UK garage in the context of "Breakbeat"

Grime is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) that emerged in London in the early 2000s. It developed out of the earlier UK dance style UK garage, and draws influences from jungle, dancehall, and Hip-hop. The style is typified by rapid, syncopated breakbeats, generally around 140 beats per minute, and often features an aggressive or jagged electronic sound. Emceeing is a significant element of the style, and lyrics often revolve around gritty depictions of urban life.

The style initially spread among pirate radio stations and underground scenes before achieving some mainstream recognition in the UK during the mid-2000s through artists such as Dizzee Rascal, Kano, Lethal Bizzle, and Wiley. Grime's rise in the early 2000s benefited from a time before smartphones and social media dominated the music landscape, allowing the genre to develop at a slower, organic pace. Many of grime's foundational MCs, such as Ghetts, Kano, and Skepta, spent years refining their craft, with early career periods often lasting five to ten years. This period also produced significant archival material, from Run the Road compilations and Lord of the Mics DVDs to the RWD magazine, all of which captured grime's evolution at its peak. The genre’s emergence has often been compared to punk rock, a comparison solidified by tracks like Jammer's "Dagenham Dave," a nod to The Stranglers' song of the same name.

Dylan Kwabena Mills MBE (born 18 September 1984), known professionally as Dizzee Rascal, is a British rapper and MC. He is often credited as a pioneer of British hip hop and grime music and was ranked by Complex as one of the greatest British rappers of all time. His work has also incorporated elements of UK garage, bassline and R&B. Dizzee Rascal's music is also often credited with bringing UK rap into the mainstream and became the country's first rapper to achieve international recognition.

After signing with independent label XL Recordings in 2002, the rapper released his self-produced debut album Boy in da Corner in 2003. which received widespread critical acclaim and earned him the Mercury Prize in 2003, eventually being certified platinum by the British Phonographic Industry. It is often regarded as the best British hip hop album of all time. It was followed up with the albums Showtime (2004) and Maths + English (2007), which were also critically praised and were certified gold, both peaking within the top ten of the UK Albums Chart. His next album, Tongue n' Cheek (2009) saw a departure from grime for a more pop-oriented sound. It garnered four UK Singles Chart number one singles—"Dance wiv Me", "Bonkers", "Holiday" and "Dirtee Disco"—and went platinum in 2010.

Richard Kylea Cowie Jr. (born 19 January 1979), better known by his stage name Wiley (formerly Wiley Kat), is a British grime MC and producer from Bow, London. Wiley is often labelled the "Godfather of Grime". In the early 2000s, he independently released a series of highly influential eskibeat instrumentals on white label vinyl, such as the first in the series "Eskimo" and is known as a grime MC both for his solo work and for material released with his crew Roll Deep.

Wiley first tasted success as a member of the UK garage crew Pay As U Go, with whom he had a Top 40 hit, "Champagne Dance" in 2001. Wiley has continued to make grime music while also releasing mainstream singles, such as the UK Singles Chart Top 10 hits "Wearing My Rolex", "Never Be Your Woman", and his UK number-one "Heatwave". Wiley's eleventh album, Godfather (2017), peaked at number nine on the UK Albums Chart, becoming his highest-charting album of his career, and also won an "Outstanding Contribution to Music" award by NME.

2-step garage, or simply 2-step, is a genre of electronic music and a subgenre of UK garage. One of the primary characteristics of the 2-step sound – the term being coined to describe "a general rubric for all kinds of jittery, irregular rhythms that don't conform to garage's traditional four-on-the-floor pulse" – is that the rhythm lacks the kick drum pattern found in many other styles of electronic music with a regular four-on-the-floor beat.

Garage house (originally known as "garage"; local terms include "New York house" and New Jersey sound) is a dance music style that was developed alongside Chicago house music. The genre was popular in the 1980s in the United States and the 1990s in the United Kingdom, where it developed into UK garage and speed garage.

Speed garage (occasionally known as plus-8) is a genre of electronic dance music, associated with the UK garage scene, of which it is regarded as one of its subgenres.

Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in South London in the early 2000s. The style, whose roots trace to the Jamaican sound system party scene in the early 1980s, emerged as a UK garage offshoot that blended 2-step rhythms and sparse dub production, as well as incorporating elements of broken beat, grime, and drum and bass.

Dubstep is generally characterised by syncopated rhythmic patterns, prominent basslines, and a dark tone. In 2001, this underground sound and other strains of garage music began to be promoted at the London nightclub Plastic People, at the "Forward" night (sometimes stylised as FWD>>), and on the pirate radio station Rinse FM. The term "dubstep" appeared around 2002, used by labels such as Big Apple and Tempa to describe remixes more distinct from 2-step and grime.

UK funky (sometimes known as UKF or funky) is a genre of electronic dance music which originated in England that is heavily influenced by soca, soulful house, tribal house, funky house, UK garage, broken beat and grime. Typically, UK funky blends beats, bass loops and synths with African and Latin percussion in the dembow rhythm with contemporary R&B-style vocals.