I remember back when I first heard Dizzee Rascal’s iconic “Fix Up, Look Sharp.” It was when I couldn’t have bee more than 9 or 10. But at the time, I didn’t know the artist was Dizzee, and I didn’t even know the name of the song. I think I heard it on the radio driving with my mom in the car. I loved it. For years, it was stuck in the back of my head and, as I wasn’t nearly as internet-savvy as I am today, I didn’t know how to find it. It wasn’t until late 2014/early 2015 that I rediscovered my love for Dizzee Rascal, and that happened purely by chance. I was discovering the joy of PC Music and hyperpop, which led me to discover DJ Jack Dansu (NONSTOPPOP) and his FROSTY mix. He was mixing my favorite hyperpop tracks and putting bars from grime artists over those racks. When I heard his mix of Caladhort, featuring the bars from “Stand Up Tall,” I immediately began to research more of Dizzee’s work. I was thrilled when I found out that he did “Fix Up, Look Sharp” and from there, I explored the rest of his discography and introduced myself to other grime artists like Skepta, Kano, Wiley, Lethal Bizzle, Jme, Nolay, Lady Leshurr, and Big Narstie. That was my introduction to grime. I was hooked.

When I shared grime with my friends, they weren’t nearly as excited about it as I was. While I thought it was so cool, so refreshing, so much more sonically interesting than American hip-hop, to them, it just seemed like another iteration of rap. This isn’t to knock American hip-hop and rap; I love the genre and some of my favorite artists fall into this category. But back to sharing grime with my friends: this minor, everyday interaction among friends illustrates a larger issue with America’s relationship to grime. The struggle I had to get my friends excited about grime seems to be reflective of grime’s (in)ability to captivate the American mainstream.

The past year and a half saw a growing acceptance of grime in America. Even at my college, Oberlin, there was the first-ever grime-themed night at our little club, The ‘Sco. It seemed that America was finally warming up to grime again. Grime has an interesting history with the US. It’s not an entirely foreign genre to our nation – we liked Dizzee and The Streets for a second, and Lady Sovereign had a moment in the mid-2000s, but fizzled out quickly. What I sense here is a pattern: a grime artist somehow manages to garner US appeal, has one song that really sticks in America, and then seems to fade away. This only happens every few years or so. The last time the US really engaged with grime seems to be around 2007. But this pattern seems to be poised to change or even disappear. The entire music world, those in America and the UK at least, went berserk when Drake, the Canadian rapper who’s more meme than man, made a surprise on-stage appearance with up-and-coming grime crew Section Boyz, after the BRITs. Soon after, Drake also signed to Skepta’s label Boy Better Know and made yet another surprise appearance at a Mayfair club. Kanye also gave love to the genre at last year’s BRITs. With grime being lauded and celebrated by these North American mega-stars and the rising acceptance and appreciation of the genre within the states, it seems that grime is finally beginning to find a solid audience and fan base with Americans. This is the right moment for Americans to incorporate grime into their musical lives. But more than a year after many publications and blogs made predictions that grime was going to blow up here in 2016, the genre still really hasn’t taken off in the US. Skepta, who dropped the excellent Konnichiwa last month, did get ‘forked, but the album didn’t make the cut for Best New Music, despite scoring high marks on the site while other UK publications called it one of the best albums of the year. There was even a stage at SXSW loaded with grime acts that many Americans seemed excited to see, yet there seemed to be little coverage of it. With big North American artists like Drake and Yeezy openly proclaiming their love for grime, there has never been a better moment for grime to come into its own here. And now that we’re in an age that’s more connected than ever, grime artists can easily reach and create fans all over the globe, much more easily than they could 15 years ago. However, the genre is hitting the mainstream hip-hop and overall music scene in the US at a glacial pace. Why is this happening? Why isn’t grime captivating America?

These are questions that I don’t really have the answer to, and it doesn’t seem like other people have the answers either. I’ll posit a couple of reasons that might explain why grime’s not taking off here. It could be because Americans have tended to lump it in with hip-hop and rap, despite artists having made statements that it’s its own genre rooted in its own tradition and stylistic tendencies. It could also be that the subject matter of grime lyrics are hard to relate to for Americans. And while there is some lyrical continuity with US rap and UK grime, the subject matter is unique to the UK, and London in particular. It may be just because Americans simply don’t know that much about grime. Many American weeklies, music journals, and websites haven’t done much reporting on the grime scene. And while I would recommend readers to just type in grime in Google and go from there, some people just aren’t aware that it exists. It doesn’t help that mainstream media is only barely beginning to give grime any attention. One article argued that Americans are turning to grime because it’s less commercial than current American rap. I find this argument to be incredibly flawed, and the author clearly hasn’t been listening to the works of Run the Jewels, Chance the Rapper, or Kendrick Lamar, who’s album is a stellar modern thesis on what it means to be a black man in America in 2015. To argue this is to ignore the plethora of great and meaningful work by American rappers and is, frankly, insulting. It may also be that it’s not taking off because of the sheer volume of great work that our artists at home are putting out and is capturing our attention more than a UK grime artist many might not know about. However, I think this line of thinking is flawed – if a new artist, no matter where they’re from, is hyped up enough in the media, they’ll get more attention. So, maybe another possible answer is that grime artists aren’t getting them media attention necessary to really gain a wider audience in the US.

Like I said earlier, I don’t have the answer to these questions. I can only make educated guesses based on what I know, what I’ve listened to, and what I’ve seen. I’d love to get a discussion going on this and see if we can really parse out why it’s taking such a long time for Americans to “get” grime. If you’re so inclined to offer your opinion, or have better ideas as to why this is happening (believe me, I don’t doubt that there are better ideas) please leave a comment or two.