The MC’s spat with a fellow grime star is forgotten on a night when he displays his lightning-fast verbal skills
For a man who threatened to kill someone the other day, Dizzee Rascal makes for a convincing peacekeeper. Half a dozen songs into his set in Newcastle, a tussle breaks out in the moshpit. Dizzee shouts to his DJ, MK, to stop everything. As security wade in, the 33-year-old instructs the offending parties to move to opposite sides of the room; huge cheers erupt. His manner is equable, patient – a little, perhaps, like one of the teachers the young Dylan Mills sorely tested back in Bow, east London, around the turn of the millennium (this third night of his sold-out UK tour falls on World Teachers’ Day).
You sense this set-to is very small beer compared with the early days of grime. Now, in the best possible sense, it can be just another genre. Fifteen years on, its recent resurgence – Stormzy’s Gang Signs & Prayer, released in February, was the first grime LP to hit No 1 in the UK albums chart – has prompted discussion about the scene’s formative years. Dizzee performed his Mercury-winning debut album, 2003’s Boy in Da Corner, in its entirety at two celebrated gigs in New York and London last year, underlining not only its influence (Stormzy sourced his outraged yelp from Dizzee) but its enduring immediacy.
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