The first quarter of the year is done, could you sum up grimes achievements in brief for us, and what do we have to look forward to for the next 3 months or so?


The scene can take credit for making a couple of pop hits in wearing my Rolex and Rolex sweep, but they aren't traditional grime records. In terms of the achievements of grime music, it just continues to produce a steady strong flow of good music and is slowly building a structure to get that music released to a wider audience through hmvs and other chain stores. Hopefully digital and vinyl releases can match the strong sales of Cd's soon.


What do you think is the roll of the grime DJ in 2008? There are big underground DJ e.g Spyro, Maximum & Vectra how do you think they can push the music better?


The deejay's roll is twofold. To provide music for the live sets mixing up the instrumentals, and to work behind the scenes to promote the music and artists in the scene.


How do you think young DJ can get into grime? It has changed from everyone just going to a local pirate a long time ago now, and there isn't much vinyl out there for budding djs to buy, what is your advice?


You need to hustle. Mixing good is cool. Having 'exclusive' instrumentals is cool. But if you have nowhere to play them it is a waste of time. Young djs need to look at marketing themselves so they become a commodity. The scene already has Mak 10 and Spyro. Being the tightest mixer in the world isn't going to bring anything new to the table. New tricks, new producers, blending new genres of music with grime. Do something different to get noticed.


The producer has got the hard bargain since the mix CD era has taken over grime, and the vinyl slowed down. How can producers get their music out there in the public, and see a small return for their investments?


Producers need to network with the artists. When their beats are used on lead singles from mixtapes and get legal radio airplay, if the tracks are registered with prs you can get a healthy cheque every 3 months.


Can you shed more light on the oneaway style project, i.e How it came about, whats on it, and where people can pick it up from?


Oneaway style is something which came to me when i heard that Nike were opening an id studio in niketown london. I was thinking of exclusive creps and the word oneaway popped into my head. And obviously i linked it with oneaways in music. I thought that whole mentality and attitude of exclusivity was something core in the culture of the streets in London, and it made perfect sense to approach Nike to do a CD which not only promoted grime music to the Nike buying audience, but celebrated the idea of oneaway items of clothing and footwear which is the whole point of Nike id. It all dovetailed nicely as a statement of culture.


The Urban Music Awards awards are approaching, do you think it is important for grime acts to get awards at these type of events?


It would be important if the awards were respected by the public, but seeing as they are all rigged no one really cares. Accolades and plaques mean very little in the 21st century, i prefer to worry about the respect of my audience. If they respect me and what i am doing, that means more to me than a cheap piece of glass.


What do you think the future holds for the grime rave? There is only one regular grime night in London and basically none anywhere else in the UK, how can mcs, djs and promoters and possibly the fans mend this situation?


There are no regular grime raves. There are 'parties' where people might play grime, but they have turned into trendy fashion shows for wastemen to stand up and pose at. There's nothing for people who genuinely love grime music now. I recently played at an event with jammer and the crowd were clearly there for a day out, not to rave. I ended up playing a bag of dubplates that used to mash down rumble, stampede and young man standing and would get beat out on de ja and rinse back in the day. Classic grime tracks, but not the same 10 bait eskimo dance reload tracks. No one in the dance knew any of the tunes. That's how i knew that practically no one in the venue had seen the inside of eq or rex, never used to have to go through metal detectors to rave, never seen dizzee rascal MC on a set rather than at a concert. I miss playing grime to people who are into the music, not people who are there as cultural tourists. I have no problem with these trendy shoreditch and whitechapel nights, but when there are no real grime raves to play it, it just gets on my tits. And i blame the police for that. Ignorant policing.


In the UK right now we have the dubstep, funky house and bassline scenes making a lot of noise. Do you positive examples of the way they do things differently that we should be doing in grime right now? I.E dubstep regular vinyl releases, bassline & funkys monthly mix Cd's?


These genres of music succeed because they are allowed to hold events. Funky house is house music, and if you put house music on a license application, unless you have a certain few dj's names on the line up, the police will let it go. House is so wide that they can't close down every house event because it might be one of those funky house events where the coke dealers go. Even supa d had to change his name to supa surprise DJ because every event with his name on got locked off by the police because of fear of violence. But house is a big enough scene that the promoters can continue to put on parties and get lost in the shuffle. You can fiddle the license applications so that it doesn't set off alarms with the police and get locked off. Dubstep appeals to a mainly middle class crowd, a largely white middle class crowd. They are allowed to put on their events. Bassline i have a lot of respect for as a business model because they have to deal with a lot of the same social problems grime does in terms of the people raving to it. The crowd at a bassline rave up north is identical to the crowd who would reach sidewinder or eskimo dance in 2002-2004. Maybe the police up there aren't as on it as the met. They seem to get away with putting on raves on the regular with a higher frequency of violence than grime does. If you look at grime, the most successful group of artists by a mile are boy better know, and it is no coincidence that they have a large following not only on the underground, but amongst a mode middle class crowd. They can play a grimey underground event one week, and then do a uni gig the next night. They are smashing it, and that is because they are effectively on tour all year, doing 3 or 4 live gigs each week. We make dance music, and dance music makes it's hits in the clubs. If you don't allow the music in the clubs and don't want the people who listen to that music in the clubs, then you don't make hits. It is nothing to do with anyone in dubstep, bassline or funky having any greater business nous or strategies, because most of the people making money out of those scenes tried it in grime and failed because they simply weren't allowed to do the things with grime music that they can do with dubstep, bassline and funky house. I don't have any resentment to those scenes for their success, i resent the authorities for basically coming out and saying in other words that a certain demographic of people is not welcome in clubland and they will do everything they can to keep them from raving to the music they love.


Is grime lacking an "official compilation", for a representation in the mainstream. There are tons of rnb, hip hop, bassline, house, and even old school garage collections out there now, is there a reason why a grime one hasn't come out since run the roads 2? Are labels scared of it, or is it because there is no demand?


A compilation is something which is made up of hits. House has them, bassline has them, rnb and hip hop has plenty. Grime has an abundance of great tracks, but not many hits. Compilations don't sell of the back of their quality, they sell off the back of the success of the singles on them. That is why run the roads is no more. There were some great tracks on there, but hardly any of them were hits. That is due to the restrictions placed on the music. I could put a CD out with a bunch of great tunes on tomorrow, but the people who care about grime are the underground fans, and most of them download. It would sell terribly unless i got the wider public to run into hmv and buy. And to get them and hmv to care, you need hits. Grime has none right now. It's not the right time. However if you mean grime is lacking a regular easy to obtain collection of the freshest best music, i agree. But selling it wouldn't work. That is why i am so stubbornly determined on doing regular free mix Cd's. And they will be coming. If i could burn my radio show every week and hand it out to people in the streets i would, because that is what people need. The best in grime music every month compressed into one download or cdr.


The last Adamantium release was Maniacs Devil EP? It has been a while since, can you share with us what you have forthcoming, and let us know why releasing a record is a long process.


It has been a while. I had some problems with my distributor. I have now resolved those issues and have a backlog of releases which i am about to work through, the first couple due to land at the end of may. There is not a thriving vinyl market, which means anything you put out is going into rebuilding said market. That is why it is a long process, you aren't making a quick profit which you can re-invest into new titles. You are propping up a market which has been through a big downturn. It can be salvaged though, because no matter how cool cdjs are, most djs say they prefer vinyl, so the mentality is there.


Whats your opinion on radio rips; most of them come from your show, do you feel it helps artists, or does it encourage people to play out a song way before it is due for release? Does this influence what tunes you select for your shows?


Radio rips are part of the modern age. If a couple hundred people rip tunes out of my show and play them a thousand times on their phone or ipod and get sick of them, that is their choice. Really it doesn't affect whether they will pay for the music when it is released or not, it simply offers them a convenient excuse not to buy. It is such a small number of people however that if you do your marketing and promotion correctly, it works in your favour. You have a core audience bigging up your tune and it becomes the thing to look out for. Then the secondary market becomes aware of the track and looks out for it through traditional channels like itunes and record shops, rather than their msn list and webforums.


There has been a lot of discussion about your impressive listener numbers on the radio show, how can we convert some of these listeners into sales of the music?


With investment in promotion. Wearing my Rolex was born on mine and Target's show and it is at number 2 in the charts as I type this with all number of radio rips and leaked promos online for people. Wiley is making huge amounts of money and everyone is happy. The only difference is someone invested in the tune, it came out on a wide enough platform and got heard by a wide enough audience for it to be profitable. Without that investment then you end up with the other 100 or so records Wiley has made which are infinitely more groundbreaking and inventive, yet never saw 1/100Th of the spins Rolex is getting.


If we talk again in December what would you hope grime would have achieved by then?


Stability, structure, consistency. But without selling out the excitement and raw edge that makes it special.

Oneaway style is out may 6th FREE from Nike town. He is also playing at this event: