To call yourself a Godfather of something, you need to be fairly confident that you’ve amassed plenty of power and respect in your area of expertise.
It would be quite embarrassing to label yourself as such if you couldn’t justify it.
Fortunately for Wiley, the self-proclaimed title ‘Godfather of grime’ is a fully justified one, not just thanks to pushing out some huge tracks in the genre, but by being its inventor.
Making original music that is truly ‘original’, without sounding like your main influences is one thing. To be responsible for having created a whole genre really is special. By fusing the sounds of garage and jungle, with some drum n bass and a hash of other sounds thrown in, early Wiley, also known as ‘Eskiboy’, was the creator of a sound completely fresh and new, a sound which many other contemporaries would reproduce. He named it ‘Eskibeat’, but it later became known as grime, and was adopted as a major category in today’s music market.
After bouncing around from one music crew to another, he formed Roll Deep – a who’s who of grime’s now-biggest names.
Meanwhile as a solo artist, having already achieved massive recognition within his own genre, he blasted through into popular mainstream with tracks such as ‘Wearing my Rolex’ and 'Heatwave', before returning to a more familiar grittier sound.
He’s been a prominent musical force for the last decade and a half now, and is highly respected in and out of the musical sphere.
Even Her Majesty has approved of his work, decorating him with an MBE for services to music. Who knew Ma’am had such great taste in grime!
