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Music

WTF, Big H walked out of his headline clash at Lord of the Mics

We spoke to his competitior, P Money, about why he wimped out.

Jammer’s pet project, Lord of the Mics, is one of the biggest events in the grime calendar. It’s basically the Royal Rumble of grime music; people clash, fans take sides, someone goes home as the winner. It’s full of hype and has been increasingly treated like a Pay-Per-View wrestling bout. This year, Lord of the Mics cost £100 per ticket, with only 150 tickets up for sale. P Money and Big H were the headline clash, with the event being advertised as being “part of Grime history”.

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Big H's placing on the bill is surely down to the success of Meridian Dan’s “German Whip”, on which he has a feature. For some, the 4 million YouTube plays that song has racked up are a sign of grime's return to wider-public consciousness.

So this morning I picked my feeble carcass out of bed and hit up Dalston.

I arrived and a #DENCH security guard greeted me. He wanted to make sure that everyone was okay and I wanted to admire his tattoos.

A lot of grime’s biggest name were in attendance. Noisey’s entertainment correspondent and man of the year, Big Narstie, had come down to take a few selfies.

Tempz was there too. A bunch of guys in snapbacks wanted to have their photo with him.

A couple of grime super fans were being interviewed before the clashes kicked off. This guy was excited to see “Big P and H Money”.

They were also handing out these goody bags with various Lord of the Mics memorabilia. This guy, who calls himself MC Surgeon, rocked the age-old "one lense over, one lense under" look with one of the complimentary bandanas.

Cool jeans brah. After a couple of hours of hanging around drinking drinks and lending people lighters in the smoking area, it was time for the main event: P Money vs Big H.

Except not really. One round in and P Money had fired enough verbal shots to get Big H riled to the point of no reply. He didn’t have enough bars to finish the round and was about to leave and jump in his German whip – which, if P Money is to be believed, is actually French and "Big H winds his windows down with a wrench".

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After a few failed attempts to get the DJ to rewind, Big H decided it was time to leave the stage. Despite the fact that the battle hadn’t even finished, he made a swift attempt to leave the building. Then he came back on stage, demanding more money from Jammer. Then he left again. It was like he couldn't decide what he was more prang about, battling P or not getting his fee for leaving early. Meanwhile P Money remained on the stage, calling out Big H for failing fans and, ultimately, not giving them what they had paid £100 to see. It was the most embarrassing thing to happen at a UK battle since this.

We waited around for a while to try and catch Big H. Someone told me that he was too scared to leave the building in case people saw him drive off in his Peugeot. However, I did catch P Money. Here’s what he had to say:

Noisey: Hi P Money. What do you think about what just went down?

P Money: Basically, it’s a shambles. I’m not happy. It was meant to be one of the biggest clashes in history – it weren’t. All I gotta say is Big H went round claiming he is the lord of grime, the king of grime and on top of the scene. He said to me he doesn’t watch Lord of the Mics, he has never watched Lord of the Mics. A man that’s the lord of grime cannot say he doesn’t watch Lord of the Mics. One phrase he said to me was, “people that work in McDonalds don’t eat McDonalds”. He’s saying just because I do grime, doesn’t mean I care about it and today he showed that. He didn’t write any bars, he didn’t prepare - he came for the money. Live on stage he said, "you want more bars, pay me." He is here for the money, he’s not here for the fans, he’s not here for the support, he doesn’t care about the people that paid £100 to come. He only cares about himself and it's fucked up. I want nothing to do with that to be honest. I can’t see there being a rematch. He is not human.

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What should Lord of the Mics mean to grime as a genre?

It’s our thing. It’s a genre and it’s just not recognised as one because of stuff like this and people like this. It don’t carry us nowhere. They do stuff that makes our scene look dumb. Like, we can’t organise stuff, we can’t do stuff. So then on iTunes we don’t have our own section because of stuff like this. This was the time to show people we could organise a sick event. People paid £100, it’s packed out. This was the event to show people grime is popping and he ruined it.

Big H was unavailable for comment.

Follow James on Twitter: @JamesEmb

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