Ahead of Culture Clash, Wiley goes deep on his spat with Dizzee Rascal.

Wiley and Eskimo Dance Crew are competing in Red Bull Culture Clash against Wiz Khalifa’s Taylor Gang, Mixpak and a gang of UK garage superstars on June 17. In a new interview with Time Out, he’s gone in deep about his relationship with Dizzee Rascal, whose stabbing in Ayia Napa in 2003 was the beginning of a rift between the two MCs.

When asked if he’d work with Dizzee again Wiley said: “We haven’t got beef – remember, I was with him when he got rushed in Ayia Napa. The reason we haven’t spoken for so many years?… [B]asically, me and Dizzee went out one night [in Ayia Napa] and there was some fighting with another crew – I won’t say who, but basically everyone knows. Then the next day, I decided to carry it on – I didn’t pull out a knife. I was just fighting… Well, after we started it up again, those guys came looking for us. But the person they found was Dizzee. The thing we done the next morning led them to go looking for us, but see him and stab him.”

He continues: “Now I’m older, I can see: Dizzee in his head will always be thinking: ‘I know we got into a beef. I know something started. But you lot carried it on the next day. If you had left it I wouldn’t have got stabbed.’ That is the reason me and Dizzee haven’t spoken all these years.”

Wiley also said that he’s very open to collaborating with Dizzee again (“I would work with him any day of my life if I could. I love him like a brother”) and that he’ll be opening for Dizzee in Bedford Park on August 5. One can only hope they’ll reconnect there.

He also addressed America’s current fascination with grime, which he finds lacking: “I don’t think Americans like grime. Azealia Banks said</strong> what she really thought the other day. I’m not talking about the racist stuff, I mean her saying that ‘grime is garbage’: that’s how they all think. They like grime as a form of entertainment, like boxing or the Olympics. But when they hear an English accent MCing, they can’t accept it on the same level they can accept hip hop.”