Friends Like These: JME and Yizzy

The video for Yizzy‘s recent JME-featuring single ‘Grime’ is something special. A visual celebration of the genre, the clip features recreations of a host of iconic grime music videos including Dizzee Rascal‘s ‘I Luv U’, Skepta‘s ‘Shutdown’ and Stormzy‘s ‘Shut Up’.

“It’s a feel-good video,” Yizzy explains of the ‘Grime’ clip. “I’ve had more people hit me up about this video than any video I’ve ever done — it’s a proper talking point. I think I even saw one person clocked the Crazy Titch walking along the bridge reference, and they were like: ‘I remember first watching this when it came out, I feel so old now!’. It’s like nostalgia: people start remembering stuff from that time.”

Yizzy is speaking with JME for the latest edition of NME‘s Friends Like These series (which you can watch in full above), with both artists noting that the nostalgia factor has been a big talking point about the ‘Grime’ video — although it’s not the kind of reaction that they were necessarily expecting.

“It’s mad, because when we were doing it I wasn’t thinking of that,” says JME. “I was just thinking it’s going to be sick. It’s hard to think of how people are going to take something and react to something and how it’s going to make people feel. Like you’re saying the tweets are coming in now non-stop, every time I open my phone… and from bare different people. You can’t really pre how nostalgia’s going to be triggered in other people.”

‘Grime’ is the opening track on Yizzy’s new EP ‘Prince of Grime’, which he executively produced and led the visual concept for in a bid to show his growth as an artist. The EP is also part of a wider story, as Yizzy explains: “It started with [2018 EP] ‘S.O.S’, which stood for ‘Save Our Sound’. I hated the fact that grime was getting mislabelled and misrepresented and [how] nobody was really talking up, and was just kind of happy that grime was getting a mention full-stop.

“So we went from ‘Save Our Sound’ to [2019’s] ‘Welcome to Grime Street’ to ‘Prince of Grime’,” he continues about his discography’s chronology. “So it’s me saying: ‘Alright, I’m here to try and save the sound for the next generation, like me pushing that forward. This is what grime means to me – welcome to grime street.’

“Now it’s like: welcome to grime street, who lives there? The Prince of Grime.”

Yizzy’s ‘Prince of Grime’ EP is out now.

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