A few weeks ago, Stylus presented its third Survival Guide. This particular one was devoted to the exciting London hip-hop hybrid known as grime. Simon Hampson presented ten tracks with his thoughts on their relative importance to understanding where the genre has come from and where it’s going.

Below are three of those songs with Hampson’s descriptions attached.

J-Sweet– Gutter

One of the best ever true 8-bars (in which there are two alternating beats, repeated for 8 bars each). From the opening screech of the alarm siren, you know it’s going to be hardcore. Then that brutalist one-note stutter comes pummelling in, buzzing like a thousand starving locusts, and things kick off properly in gabba-garridge fashion. The other 8-bar sequence is a nicely dark piece of drum n bass-ish gelatinous synth but really, it’s just there to build up anticipation for the other, more mentalist, beat to come in. A slice of the really nasty, adrenalin crazed side of grime. Love it like cooked food.

D Double and Shola Ama– So Contagious

Grime isn’t just about angry boys shouting over clattering beats, you know. There’s a softer, R & B influenced, side to it that’s been called ‘Grimette’ and is spearheaded by Terror Danjah of Aftershock and Davinche of Paperchase Recordings. Here, Terror does his trademark futuristic shiny but grimey production thing, sounding like El-P raised on dub and rave. Synth lines swoop, twist and curl round each other like post-coital cigarette smoke, while the grimey edginess is kept in view by the metallic, clinking delay applied to those crunching beats which always remind me of walking in the snow. Shola Ama is fantastic on here as always, sticking to the tune and not doing the hateful Mariah-warble like so many R & B singers. And that moment where the music drops out and she sighs, ‘onhhhh’, like she’s both trying to regain composure and throwing herself straight in to love and passion is probably the sexiest thing you’ll hear all year (on record that is, what you get up to in your private life is your business). And the mighty D Double’s on it as well. What more can you ask for?

Riko and Target– Chosen One

There’s a sub-genre within grime of very inspirational, conscious tracks focussing on self-belief and self-reliance. “Chosen One” is probably the best of these, with other examples being Wiley’s “Pick Yrself Up” and Roll Deep’s “I Will Not Lose”. Producer DJ Target, of Roll Deep, performs a strange trick on this track, where it sounds very lush, thick, even orchestral, but if you listen closely there’s actually very little going on: just a few sketches of intersecting samples of synth and string-led melody, which suggest a much fuller sound, leaving your mind to fill in the gaps. The tune also has a wicked shimmery, delicate quality to it, sounding like it could fall apart at any moment into a million diamonds of sound. Riko hits you deep with the chorus of, “Stay calm, don’t switch your composure blud, use your head then battle through cuz you know you’re the chosen one”. Total belief and determination. And it also features one of my favourite lyrics ever: “Soon gonna see me on satellite / On Saturday/ On Saturnight…wait, Saturnight, that ain’t right / But I told you before I’ll say what I like!” Kids should study Riko in school.

[Interested in buying some of these 12”’s? Try these fine record stores: Uptown Records, Rhythm Division, Black Market and Big Apple]