Roll Deep

Roll Deep were the preeminent, pioneering grime crew before the genre was even called grime. The East London blend of hip-hop and techy electronic music -- in which the beat bounces around like it's got the hiccups and the rhymes skitter erratically over the top -- evolved out of the U.K. garage rap scene, inspiring critic Simon Reynolds to dub it gabba-gangsta-garage. The group's informal lead MC and producer, Wiley, preferred to call his sound "eski," but he was doomed to be dubbed "the Godfather of Grime" whether he liked it or not. The extended crew fluctuated up to as man...