While many of us were amazed with the success of the independent phenom Chance the Rapper, there was one artist making similar historical moves overseas. It was Skepta, an independent artist from England, creating waves never before seen in British hip-hop. Skepta has been around for a minute making music since 2007, however, 2016 was the breakout moment for the rapper. Skepta is the kingpin of the grime music, which combines many different genres from reggae to dancehall, over high levels of bass and drums, rarely seen inside America. Aside from the ridiculous beats, the insanity of grime lies in the schizophrenic rhyming over each song, switching up flows at extremely fast rates, alongside dropping some crazy bars.
Grime has been a staple in the UK music scene for years and it all led up to the biggest grime album release date in history, with Skepta’s Konnichiwa dropping this past May. With the eyes of the UK upon him, Skepta met the hype delivering an album that has propelled him from a country’s star to an international superstar. With Konnichiwa, Skepta had a clear understanding of what he wanted from this album, relatability. Every song everybody can relate to from police violence on Crime Riddim to fake friends on Man. He even featured American artists such as A$AP Nast on “Ladies Hit Squad” and the god Pharrell Williams on “Numbers”. The album immediately experience great success climbing the UK charts to as high as #2 earlier this year. Konnichiwa also became critically acclaimed, as NME described it as “A Landmark for British Street Music”.
After this extreme success, the question most people are asking is will Skepta help pioneer grime music to the mainstream overseas to America? The answer is yes and I would argue this has already happened.
To first dive into this phenomenon, it’s eerie to see how similar Skepta’s breakout in the UK mainstream is to Chance in America. Much like Chano, the mainstream wasn’t ready for his music at first, so instead of signing with a label Skepta decided to create his own label and go independent. By withholding selling out, he was able to create his own lane and gained a following that was too hard for the radio to ignore. Fast forward to today, he’s now got the radio in the palm of his hand and made them come to him, not the other way around. Much like Chance, who was nominated for multiple grammys, Skepta recently won the Mercury Prize for Best Album in the UK for Konnichiwa. What was even more impressive is that he beat out the world famous David Bowie and Radiohead to capture the award even enhancing his stardom.
With all of this success, Skepta has also made significant waves in American Culture during 2016 that you may not be fully aware of. First, is Beyonce, who danced to “That’s Not Me” during her Formation tour, fully cementing how vast Skepta’s reach is now. If you still don’t believe me, how about A$AP Mob’s extensive relationship with the man, as Rocky even dropped a short film that took place in the UK and featured Skepta on it.
With all of this even the most mainstream of mainstream artists, Drake, has a long lasting friendship with the man. In fact, he is een said to be signed to Skepta’s label and was brought out during a show earlier this year (Which btw was the most lit thing I’ve ever seen).
With all of these waves being created in America by Skepta it’s only a matter of time till american artists start releasing songs with this type of sound. One artists already has in fact, Danny Brown, who dropped Blueberry a few years ago that sounds like a american type version of grime itself.
2016 might have been the year of american artists dropping many albums, but the most impactful one might have been Skepta’s Konnichiwa. In fact, I think we could look back in a few years saying he was the artist that paved the way for grime music in America, as well as turning rap into a true international genre of music. To live in a world where hit rap artists come from all different countries is an era I want to be apart of. So thank you Skepta, 2016 is just the warm up, 2017 is the takeover.
