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Wiley, 2005

There are some songs that seem to defy a group’s established stylistic tendencies. And there are some songs that are just plain weird.

While browsing through grime crew Roll Deep’s discography yesterday, I stumbled across their compilation album Street Anthems. I already knew most of the classics, “While I’m ‘Ere,” “Eskimo,” “Babylon Burner,” etc., but what I didn’t know was one song in particular called “Shake A Leg.”

Without a doubt, this is the weirdest grime track I have ever heard, so much so that it’s unsure whether it can really be called a grime track.

Instead of the characteristic eskibeat that Wiley perfected during his time in Roll Deep, we hear a Latin and Caribbean-inspired cha-cha tune that transports you into a colorful dance club somewhere in Trinidad. There’s no hint or reference to grime anywhere in the instrumentals. While grime does have funky beats, “Shake A Leg’s” instrumental is funky in a more traditional way, as it doesn’t incorporate any of the cold or angular textures heard in eskibeat.

Though Wiley is an innovator in his genre, I had a feeling that he didn’t produce this track. A quick WhoSampled search told me that the track sampled in “Shake A Leg” is “The Mambo Craze,” an obscure song by a German downtempo jazz group called De-phazz, from their 1999 album Godsdog. The group is still active today – they just released an album last year.

The only grimey thing about this track is that members of Roll Deep are spitting over it. The funny part is that the members of the crew are just as bewildered by the beat as the listener is – Wiley spits: “Oi! Dan! Wot you call this?/Why have you got me spittin on this?/I usually don’t spit on tracks like these/but it’s just the start and I’m starting to like it.”

“Shake A Leg” might be the proto-grime crossover – it appeals to those who might find grime too aggressive or shouty, and has a great deal of pop appeal. However, because the song was part of In At The Deep End, it doesn’t suggest that any of the members have sold out to pop. It also helps that the MCs on this track are pretty self-aware that this song doesn’t exactly fit the aesthetics of grime.

You can check out “Shake A Leg” here (this version doesn’t actually have the lyrics).