After lockdown left a hole in grime's live circuit, Travs Presents filled it with radio sets, packed rooms, sharp bars and the sort of brotherhood you cannot manufacture, Raj Kapone meets the collective making grime feel communal, competitive and exciting again.
“Our mission is to make grime fun again,” says Travs. On a balmy evening outside NTS Radio, the residential block off Kingsland Road has taken him at his word. The weather has dragged chairs, speakers and dominoes into the square, turning the space beyond the doors into an impromptu block party. Dancehall rolls between the buildings. Locals slap down tiles. Micofcourse sits astride his motorbike, taking in the scene while legendary grime photographer Simon Wheatley moves around him with a camera. Inside, core DJs CHAMBER45 and SI*BL spin through the first hour of a two-hour Travs Presents (TP) set. Creatives and organisers Kwaane, Dan and David, alongside MCs Duppy, Logan OLM, Kruz Leone, Crafty 893, Jafro, Renz, Babydoom, SM, M.I.C. and Micofcourse, hang around, catch jokes, drift towards the mic and disappear again. Hennessy is poured. Chicken wings arrive. Every few minutes, somebody slips outside for air, a laugh or a moment with their girl. A few of the partners have already been christened “WAGs Presents.”
Travs watches, checks everything is moving and quietly redirects people when required. Everybody else is louder. It feels like being dropped into a friendship group that has temporarily remembered it also runs one of grime’s most exciting platforms.I had seen the full effect earlier this year at the Travs Presents’ ourth birthday at Colour Factory. JME, P Money, Rude Kid and Manga appeared alongside TP’s own generation, but it never felt like an old-skool package with a few younger names added for balance. Everyone was inside the same pressure cooker.
The atmosphere was familiar from early grime dances such as Eskimo Dance, Dirty Canvas and Straight Outta Bethnal: raw, unfiltered and liable to veer left without warning. RWD was present in those original rooms. This was not the same crowd wearing the same clothes and pretending the past 20 years had not happened. Classic riddims got played, bars were sprayed and gun fingers displayed, but the social contract was the real throwback. MCs, DJs and ravers were all expected to put something into the night.The crowd knew bars from artists the wider grime audience still needs introducing to. Reloads briefly turned Colour Factory into somewhere less structurally reliable. People were not filming history from a respectful distance.
They were inside it.TP borrows from grime’s original instincts without spending the whole night staring backwards. The first generation is in the room, but not mounted behind glass. The current lot are not being wheeled out as the educational segment before the names everybody knows.The need for something fresh became obvious after Covid. “Lockdown created the void,” says CHAMBER45. Before it, grime still had regular nights, radio sessions and places where the same faces kept crossing paths. Afterwards, promoters stepped back, artists moved towards other sounds and the scene’s physical circuit started looking like the high street after Woolworths closed. Then came the verdict. Grime was dead again.
Read the full feature in RWD Magazine Issue
133
Read the full feature in RWD Magazine Issue
133
