A Thursday in July 2018. I’m at my desk at the local authority where I work. Whenever the coast is clear, I minimise Outlook and speed-read the manuscript open behind. 1.25pm. I lock my screen, shake my usual lunch-buddy and set off down the high street. Relying on my peripheral vision, and familiarity with the roads, I keep my eyes glued to the pdf on my phone. I have a few pages to read. I arrive at a cafe. At a back table are execs from production company Mammoth Screen and DJ Target. I absorb the last lines of the manuscript – Grime Kids, by DJ Target. I head over to the table. Target and I are introduced. I take a breath and present my idea for a TV drama inspired by his book.
I admit I was a little nervous meeting Target (a DJ, music pioneer and grime royalty). I wasn’t sure how he’d respond to my vision. But I knew the story I wanted to tell. A coming-of-age drama, centred around a fictional group of friends (Junior, Bayo, Kai, Bishop and Dane) in east London. The world had already started dotting its outline in my mind. I told Target about the moments in his book I connected with: the friendships, families, community, the hope, the JOY! I confessed I didn’t know too much about the grime scene. In the words of Dane, I sometimes found myself “on the outside looking in” as a kid. But I had fallen in love with the stories the music sparked, the people who fanned those flames and the places the music set ablaze. That was the story I wanted to tell, one of people and place. Target smiled. Nodded. He got it. It seems people and place is grime music’s entire “why”. Not just grime, but the music that led to it. All the ingredients simmering away, before grime exploded.
