Thermodynamic beta

• The MC’s first full-length project after years of releasing tracks and performing at raves and on pirate radio, Treddin’ on Thin Ice is undoubtedly a foundational part of grime’s history.
• April marks 20 years since the release of Treddin, now considered a seminal grime album.
• Alongside Dizzee Rascal’s Boy In Da Corner (2003), Treddin’ On thin Ice is considered to represent a blueprint for one of Britain’s most exciting music cultures.

It’s not garage

• Eskibeat – Wiley’s own term for his early sound – was a “defiantly low-rent mass of jabbing rhythms, crude samples and rumbling bass frequencies” that established a powerful aesthetic model for future artists.
• Treddin’ marked grime’s separation from garage and other prevailing musical trends.
• Wiley establishes a musical meta-commentary on the evolution of grime from garage in the album’s first single Wot Do U Call It?

Grime: from infancy to adolescence

• Wiley is credited with not only fuelling grime’s emergence from the British underground’s post-garage music scene but also for carrying the genre from its infancy through to adolescence.
• He mentored pioneers Kano and Dizzee Rascal, as well as grime’s second-wave heroes Skepta and Stormzy.
• He also did much to pioneer grime’s early methods of production, distribution, promotion and consumption.
• Wiley, however, has fallen from grace following a torrent of antisemitic remarks he made on X in 2020.

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John Pierce O'Reilly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.