Inner City Pressure: The Story Of Grime

"By Y2K, people the world over were dreaming of either collapse or revolution. London, a city fairly recently besieged by Tory politics, pimpled by postindustrial docklands and newly in the grip of Tony Blair, got the latter in the form of grime music – perhaps one of the more elegant symbols of a Britain in flux. Author and grime savant Dan Hancox lovingly considers this chaotic genre (which he unforgettably describes as “a tension headache you can dance to”) as a case study on the way that music can simmer disparate cultures into one neural stew, measure socioeconomic change, or sum the heart of a nation more accurately than any anthem can."