page_title: British hip hop
section_title: Underground to mainstream: '00s to 2010s
hierarchical_section_title: British hip hop / History / Underground to mainstream: '00s to 2010s
caption_attribution_description: English: Backstage At Orange Rock Corps With Skepta, P Diddy &amp; Chipmunk
context_page_description: British hip hop, also known as UK rap, is a genre of music, and a culture that covers a variety of styles of hip hop music made in the United Kingdom. It is generally classified as one of a number of styles of urban music. British hip hop can also be referred to as Brit-hop, a term coined and popularised mainly by British Vogue magazine and the BBC. British hip hop was originally influenced by the dub/toasting introduced to the United Kingdom by Jamaican migrants in the 1950s–70s, who eventually developed uniquely influenced rapping in order to match the rhythm of the ever-increasing pace and aggression of Jamaican-influenced dub in the UK. Toasting and soundsystem culture was also influential in genres outside of hip hop that still included rapping – such as grime, jungle, and UK garage.
  In 2003, The Times described British hip hop's broad-ranging approach:
  ..."UK rap" is a broad sonic church, encompassing anything made in Britain by musicians informed or inspired by hip-hop's possibilities, whose music is a response to the same stimuli that gave birth to rap in New York in the mid-Seventies.
context_section_description: A new generation of artists emerged following the turn of the century, including Jehst, Skinnyman, Nicky Spesh, Foreign Beggars and Usmaan. At the same time, a new style of electronic music emerged in the early 2000s, derivative of UK garage and jungle, with influences from dancehall, drum and bass and hip hop; this new genre was dubbed "grime" (sometimes called eskibeat or sublow) and effectively superseded UK hip hop in both popularity and the mainstream conscious. Notable grime acts include Dizzee Rascal, Wiley, Kano, Lethal Bizzle, Tinchy Stryder, Skepta, Jme, Jammer, Shystie, Ghetts and Devlin. Grime music saw some early success in America with Wiley, Kano and Dizzee Rascal, all releasing music across the Atlantic. Grime is generally considered to be distinct from hip-hop due to its roots primarily being genres such as UK garage and jungle. In 2001, Roots Manuva claimed that British hip hop "is more healthy" than American hip-hop, and is about making the music than is it about exploiting wealth or hitting it rich.
  Success followed The Streets' 2002 album Original Pirate Material, and he became one of the first of the new breed of British hip hop artists to gain respectable sales, though his verbal style resulted in him being shunned by many artists in the scene. Such success has caused a surge in media exposure of other British hip hop acts. Welsh rap group Goldie Lookin Chain also achieved chart success with their tongue-in-cheek take on hip-hop. Key records such as Skinnyman's Council Estate of Mind, and Klashnekoff's The Sagas Of... were released, cementing the reputations of the artists and opening up the floor for new artists to emerge. Labels Low Life Records, run by prominent political rapper Braintax, and Young N' Restless started and became the starting point for many. At the same time, just as Garage was losing momentum, grime was creating interest. Wiley's Treddin' on Thin Ice was a cornerstone of the genre, and one-time friend Dizzee Rascal won a Mercury Music Prize for his debut Boy in da Corner. From then on, grime artists were the only MC's for interested record labels, and UK Hip-Hop's momentum dried up.
  A new generation of young socially conscious hip-hop musicians emerged as a counter to the grime scene that many in the UK Hip Hop scene perceived as commercial. These rappers strived to bring attention to both positivity and lyricism as well as the injustices of war, gentrification and racism, following in the tradition of conscious rappers such as Nas, Mos Def and Talib Kweli. Amongst this new generation included artists such as Klashnekoff, Akala, Lowkey and the Poisonous Poets.
  The mid-2000s saw the emergence of road rap, a genre that took influences from American gangsta rap and focused on crime, gang, or violent themes. Road rap was pioneered by artists such as PDC and Giggs' SN1 crew.
  By the late 2000s, grime music has entered into a period of stagnation. This led to an emergence of acts that, while influenced by or initially started out making grime, were moving into a more commercialised, hip-hop influenced form of music. Artists from this new wave included N-Dubz, Tinchy Stryder, Tinie Tempah, and Chipmunk (later known as Chip) who emerged in the late 2000s to great commercial success. Tinchy Stryder scored two number ones with songs Number 1 and Never Leave You and became the best-selling British solo artist of 2009. The following year continued the success of the previous, with acts like Professor Green and Tinie Tempah breaking through to even bigger commercial success and also critical appreciation. The debut album from Tinie Tempah called Disc-Overy went to number one in the UK album chart and was certified platinum on 1 March 2011. He also won a Brit Award for his number one single "Pass Out". Rapper Plan B found success with his 2010 Hip Hop and Soul fusion album The Defamation of Strickland Banks, followed by the soundtrack album Ill Manors in 2012, both of which peaked at number 1 in the UK Albums Chart. In 2014, Scottish alternative hip-hop trio Young Fathers won the Mercury Music
caption: Chipmunk (left) and Skepta (right) with American rapper Sean Combs in 2011. Combs has also given recognition to Stormzy.[44]
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