LITMIR.BIZ

      PROLOGUE

       DON’T HOLD HIM BACK!

      It’s dusk on a spring evening in 2003, and the start of something exceptional: the hottest summer in years, a sweltering heatwave lifting temperatures in London above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. But it’s cooler when you’re high up on a rooftop, and windy, so hoods are up and beanies are on. Around 20 members of the legendary east London crews Roll Deep, East Connection, Boyz in da Hood and Nasty Crew are squeezed into a makeshift pirate-radio studio, the occupied box room being used by Deja Vu FM. The average age in the room is about 17. A few hangers-on lean against the walls watching, part-time MCs nodding their heads to the beat, hoping to be given some time on the mic or just there to witness, without realising it, a seminal moment in the history of British music.

      On the decks is Roll Deep’s DJ Karnage, who slowly builds momentum with his freshly cut vinyl, exclusive unreleased instrumentals unavailable to the general public, and the mic is passed from MC to MC, each of them spitting their bars over the new dubplates.

      The MC line-up ranges from graduates of the jungle and UK garage scenes such as Wiley, Maxwell D, God’s Gift and D Double E – each of them veterans already, by virtue of being in their early twenties – to early grime heroes Demon, Sharky Major and Lady Fury. There’s even a minuscule, half-squeaking, Tinchy Stryder, then only 16 years old.

      The event is being filmed for an amateur DVD called Conflict by Troy ‘A Plus’ Miller, who has begged his girlfriend to borrow the camera from her university media department for the summer, to shoot some footage of his mates on the east London pirate-radio scene. Miller, from far-away Hackney, has met Bow boys Wiley, Geeneus and Slimzee in the nineties through their

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