It's somehow appropriate for its DIY ethics that the seminal moment in the history of modern British urban music is a four-part YouTube clip. Ripped from a home-made, long out-of-print DVD called Conflict, one cameraman films a tiny box-room full of young grime MCs, performing on pirate station Deja 92.3 FM, high up on a rooftop in Stratford – only yards from what is now the Olympic site.
Filmed on a summer evening in 2003, over 40 minutes, 15 or so members of legendary crews Roll Deep, East Connection and Nasty Crew squeeze into the makeshift studio – an all-star cast akin to getting the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Buzzcocks on the same bill. This was, in fact, grime's 100 Club moment – and thanks to the internet, we can all pretend we were there. As Roll Deep's DJ Karnage builds momentum with the instrumentals, the microphone is passed from MC to MC, from legends Wiley and D Double E to a 16-year-old Tinchy Stryder, to forgotten early heroes Demon and Sharky Major. The video is notorious for its dramatic climax, when a 17-year-old Dizzee Rascal (below) nearly comes to blows with an MC who was then as hotly tipped as he was, Crazy Titch. The whole cast is a litany of possibility, of foiled and realised ambition; the future of British pop music at the crossroads. Eight years later, Dizzee is a global superstar with four No 1 singles to his name; Crazy Titch is serving a life sentence for murder.
Seen from this distance, the poignancy lands with the clinical punch of a Wiley snare: Dizzee Rascal now wants nothing to do with the music that first made him famous – he won the Mercury prize for Boy in Da Corner only months after this video was recorded. In 2011, Dizzee is collaborating with Shirley Bassey and Shakira; shadow-boxing backstage at Hyde Park with Prince Harry, while Titch resides at his grandmother's pleasure.
The videos, with a million or so YouTube views, findable by Googling Roll Deep Conflict, are a window on to an extraordinary era in British musical history. In one 10-second bit of hosting, Wiley accounts for the now-vanished trinity that created grime, and gave the British pop zeitgeist its platform: radio, raves and riddims. "This is Deja 92.3 FM … hold tight the raving massive, don't forget Eskimo dance ... hold tight Danny Weed, hold tight Target". This was a time when pirate radio was a hub for a whole (teenage) community – the geographical horizons as narrow as the musical ones were broad: "That's where I'm from, Bow E3," Wiley sprays into the mic. "I'm like the 38 bus, because I never turn up."
It also tells a story about grime at its musical peak: a stage before, or perhaps exactly when, the ego of MCs began to take over. Prior to that, anyone with a mic in their hand was first of all answerable to the beat, to the producer-DJ auteur, and pirate radio was all about "rolling out" the instrumentals – building a steady, if restless momentum. The MC was a performer, but also a host: a master of ceremonies, but also, in the parasitic sense, possessed by those extraordinary early grime beats and their macabre, avant-garde minimalism. As Wiley spits, "I'm futuristic, quantum leaping/there's no defeating/E3 tiger – see me creep on the riddim like a spider/kill them with a 16-liner". You wouldn't know it to hear 2011's shiny electro collaborations with the likes of Calvin Harris, but grime "spitting" is supposed to be twice the speed of hip-hop rapping: typically, you had just 16 bars to show your skills, before passing the mic to the next MC – a rule that made grime the most thrilling, ADD-friendly onslaught of a genre. Andy Warhol should count himself lucky he got 15 entire minutes to make an impact.
As the energy mounts, Crazy Titch is bopping with cartoonish energy, face screwed up at the sheer meanness of the track playing underneath, his blitzkrieg of bars including the lyric "Draw for me, you'll be on the 10 O'Clock News" seconds before the fight with Dizzee breaks out. When the scuffle starts, it could almost be a scene from EastEnders – apt, given the location. The music cuts out abruptly, and amid the clamour of raised voices and bravado we hear "step outside!", "leave it, man" – you can almost hear Pat Butcher telling them "he's not worth it!". Wiley is immediately in between the two callow young MCs – the godfather of grime, the paternal statesman who cares more for the scene than his own career. They are pulled apart, and everyone spills out on to the rooftop, silhouetted against the east London gloaming, as friends attempt to calm them down.
Three years later, Titch was sentenced to life imprisonment for his involvement in the murder of 21-year-old Richard Holmes, a senseless crime supposedly connected to a disrespectful grime lyric. In that Deja FM set, Crazy Titch is captivating, going 100 miles per hour, arms pumping, grinning ear to ear – it's not a stretch to suppose that the gleeful, relentless energy he displays on the mic came from the same place as his manic, unhinged tendencies.
"Forget all this, man, forget all this," one MC is heard saying after the fight breaks out, attempting to defuse the tension. He meant they should forget the beef – and soon enough, they did. But a great deal else was forgotten with it.
