03: WILEY
‘WOT DO U CALL IT?’
(XL RECORDINGS 12”, 2004)

One of K-Punk’s arguments at the hardcore continuum discussion was that critics need to talk more, and musicians need to stop talking, because they know not what they do. Well, Wiley gave us pretty much the first principle for discussing this decade’s music here, encapsulating UK urban music’s dazzling, defiant ineffability, the strange and unexpected collisions of ideas that spring forth into unnameable new tributaries. It would be difficult to have a ‘wot do u call it moment’ without ‘Wot Do U Call It’. This is one of only about two proper label-released Wiley singles that has avoided massively underselling his talent. Well done XL, pat on the back. Now, why did you release ‘Pies’, you idiots?

04: WILEY AND RIKO
‘LETHAL DISS’
(from CREEPER VOLUME 2, 2004)

Wiley may have got bored writing bars for Lethal B, but I haven’t got bored of listening to them – not over ‘Fire Hydrant’, and alongside Riko at his best, anyway.

05: WILEY
‘WD25’
(from EYE OF THE TIGER VOLUME 1, 2005)

An innocuous but unsettling Scandalous Unlimited production, on an underrated mixtape, this tune marked Wiley’s ascent into a new level of creativity: channeling more of his energies into being a deranged, stream-of-consciousness raconteur, rather than a maestro producer.

Blackdown’s justified fascination with this lyric – a sprawling series of sketches, threats, and inspired digressions – has always stuck in my mind. ‘I was a street yout, street kid, street boy – now I am a street man’ he spits, and this is the first of many expressions of growing up in his bars, the struggle between his sense of responsibility on the one hand – for the grime scene (“I do it so the sound expands”), but generally as he neared 30 – and on the other hand, his inclination to ‘come to your ends like Achilles and take out Hector.’

06: WILEY
‘CRASH BANDICOOT’
(from TUNNEL VISION VOLUME 1, 2006)

In a transition moment for grime, when the prospect of major label success was receding fast, and self-released mixtapes were about to roam the earth, Wiley released this truly jaw-dropping track, on the first of his iffy-but-occasionally-brilliant Tunnel Vision CDs. The production is just startling, with its mad circus boings, bongos, and muffled claps, and the lyric takes ‘WD25’ up another gear again: ‘the bars are right, they’re like scriptures’. Scriptures for a pretty addled religion, but scriptures nonetheless. His flow is controlled and accomplished but still so animated here, with so many killer lines, a personal favourite being ‘There ain’t a club that you won’t see me at / Cos I’m a street star / There’s no set time I have my tea at’. (See also the Dissensus ‘Favourite Wiley Non Sequiturs’ thread.)

07: WILEY
‘NIGHTBUS DUBPLATE’
(from TUNNEL VISION VOLUME 3, 2006)

‘Last three dubs hit The Movement and crushed it.’ Well, this one actually did. Look at what Scorcher’s doing now – who won that one? Wiley helped nix the tendency towards a certain type of ‘bait hip-hop’ (‘WHY ARE YOU LIKE D BLOCK? YOU’RE FROM ENGLAND YOU BATTY’) as well, at a time when the grime forums were revolting over exactly this. Wiley’s energy seems to overtake the beat’s at times, an exhilarating race he continues to win for almost six minutes. It should go without saying, but Nightbus is one of the best war dubs in grime’s history; the fact it features the line ‘Must be the same old kid in the dinner hall / Primary / Eating apple crumble and custard’ is just a bonus.

08: WILEY
‘NAN, I AM LONDON’
(from TUNNEL VISION VOLUME 5, 2007)

As Dave Stelfox has pointed out in the past, the different frames of reference between, say, crunk and grime are chasms apart in scale. Lil’ John can and does big up the whole south of America: that’s a good 100 million people or so. A lot of grime tunes, on the other hand, are bigging up just one individual street in east London (I’m jamming down Roman / fuck iiiit‘).

I recently went to an academic event titled ‘Multicultural London: Past, Present and Future’, in which one of the speakers referred to Kano’s ‘London Town’ as an example of black Londoners’ sense of place in the capital, relating Kane’s tune back to Lord Kitchener’s ‘London is the Place for Me’. To which I would – and did – say ‘sure, Kano talks about London in a track. Anyone can talk about London. Wiley is London’. He does, erm, sort of live in Kent now. But shhh, let’s not distract ourselves from the point.

09: WILEY feat. BLAZE AND TRIGGS
‘IF YOU’RE GOING OUT I’M GOING OUT TOO’
(from GRIME WAVE, 2008)

Exhibit A, your honour, that the music industry is an ass. Why didn’t this get a major label release? It’s as poppy and accessible as ‘Summertime’ and just immeasurably superior. It bubbles along like ‘Wearing My Rolex’s Bizarro World equivalent: an equally witty, succinct sketch of an evening scene, over light-touch cellophane synth melodies – further proof that Wiley didn’t stop innovating behind the production desk after the Eskimo period. ‘Wearing My Rolex’ has grown on me, and I’m glad it was a hit – it pisses all over ‘Dance Wiv Me’ as songs to dance to in the electro grimelite go. But this is just better than all of them. I mean, isn’t it?

10: WILEY
‘WHERE’S MY BROTHER?’
(from RACE AGAINST TIME, 2009)

What’s that? Haha. Yeah he’s lost it. Right.

Dan Hancox