” Whereas before it was like, “That’s why I need to prove I’m the best — so I can get coverage.”

Big Narstie said something similar on Charlie Sloth’s 1Xtra show a while back. For him it’s been 10 years of grind, whereas now you’ve got people who know the avenues and follow the blueprint.

James Perolls

But that’s cool. All the work we’ve done, we built it for that. I’m not angry that they have that now, but what some people fail to understand is the culture, and I hate to use that word, but the culture is to be a grime MC. That’s why it was raw and cool to be. The stages you had to go through to get that stripe was a lot. That’s why you were respected, whereas now you can make a banger, and everyone says you’re the shit and bang, you’re a grime MC.

Like I said, that’s cool, it just depends what you want from the scene. Me, I’m just grateful the scene’s still breathing and there’s people earning a living and it can get bigger. I might not even be the Jay-Z. Stormzy might not. My son’s generation — they can be the ones that get the major P. In my lifetime this is a good start, and I’m alive, living it, doing it. What Lord of the Mics was about was innovating. We were one of the first people to bring the visuals to you, bring you the clashes, show you what that was, buying them on iTunes when it came to digital. And we’re still just trying to do grime in a different, unexpected way. I know what it takes to have longevity, to be there for fifteen, twenty years and that’s why I want more artists to embrace the culture and live it, and it’s better for them because they get to feel it more. If nobody’s speaking to each other and sharing ideas, then how are we going to do something new?

As the platform’s grown, the whole genre has evolved and broadened; you’ve got Local who’s clearly an entertainer, and then you’ve got 67 & Section Boyz who are a lot more trap-influenced — that some purists would say doesn’t even qualify as grime.

It’s both worlds because they’ve grown up on both things. Section Boyz spit with trap flow and then they spit verses with a grime flow. You hear their ‘Oi! Yo’. You can approach a grime beat like a hip-hop tune. You are what you do, so if someone says you’re something, it’s because of what you’re doing. If you want to be grime, just do that, but do what you want to do, because someone will name you eventually. We didn’t even name grime! I was just doing a feeling with my mates and all of a sudden someone named it something and now that’s what it is.

I’m interested also in how fashion has come into grime, or perhaps vice-versa.

They’ve always been together though. There just wasn’t enough time for people to stand back and look at the culture and realise that that was a monumental, iconic moment where they looked like that, they sounded like that. You can only look at that now because you’ve seen the years, the progression.

It was around 2007-8 when Skepta was “doing fashion” with Ed Hardy Party for example, and the way he talks about his return to tracksuits now it seems almost an “anti-fashion” statement, so it’s interesting that magazines are so interested in that dress code now.

James Perolls

But that’s what I’m saying; everyone has been doing fashion all along. I was doing fashion before I was Jammer. Before I made a beat, before I wrote a bar, I went to the block where everyone was and I looked sick. People weren’t even gonna hear my tune if I [didn’t] look swag. You think I could play you a beat if I looked like a dickhead? Fashion was the first step! Everything is what you sound like, what you look like, what you represent.

I wear what I want to wear, so maybe back then it was Akademiks and Reebok Classics and making music. That represented that time. When you look at Run-DMC and you see the adidas shell-toes, that represents that. So now we look back at that era of grime and it’s like, ah it’s cool now, I should get an Akademiks jacket or whatever. That’s what you want to feel like, those clothes represent that time. So now people are aware of the style of that time, we might utilize it a bit more. We always looked good; you don’t get to be a grime MC by looking like a dickhead. So that was already happening, but now people have embraced that, and it’s not just grime. Tyler the Creator, Travis Scott, all those guys, their music goes hand-in-hand with how they look.

So you think magazines recognizing and writing about “the grime look” is a good thing.

Because it’s undeniable! Because that is what the kids of today are wearing. That’s what they like. The internet doesn’t lie. When you put a Boy Better Know T-shirt online and it sells out in 0.1 seconds, are you gonna say that isn’t real? It’s here, now. You can’t lie to the internet.

All these things that people are paying attention to — not only magazines; labels, corporates — it’s just because we’ve forced them to. And it’s not their fault, their job is just to document, and if we weren’t doing it there wouldn’t be anything to document, it’s our job to make it worth documenting. And now we’ve accomplished that, it’s worth trying to be a part of. They respect it. And that’s the thing; people don’t want to wait for respect nowadays. You hear people saying, “Ughhhh, but he wasn’t fucking with us before.” Well maybe it wasn’t your time? Maybe you hadn’t put enough work in to fuck with at that point? It’s just the right time now, and if everything before hadn’t been long and hard and challenging, if people didn’t get turned down and ignored, people wouldn’t have had to struggle so hard, do it themselves, build their own companies, get knocked down, learn how to do everything so they don’t get bumped again, become strong businessmen with strong minds in their own rights. That’s when nobody can stop you.

Jason Jules said the same thing about the ’90s club scene. People will eventually buy into your culture, it’s just something that happens, but it’s the people at the beginning who have to take the risk, put themselves on the line, who make something exciting happen.

Definitely, and I’ve been talking to Skitz about this all day. People always say to me, “You helped this person, you supported that guy, how come they aren’t with you now?” I didn’t help them for them to be with me! I helped them for them to go! Wherever they’re going.

Sometimes you have to be trodden on. Sometimes you have to be a doormat. Not every day is nice. Not every day champagne and girls in your lap. Some days kicked in the head. Some days feel the pain. Every day can’t be perfect. That’s not a real life. When you believe in something, and want to push it so badly, you will be there at the end and everyone will know you got fucked up along the way and they’ll respect it. Because they have to admit, “You know what, no matter what I say about that guy, even if I hate him, he worked hard and he stuck to what he was doing.” You don’t have to like me. But you have to respect me. And that’s what matters. You have a vision, you stick to it, and one day you get there… and then you learn there’s no “there” either. There’s always another place to go. When you get to that point where you think you wanted to be, what else can you do except keep going?

You said something on the way here about how the only goal should be doing the music.

James Perolls

Because of my knowledge in the game and how long I’ve been doing it, I’ve had a lot of time to think about things. The game’s put me in a better position. It was a struggle when there wasn’t as much money in grime. Now I’m a little more comfortable, I can look at things differently.

Before anybody knew who I was, I was in my studio making beats. I didn’t want to go out. I didn’t want to go to raves. I didn’t like them. I only wanted to go if I was mixing, otherwise why was I there? All my greatest records were from that era when I didn’t leave the studio. D Double E and the rest had to beg me to come to raves to see the reaction to my tune, and that was when I thought I should start going out, but then you’re getting bookings, you’re in the rave scene, seeing people, meeting people, studio sessions, remixes, interviews. Distractions to making a tune. You could do a year run of press, raves, interviews, but you haven’t made a new tune.

I just realised that the most important thing is the music. It sounds so simple when I say it, but it really is like that. Don’t expect anything from anyone, just do your work, go hard, and that will save you from the stress. That’s all that matters. Even being here in Berlin with Skitz, we’re from the same ends, and when he was coming up I was known with Neckle Camp, and now we’re here, doing what we love, no hassle, no beef, no gas, it’s the best thing you could possibly dream of.

And how does grime translate now, doing shows in Europe and the U.S.? Are the crowds different?

Music is universal. It doesn’t have a language. If people love your music they’re gonna learn the words, even if they don’t know what it means, and they’re gonna sing it with you because they want to feel the way you did when you made the tune. That’s all that matters. When you see guys going to different countries and everyone’s singing the lyrics back to them I’m sitting there thinking, this is crazy.

But in a weird way I always knew this would happen. We always believed in this! If there are people around doubting you, get them away from you. They’re poison! Whatever that voice is in your head, whether it’s God or instinct or whatever you want to call it — that is your truest friend. Listen to that one. Everything we’ve done, we knew it. It was other people making me think it wouldn’t happen, it was never me. I was alright! Like I said, obviously it’s crazy to see the scene where it is now, but we always knew we were doing something important.

Looking back to those early days of YouTube, the grime videos were some of the first to really embrace digital culture and see how to use it as a platform, with Tim & Barry, Grime’s Not Dead, SBTV and so on.

James Perolls

I feel for Tim & Barry, because a lot of people kind of took their concept, but those guys really understood the culture from early. But when you’re an innovator, obviously people will copy your vision. I had to get used to that, a lot of people liked my sound. The kicks, the brass, the strings, when people heard that they knew it was a Jammer beat. Just like Wiley’s “Ice Rink” sound. People might not even mean to copy it, but they’re inspired by it, and then you’ve got six or seven producers jacking your sound, but really it was proof that we were creating a scene, it was working. Something new was happening.

It was really nice when KISS radio did that Grime Producer Special with you, JME, Footsie, Bless Beatz, Flava D and so on, all in one room, doing that same thing, battling with your production and sort of saying, “I made a song that sounds like you, but my one’s obviously better.”

And that came from the same thing, Bless Beats was talking shit on Twitter saying he was the best producer, I threw a shot back, but it was a good thing that came out of it. Loads of great music came out of that, and it’s always great when people connect and make music.

The whole culture is about dialogue.

It’s competition. It’s about pushing the other person to the edge. Showing other people why they should respect you, and why you’re the best. As a producer, if you believe in yourself and you made a riddim for me, I’m gonna take your sound and make it better than you, and I’m gonna upload it on Soundcloud or play it on radio and show everyone I’m better than you.

That is what grime is. A lot of people ask me what it is, but I’ve only just realized it, here on this spot. People always try to refer grime back to punk, rebellion, and I understand, it’s the closest thing they can correlate to in the UK with clothing and creating your own movement, but grime is basically people not having it. Man ain’t having it, man ain’t listening to you say that we’re whack, or that we’ve come to rob everyone. We ain’t. We make tunes and make everyone feel as good as us, so I don’t know what you’re talking about. We’re not having it.

We’re not beating anyone up anymore. No one’s had a shiv for years. No one’s done anything bad. Everyone’s happy. Everyone’s smiling. Let us do it. America’s following everything we’re doing. We’re inspiring the biggest musical influence in the world, you know? They’re looking to us for everything, for our sound, our clothes, our style. It’s mad.

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Words: Gregk Foley

Photography: James Perolls

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