Rinse re-format and re-launch the original grime DVD, Practice Hours. Taking the fly on the wall series and focusing it by episode, to a day in the life of one key player from the grime scene.
The opening episode features grime’s perennial statesman Jammer, a member of golden era N.A.S.T.Y Crew, Boy Better Know and collaborative affiliate of Roll Deep. Jammer has simultaneously represented the culture at the highest level and at once nurtured the scene at its grass roots. The basement in his parent’s house is the stuff of legend, where the walls whisper with the tags of every luminary from the scene. He was the first artist to bring the genre to both the USA and Japan back in the early noughties and his DVD series’ Lord Of The Mics and Lord Of The Decks have meant he’s never been far from and often encouraged microphone conflict, stepping up to resolve it when it threatens to spill beyond the ratified battlefield.
Now with a whole new generation of grime artists stretching their legs, who better than the active elder statesmen to set the tone for the new look Practice Hours? Just as he’s celebrating 10 years of Lord of the Mics, Rinse give you exclusive access to a day in the life with Jammer.
Practice Hours is the grime documentary Series originally conceived and shot by Troy “A Plus” Miller. One of the founding DJs spinning on Rinse FM’s maiden broadcast alongside Geeneus, Wiley and Slimzee; A Plus had unrivalled access to the full gamut of the grime scene by virtue of the fact that he was an active player within the community.
The result is thousands of Gigabytes of gonzo style footage from the frontlines; spawning the DVD’s, Practice Hours 1 + 2.
These Discs documented the then nascent culture in its entirety and just as the sights of the artists at the time were as local as blocks and postcodes; A Plus, who initially stocked his DVDs in hang out spots of the scene such as the now defunct Rhythm Division and Uptown Records, couldn’t have imagined that Practice Hours would become an important reference piece for an eventual global audience with excerpts scattered throughout online video platforms.
If you want the pure view of how the music and culture evolved you have only two reliable veins to tap outside of the records themselves. Radio satisfied the audio but as with hip-hop, the effervescent nature of grime means it’s necessary to look beyond the studios that played home to sets, cyphers and clashes.
The original Practice Hours not only put faces to names in an analogue age before grime’s ubiquity on YouTube, it also allowed for a wider lens view at the culture. DJs, MC’s, producers, players, faces, fashions, vernaculars, beefs and locations. All these and more marks in history made visible and indelible without dilution or misinterpretation from voyeurs. Dropping the viewer front and center into the action without a guide. If you know, you know. If you’re uninitiated then catch up quick in the baptism of fire or leave bamboozled. Practice Hours is a cornerstone of the culture, As seminal to grime as the documentary ‘Style Wars’ is to hip hop and graffiti
Once more, Rinse stand in the heart of local culture to celebrate and transmit it to the globe direct from the source without filter.
The evolution of Practice Hours. Episode one – the artist, the entrepreneur, the Murkle Man, Jammer.
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