Grime Note #1: Wiley, Gangsterz

I would not be anywhere near as immersed in grime as I am without Wiley, so I always planned on beginning this process with him. Doubtless I'll be returning to his music over and over; for now, I want to highlight one of the earliest times it astonished me. The song is Gangsterz, about 2/3 through the track's sing-songy call-and-response structure. It's just a small moment really, one of many variations on a theme, but the amount of information in the following two lines alerts the listener to Wiley's gifts as an MC:

"I got stabbed 14 times I can tell you it weren't by (gangsters), my uncle got stabbed like twice and he died, I told you he's one of them (gangsters)"

In these two short lines, Wiley tells us a lot about himself, his life, and the world around him. Violence may be a constant threat, but it manifests differently depending on the recipient. At the start, Wiley brags about surviving his own stabbing, in itself a boast most can't match. You would think being stabbed 14 times is as bad as it gets, but not only does Wiley suggest otherwise, he laughs off the poor technique of his assailants. In contrast, Wiley gives us the example of his uncle, who died from what we infer are two real-deal knife wounds. Not only does this further shame Wiley's unsuccessful attackers, it also demonstrates that Wiley comes from a background of true gangsters, men whose deaths are planned and executed with great skill. In quick succession, Wiley reasserts his legitimacy, delegitimizes his foes, and locates himself as one among London's toughest.

While I wouldn't want to fetishize the violence Wiley narrates, I think it's worth noting the skill with which he shares it. The truth of the matter is more nuanced than the song permits: in his autobiography, Wiley speaks to how his uncle's death deeply affected his mother, possibly to the point of her emotionally withdrawing from his own childhood. So it's not as if Wiley offers us this fact as hero worship. Rather, it's part of a complex method of synthesizing one's own experiences, often adverse, into something meaningful. Drawing again from his autobiography, Wiley doesn't look back fondly on his own stabbings any more than he admires his uncle's. But if such violence can't be avoided altogether, at least he can speak on it and narrativize it into part of his personhood. Better to subjectify oneself than be the object of someone else's violence.