Contrasting grime and rave sonics with the sobering moments of clarity that come after them, artists like Jawnino, CMillano and Cold are pushing a new sound in the British underground
2024 was the year I kept hearing about ‘post-grime’. Jawnino said it, Cold said it, and Jim Legxacy’s interpolation of Chip classics in “Aggressive” definitely embodied it. Grime was a unifying phenomenon for anyone growing up in London in the 00s, but what does that energy look and sound like today? What does its stark DIY ethos feel like for a generation that came of age amid the intense isolation of lockdown, rising cost of living and the rapid decay of British nightlife? Well, 2024 might have been the year that we found out.
Listen to Jawnino’s breakout single “It’s Cold Out” and the influence of grime is palpable – it’s 140 BPM, and, in its live iterations, the masked south London rapper is wont to dive into extended energy-filled verses until the crowd eventually demands a wheel-up. But listen closer to his ruminations on “soul searching” from “Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye” over transient synths, and it’s not the rave we’re transported to, but what comes after it: those cold moments wandering home, ears still ringing and anxieties creeping in.
For both Jawnino and the track’s co-producer Cold (alongside Oliver Twist and Poundshop), “It’s Cold Out” was somewhat of a lightbulb moment. “When I found that [sound], it changed everything,” Jawns told Dazed earlier this year. “People expressing themselves and talking slower over faster beats. There wasn’t really anyone doing that in the grime world.”
“It was a pivotal moment. We weren’t sure what it was either,” south London producer Cold agrees. “Me and Poundshop met years and years ago and we were experimenting with grime and British club sounds. We were in the ‘post-grime’-slash-’new-gen-grime’ thing that was happening on the DJ-production side at the time. It wasn’t quite what Novelist and Mumdance were doing, it was this nuanced thing that was quite niche and young.”
Featuring production and vocals from Cold, Jawnino’s debut album 40 dropped earlier this year, further exploring this jaded yet fast-paced sound. But, cross over to recent releases from esc pln alumni CMillano and kwes e, rapper-producers who first made their names in the alt-rap scene a couple of years ago, and many of these sonic hallmarks appear once more. Contrasting four-on-the-floor bass beats, clap tracks, and electronic synths with sobering (but not quite sober) lyrics, tracks like “Dagger” and “juggin” appear to be similarly pulled between the rave and the pressures of real life that lay beyond.
I want the songs to feel like you’re in the club turning up with your friends but you’re also going through it in the background, the same as our lives
– CMillano
“I’d describe it as ‘sad flexy club music’,” CMillano tells Dazed, “I want the songs to feel like you’re in the club turning up with your friends but you’re also going through it in the background, the same as our lives.” kwes e echoes these sentiments. “I made friends with pain at an early age, and was introduced to joy by another friend called music,” he explains cryptically. “Do you ever get so low that you hit mania and only think, ‘The only way from here is up’? ‘juggin’ was the aftermath of that high.”
Dive deeper into these polarised sounds and you arrive at the likes of Jim Legxacy and Rian Brazil, whose raw and vulnerable vocals are a far cry from the grime and rave-influenced sonics that permeate their production. Jim Legxacy’s breakout album, Homeless N**** Pop Music, was named after a friend’s sarcastic description of his sound, and, crudeness aside, woven into this title is once more a contrast between euphoria and despondence. In samples of grime classics and dance-oriented production, both he and Rian Brazil approach the party as an outsider, carving a sound that caters to both.
“Take Jawns and CMillano, for example,” Cold explains of this unlikely cohort of artists all exploring similar emotions from different angles. “I don’t know if they would make a song together, but it’s cool that, from an outsider’s perspective, they’re part of the same conversation. I guess ‘post-grime’ isn’t a movement at the moment, but everyone is using British sounds in a way that suits them as individuals. It’s very unapologetic, in a similar way to what made grime what it was – it carries that same energy.”
In this sense, the looming influence of grime isn’t just restricted to 140 BPM or a particular rap flow, but an overarching ethos, reflective of young people weaving their own experiences into the canon of British music. If grime represented young Black Brits staking their claim to the urban environments they grew up in, then these new artists represent an alienation from it, underpinned by the pressures and uncertainties facing young people today.
Call it ‘post-grime’, ‘sad flexy club music’ or ‘homeless n**** pop music’, what’s clear is that these sounds inhabit the space that takes place after these moments of euphoria – the walk home, the empty night bus. It’s the sound of the afters, and it seems we’ll hear a lot more of it going into the new year.