The First Family of Grime

Hattie Collins and Olivia Rose’s essential new book This Is Grime is the first major work on the scene. in this exclusive extract the Adenuga siblings – Beats 1 presenter Julie and MCs Skepta and JMe – discuss their upbringings on tottenham’s Meridian Walk estate and the early days of Boy Better Know.

- Hattie Collins

JME “He always wanted to dJ, Skepta. He used to mix advert music with a little karaoke machine thing that had a speed tempo to it, play the tape of Heartless Crew or whatever, slow it down and speed it up to when there’s like a Mcdonald’s advert on, mixing music.

“My dad used to dJ too, so we used to hear music all the time. My dad had records, but only one deck, so Skep used to try and play a song on one deck – the Music Centre we used to call it, a cabinet with a glass door – he would play one tune on the record and then mix the tape to it, that’s what he used to like doing. He became a dJ.

“I wasn’t really MCing, I was just mucking around and then I started to write my own lyrics. Me, [Meridian] dan and everyone in Meridian [Walk, Tottenham] and yeah, it was MCing and then it just snowballed until the point where now I’m some UK artist, Skepta’s decided to start spitting, you know what I mean? It ends up being something but it’s just about being creative in the first place. Being creative, having fun and enjoying working out how to do something that you don’t know how to do.”

JULIE ADENUGA “It was just a creative time. I don’t know where that came from, I just know that we didn’t have a lot of money. We weren’t poor, but we didn’t have a lot of money. When the ice cream came round we wouldn’t ask for money for an ice cream. There’s four of us, that’s two pounds. So I think it came from realising, ‘oK, we can’t have this, but that’s not it, it’s not over, there’s not going to be no fun in the house.’