"This is Grime” is the prolific new project birthed by i-D magazine’s features editor Hattie Collins, and award winning film photographer Olivia Rose. This Grime bible would impress any music lover, and is rife with flawless imagery and enticing anecdotes told by the scene, for the scene.

Already a prominent figure in the Grime industry, Hattie Collins has been scribing the genre from it’s humble beginnings, and is undoubtedly one of the best suited journalists to now document the scene at the height of its popularity. 

As global superstars such as Kanye West, Drake and A$AP Rocky start to take an interest in our homegrown talent, this body of work could truly not have come at a better time. I had the opportunity to speak with them both during a night dedicated to all things Grime related, held at the William Morris gallery – find out which artist was the hardest to track down, and why the ‘mandem’ loved Olivia Rose so much…

-------------------------------------

How did you come up with the concept of the book?
 

Hattie Collins: I thought about doing the book for a while. Me and Olivia did some shoots together –
 

Olivia Rose: Specifically, we did a grime shoot in 2015. It was three days, Hattie thought it would be fun to get 33 different bloody artists. We only had 8 pages in the magazine, so I’m shooting all day, every day for 3 days. It worked out well – How honest can we be?
 

Very honest.
 

Olivia Rose: The boys liked me because I had weed. [laughs] So, that worked out really well.
 

Hattie Collins: I wanted images, because I think a big part of Grime is the imagery. There’s been so many great people over the years, so it just came down to someone I liked working with. Other people already associated with the scene, like Tim and Barry or Simon Wheatley, have got their own thing, and wouldn’t want to do something with me as it were.
 

Olivia Rose: That gave us an opportunity to shoot everything exclusively for the book.
 

Hattie Collins: Back to the idea of how it came about (…) I know that Olivia is really creative, and we sat down one day in Nandos in Liverpool Street, and she said “we could get them (the artists) to write letters for the future”, and I said that’s a great idea – anything creative in the book was basically Olivia’s idea…
 

Olivia Rose: Awww!
 

Hattie Collins: So, we came up with the idea and put it together in a portfolio. I sent it to my agent, and she was like “ooh, I don’t know, I doubt it”, and then the first publisher that picked it up loved it and that was it. We were on the path from there.

Vicky Grout is predominately doing some grime photography now as well. Why specifically Olivia?
 

Hattie Collins: I’ve never worked with Vicky. Vicky came up around the same time that we put the book out, coincidentally. She sort of made a name for herself in 2015. When we started talking about this in 2014. Vicky wasn’t really around, or maybe she was and I wasn’t aware of her. Again, she would be someone else that could just go and do her own book, she could just do a whole book of pictures. Whereas, Olivia obviously, she has a love of images, but is also interesting with people.
 

Olivia Rose: Yeah, I always say, before a photographer I’m like a sociologist. That’s what I’m interested in, the people. Hattie in this project was really the golden ticket. Absolutely. no way in hell would I have been able to do this if Hattie wasn’t around. It’s such a small scene, you can’t just walk in and start taking pictures, they won’t have it. I needed Hattie’s certification. I did a project in Kingston, in Jamaica on the Gang Dons. I’ve (…) worked with all walks of life. There are moments when you’re like “I am not worthy why on Earth was it me that shot this book?” …But it was, and not to blow my own trumpet but it’s really nice to see. It’s a really nice set of pictures, it’s a really nice body of work to anything we’ve ever seen before. I am not in any way putting a negative spin on the photographers shooting the scene already because they’re amazing, but they’re doing their own amazing thing. I was never gonna copy. I’m not an events photographer, so Hattie was fucked, she was fucked because I would say “I’m not going at the front Hattie, I’m backstage, I’m backstage”, and she’s like “what the fuck?!, Get one picture of Wiley on stage please?”, and I’m like “okay, one for the book.” I think for quite a few of the guys, and I shouldn’t just say guys, but guys and girls, they’re really into it, my kind of method of wanting to come spend the afternoon with you. Let’s hang out, let’s have a joint. Let’s not even take pictures for 2 hours, let’s do it at the end. People are into that.
 

Why did you specifically choose to use film?
 

Olivia Rose: I just never shoot on digital, and I will never shoot on digital. That’s. not an option. Photography is about magic, chemistry, alchemy. There is actual magic involved in processing films. Okay it’s not magic, its chemistry, but I like to think its magic because the people whose hands touch my film ARE MAGICIANS! They can pull back my shittest roll of film, to something amazing. It’s part of my aesthetic. I could never work in another way. It’s partly about framing as well. When you know its £2.50 – and it IS £2.50 every time I push the button. You know you’ve got to wait until you’ve got a good picture. You get one shot, and if you fuck it, you fuck it…. Like I did with JME.
 

What happened with him?
 

Olivia Rose: He gave us 3 and a half hours, I shot nine rolls of film and fucked every single one. I had to chase him all round London. I eventually caught up with him at the Rotherhithe tunnel. He is the sweetest boy in the world, gave me another ten minutes he was like “I really don’t wanna do this, but let’s do this.”
 

What were your favourite parts of the process?
 

Olivia Rose: The shoots for me!

Hattie Collins: The shoots and the interviews, but for me, I hated transcribing and placing it. Oh, my god! It was such a bore.
 

Olivia Rose: Yeah that scanning! Fuck!

Hattie Collins: It was months, of me and Olivia going literally Amsterdam, New York, Leeds, Manchester…
 

Olivia Rose: Road tripping!

Hattie Collins: One day in London we went to like literally North, East -

Olivia Rose: South and West.

Hattie Collins & Olivia Rose: We literally went everywhere.
 

Hattie Collins: So, that was my favourite part of it, meeting people, doing interviews, Olivia taking pictures, going to shows, going to studios, going to homes. Just that whole experience, was so… I’ll just remember that forever.
 

Olivia Rose: I will never forget the levels to which I chased Skepta around London. For 6 months. He was someone that was resistant to giving us dedicated time. It was literally just a case of: find out where he is! I had people at clubs, I had my spies around sending me texts like “he just walked into the Ace Hotel!”, then I’ve got to go because we can’t not have a picture of him in the book! We really did shoot 171 people in 153 days, that’s written in the book and that’s the truth. I counted it and almost died, I almost fell off my chair.
 

There’s a sub-genre coming up called “mellowgrime”, have you heard of it?
 

Hattie Collins: I haven’t heard of this, who’s in mellowgrime?
 

Kwollem, he’s an east London producer. He takes the likes of AJ Tracey’s vocals and mixes them onto mellow jazz instrumentals, stuff like that. Mad cool.
 

Hattie Collins: I’d love to hear his stuff, email me his stuff over.
 

Definitely will, also, BBC made their list for the “Sounds of 2017.” Featuring West London’s AJ Tracey and South London’s Satandave. Do you think the movement of grime is moving from its East London origins?
 

Hattie Collins: Definitely. Grime has definitely changed geographically a lot over the years.
 

Any follow up projects we can look forwards to?
 

Olivia Rose: Yeah, well we did with Red Bull Music Academy, an exhibition up in Leeds just a month ago and we’re hoping to bring that down to London because it was well received up there. We have a few ideas up our sleeve about events we could do. The other thing that you don’t realise when you start doing this project is that it never goes away. For the rest of our lives “This is Grime” will exist, and beyond us when we’re dead. That’s one of the most interesting things to realise when you’re doing a project like this.
 

Purchase “This is Grime” (RRP: £25) in Urban Outfitters, book stores and here on Amazon.