Ten Classic Grime Photos and the Stories Behind Them

This article originally appeared on Noisey UK.

If you’ve never gazed at a copy of Don’t Call Me Urban, then you need to fix that ASAP, because it’s probably the most famous documentation of the original London grime scene and the culture that birthed it. It’s basically like grime’s Old Testament, but instead of the Tower of Babel and the ten plagues, it’s gritty photos of Skepta in a chip shop and Crazy Titch posing with a pitbull.

The photographer behind it, Simon Wheatley, originally hit the streets in the late 90s to take some photos of the architecture around East London, but he became way more fascinated with the music that was booming from the bedroom windows in the tower blocks and high-rises, and the people who were mutilating their PC speakers just to play it. In the years that followed, he shot the scene religiously.

Don’t Call Me Urban was the physical fruit of that labour, a photo book that was originally released back in 2011, when grime had stagnated slightly, but is now being viewed with greater perspective as the genre rejuvenates. Now, Simon is releasing the book in digital form, packed with tonnes of new shit, like video content - including documentaries on scene stalwarts Chronik and Merky Ace - and an exclusive soundtrack from Novelist and The Square.

To make a song and dance out of all this, we asked Simon to roll his eyes back in his head and gaze into the past to tell us the stories behind nine of his favourite photos from back in the day, from Jammer’s basement to Poplar youth clubs and everything in between.

Continues below

With grime becoming so popular, it’s easy to forget where it came from and just how raw it once was. This was shot in a pirate radio station in Bow in the early hours of the morning. As the session ended, a couple of youths suddenly took knives out from their rucksacks. This guy went by the name of Havoc and he lived on the Isle of Dogs. In the background is Scratchy from Roll Deep.

This was shot on the staircase of the legendary basement where they went on to film all the Lord of the Mics. Looking back, and knowing how many people Jammer has worked with, the basement seemed like some kind of laboratory of grime music. I was working for Rewind magazine at the time, and they wanted a picture of all of the producers together. I tried different arrangements, moving everyone around trying to get the balance right and only felt comfortable with the shot in the last couple of exposures. Earz started out at the top of the staircase at the beginning of the roll and ended up at the bottom. Jammer said to the editor of Rewind, who was also present, that Earz was going to be the next Dizzee. Earz was one of the nicest guys I came across in grime, so hopefully there’s still time.

What turned out to be the cover picture for my book was really a throwaway picture. I was again on assignment for Rewind and Titch was waiting for me near some typical Stratford blocks on a bench with his dog, who I tried to be nice to. He warned me not to, that the dog didn’t like people who talked too much. Indeed it soon took exception to me.
I wanted to make a dramatic picture with the dog leaping up at the camera so measured the distance between us, so it would be just short of the lens. I’d make the exposure, jump back, wind on the film and wait for the next leap. I was shouting to Titch telling him for god’s sake not to let go of the lead. Then we went inside the block and sat on the staircase, where he was lecturing the amazingly obedient dog.

I shot a couple of frames of that before he sat down and faced the camera. Rewind used one of these frames, him looking at the dog with a wary tenderness - along with the leaping shot. I remember having one frame left on the roll and us being in a hurry to go, and wondering whether to just leave the last exposure blank. He was smoking his spliff but I knew Rewind could never run a shot of that. I felt I had my picture already, that nothing was happening between him and the dog that I’d not already captured, but I hated wasting film and we were in a hurry. He took a drag and I shot what I thought was something I’d never use before rolling out the film.

My assistant Marlon took a drag on Titch’s spliff after we’d put the camera away and I don’t know what he was smoking because an hour later Marlon, an experienced Jamaican who’s grown up around weed, was wandering around Elephant and Castle tunnels in total disorientation on our way to get the film to the lab. I also remember the dog biting the hand of a sweet, smiling old man who came down the stairs and patted its head and his daughter coming out soon after saying she was going to call the police. Actually, that was why Crazy TItch was in a hurry.

I used to go to emceeing sessions at youth clubs with Bomb Squad and The Wile Out Onez, who were the ‘youngerz’ of Roll Deep. This one was run by Wiley’s dad, a calm and soft-spoken Caribbean chap. But the sessions were not calm at all and this picture captures the frenzy of youths grappling for the mic and the chance to spit their bars. In the end the emceeing got closed down at this club because it got too violent. There was a guy from E3 who was at school in the neighbouring postcode of E14 and brought his mates here, where they clashed with the E3 boys. It was the time when the madness of postcode warfare was becoming a phenomenon across London.

There was this ice cream van in front of me and a load of guys on my left and it felt a bit like having to pick teams for a game of football in the park. Scratchy’s hair jumped out at me and I just decided to put him on the roof. Breeze had a shiny white top so it made sense to stick him in the front seat in a darker area. But by the time I had placed a couple of the other guys he had disappeared and was round the back of the van rolling a spliff. Flowdan started off to the left of Danny Weed but I asked him to come forward and use his shadow in the foreground. As the shot warmed up Riko started to express himself and that’s what made the picture in the end. Trim was clowning around a lot, I seem to remember, and couldn’t keep still. So I asked him to go sunbathe on the edge of the van.

This digital age of mass distraction and hype may well have undermined concentration levels, but otherwise scatterbrained youths could be incredibly focused if there was an instrumental playing on a loop and everyone had a pad of paper and pen. The boy in the headphones was the youngest in the crew. He was only 14 and had been kicked out of school, and he had probably begun to see music as his way out.

I had already started photographing quite a bit in E3 but would rarely see these guys around since they were too busy making music and not really on the roads much I guess. I asked them to take me to three locations that were important to them growing up. We started at the 3 Flats in Devons Road, then went to a couple of places in Mile End. For Rewind I chose the picture of the 3 flats, but for the book I chose the image that showed Canary Wharf. It offers a social comment about the changing landscape of East London.
(This image went on to be used on the cover of Ruff Sqwad’s White Label Classics CD when it was released in 2012)

The pictures I made of Nasty crew in Plaistow on a Rewind assignment were not very good. I remember the day most for an incident in the car when Chewy from Rewind and I were driving back to the station with Stormin’ and Nasty Jack. Suddenly another car drove up in front of us, blocking the road. The two emcees moved really fast and Chewy, who was with me in the back seat, told me to get down and get out of the car. Suddenly I was lying on the road behind another car, having expected a hail of bullets through the windscreen like one sees in films, but it was just a near-collision. Chewy later said that Stormin’ and Nasty Jack had reached for their straps but I never saw any weapons.

After that, in the early autumn of 2005, I spent a bit of time with some of the Nasty crew in Stratford, aware that they were already an important crew as grime was beginning to create its early history. I’d heard of Marcus Nasty and said I wanted to photograph him. So they called him and he turned up one evening for this portrait, and then after a few minutes he was gone.

I went up to Tottenham and met Skepta near White Hart Lane. We shot a roll on a basketball court but it was around the middle of the day and the overhead light was a bit strong. I can’t remember how the idea for the chip shop location came about, whether it was his or mine. I do certainly remember him being in a hurry.
He kept telling me that we couldn’t hang around too long in there that someone might drive by and shoot him. I’ve never felt this was one of my better shots but of course he is an important emcee and that T-shirt was also very important for my book that documents phenomena associated with The Time of Grime.

Find more out about the Don't Call Me Urban digital edition right here.