With its rapid-fire rapping, lyrics that are often impenetrable to outsiders and raw, synthetic timbres, grime was never an obvious candidate for international success. But from east London's tower blocks to the stages of California's Coachella festival, the genre has grown from humble origins to become the U.K.'s latest music export.
However, long before Kanye West and Drake were trying their hardest to attach themselves to the sound — the latter in particular has appropriated the genre and its associated culture in a somewhat cringeworthy fashion — grime had already found small but welcoming communities of fans in Tokyo, the Kansai region and other pockets of Japan. Central to that connection has been the record label Butterz, which this Saturday celebrates its eighth anniversary at Tokyo club Unit alongside promoter DBS, who is marking 22 years in the game.
Going from a blog to radio to eventually becoming a label and club night, the evolution of Butterz reads like that of many present-day electronic music institutions (it began releasing music in 2010, hence this year's eighth anniversary). And its engagement with the Japanese grime scene reflects the development of the Web 2.0-enabled globalization of U.K. dance music, with producers in Japan initially sending label owners Elijah Thomas and William Eugene — better known as Elijah and Skilliam — beats over MSN Messenger from around 2009 onward after encountering the internet stream of their show on London radio station Rinse FM.