Available on: Big Dada 12″

It has, sadly, become a nice surprise when an established grime MC releases something on a big label that isn’t freshers’ week electro or mid-90s trance pap. ‘Better Than’ is proper grime and I’m so happy that Jammer is still at it. It’s easy to forget what a legend Jammer is, as he spends much of his time making himself seem lovably ridiculous. But this is the guy who was at the heart of N.A.S.T.Y Crew, perhaps grime’s greatest ever collective. Fuck, this is the guy who produced the seminal sino-grime of ‘Mystic’, and ‘Weed Man’ and the overwhelmingly mighty ‘Destruction’, the musical equivalent of a sawn-off shotgun. He’s also the coolest guy in the world. Proof? I once saw him do a PA wearing a seersucker jacket with his name written on the back in hundreds of crystals. Personally, that’s all the proof I need.

Anyway, the track. Another legend, Ruff Sqwad’s Rapid, is on the buttons, the beat harking back to those wonderful years between 2003 and 2006 when he churned out mini-symphonies to teenage melodrama and imagined action films. Jammer’s not the most technically skilled MC, although as time goes by he seems to be edging ever closer to D Double’s sticky, disjointed phrasing, and that can only be a good thing. But Jammer’s force of character carries things through – like Wiley, he’s just a naturally engaging guy to listen to. Basically, he’s never, ever boring. He’s like the anti-Wretch 32.

However, best of all is Jammer’s list of all the grime MCs who his imagined targets aren’t “better than”. Together, these were, and are, some of the finest creative minds of their generation. And so, ultimately, ‘Better Than’ is a celebration of grime, rather than simply a diss tune – a celebration of Jammer, of Ruff Sqwad, of all the MCs who made grime great. And grime needs this kind of confidence more than ever. Radio stations should be forced to play this whenever they play Skepta’s ‘Bad Boy’, just for balance.

Simon Hampson