Music
Jammer on the return of Lord Of The Mics and clashing as therapy
As the seminal grime DVD brand returns for its eighth series, the veteran MC and producer talks about the show's origins – and why clash culture can be a teaching tool.
Half his lifetime ago, shortly after the turn of the millennium, Jammer was stood with his trusty video camera in hand, crouched in the basement of his parents’ home in Leytonstone, East London. Today we're back in that very house and I'm asking what drove him to launch the iconic grime DVD Lord Of The Mics. “I just wanted to show everybody how sick Kano was," he says. "So I had him stand next to Wiley, and that was it. Everything else came from that moment.” And he flicks the kettle on to make a cup of tea.
The Wiley vs Kano clash that followed would go on to become the most historic of all time – The Godfather, who had cut his teeth in rave, jungle and garage, versus the teenage upstart trying to make his mark. Jammer’s video documenting of MC battles – already a mainstay on pirate radio – would prove to be an unparalleled energising platform for artists like Tinchy Stryder and Skepta to gain greater visibility and industry backing early in their careers. “It’s still the same concept as it was then: showcasing talent," Jammer continues. "I think I’m put here to see the potential in things before other people see it.”
Jammer sits in the kitchen of grime's 'Abbey Road'
© Tristan Bejawn
Clashing grows strength, understanding and knowledge
The 36-year-old MC, producer and overseer has only just arrived to meet me at the house. Situated at the southern tip of Epping Forest, the residential roads are wrapped in a green space that gives the area an airy, suburban calm – a far cry from the cold, urban claustrophobia usually associated with grime’s conception. The location is often called grime’s 'Abbey Road' on account of the formative years the genre’s originators spent there, battling on the mic and recording music in Jammer's parents' converted coal bunker.
"It's a living thing," says Jammer, pondering Lord Of The Mics' legacy. “When we started, it was in the moment, and then it grew outwards. In hindsight, you can see how the greatness unravelled. But at the time I was just so heavily driven to get a voice for myself and for others around me. That was my main drive, to be heard. You know what I’m saying?”
My mind wanders back to half an hour beforehand. I was sat waiting for Jammer to arrive in the house's living room, which is piled high with musical instruments, books and family photos. I’d been welcomed in by his dad, Jerry Power, who speaks in the same considered, peaceful tone and light East End twang as his son, and our conversation quickly collapsed into one about the power of music.
Jammer seated on the famous staircase
© Tristan Bejawn
Fellow BBK star JME is just one of the MCs to have made the pilgrimage
© Tristan Bejawn
Haile Selassie artwork on the basement's wall
© Tristan Bejawn
A reggae musician himself, Power used to give lessons to locals eager to learn how to play instruments. Back in the early 2000s, young men from all over the city would gather on his home's steep wooden stairs, and he didn’t mind playing host – as long as people were respectful.
“It was better than them being out on the street,” he explains, before drawing a parallel to when he used to box and first learned constructive ways, alongside music, to handle himself and absorb discipline. He adds that as Lord Of The Mics started to grow from its humble beginnings, he and Jammer would connect up a live stream of the clashing going on downstairs to the television suspended ahead of us. Guests would queue into the corridor and out of the front door to try and catch a glimpse of the spontaneous lyrical alchemy taking place beneath the floorboards.
When asked what drove the early organisational prowess of the grime years, Jammer lays it firmly at the feet of frustration. “With the youth now, the frustration is still there, but you have a lot more outlets to put your art out there – through technology, through the growth of the scene, through executives in companies now having younger people in charge who understand. There is more of an infrastructure and understanding of what’s going on. But back then people didn’t have anything else to put their frustration, their focus, their anger into. So for us, being able to see records and products made, and to put stuff out to the public, and have an audience say 'I like what you’re doing', that was like a medicine, a therapy for the frustration people felt. Things started to get better through that. I saw me being able to talk to people and steer them away from the street and other things they shouldn’t have been doing at the time."
But the underground bunker wasn't just a space for people to overcome their frustrations and stay off the street. Jammer sees the clashes having a number of benefits for the MCs involved. “It grows strength, understanding and knowledge," he says. "It strengthens you in different ways to not react to certain things. Two people come together to test each other, and say these crazy things to each other. There are all different types of angles and pressures when you have a camera in front of you. But it’s artistic, skilful. You don’t react. You hold [your] ground, you respond, and you show [your] true form as a human.
"I think there is a very thin line between reacting negatively and being able to understand that this is a sport, this is entertainment, and to show people: I know who I am. After that, things get big, people start doing their shows together, performing their music, start to get known and have this buzz around them. It’s almost like turning a negative into positive. And sometimes in grime, people had real problems, so rather than it getting physical, they could just do it on the mic. Obviously, that was going on before I decided to video anything. MCs [were] battling anyway. But Lord Of The Mics was packaging – it was putting what we were doing in a formula so people could digest it properly."
I suggest to Jammer that the technological transition that has taken place since Lord Of The Mics launched has meant that thriving new-gen local scenes, sheltered underneath the fluid and intermixing umbrella terms of UK rap, drill and Afro-swing, have been able to thrive off the back of grime’s infrastructure and heritage. This has meant that, instead of clashing over pirate radio or on Lord Of The Mics in person, young artists can create hype, attention and controversy – they can build an entire career and marketing campaign with worldwide reach – from behind their bedroom doors. What does he make of this shift?
“I think a lot of that personality has been taken away. One thing that was good about grime is that once people got into these places, and they started clashing each other, they were suddenly familiar with people from other areas, and it started to slow down the chance of bad things happening – it became a safe zone. That created a social group who started to have a lot more respect for each other. I believe that community always wins. Music is there to bring people together. That’s the basis of it. It’s a crazy time for music right now, so much is going on, and I think over time people will get the message. Everything I’ve been involved in, it’s always based on love and respect for others. Maybe some argument came in here or there – over money, a girl, whatever. But this whole thing started from love and respect and we need to remember that."
Watch Reece West's Lord Of The Mics hype session below.
The eighth series of Lord Of The Mics is out this summer after a three-year hiatus, during which Jammer and the rest of grime’s most prominent figures have been busy touring the world and steering the genre’s resurgence. Released across a range of platforms and filmed in different locations, it features a large, diverse roster of MCs from all over the UK, including young Birmingham talent T-Roadz and Stevenage’s SBK. “On every instalment, we’ve brought you new artists who have created some of the biggest songs featured on playlists today. And these boys I’ve selected are going to bring you the best music you’re going to hear again."
At the end of our conversation, Jammer leads me down into the basement. The old walls are covered in scribbled names I recognise from all aspects of grime’s story: some are now world famous, some are long forgotten one-hit-wonders of Channel U hood fame, and some are no longer with us. Jammer tells me that the first people to sign the walls were his father and his uncles. The room stretches back into a cramped tunnel. Pinned to the wall above a keyboard is an A4 sheet of paper with the title “Following”, underneath which reads a printed quotation:
“...If you follow a group because it is currently powerful and influential, you are not really following anything but your own ambition and your own need for approval. But if you follow a group or leader because of the quality of its beliefs and goals and not merely to advance your own Selfish Interests, you will be without blame.”
On another part of the wall, scribbled nearly out of view behind a pair of turntables, in black felt tip pen, reads:
“Half the story has never been told.”
Jammer: "Half the story has never been told"
© Tristan Bejawn
For more information on the forthcoming Lord Of The Mics 8, click here.
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