Grime scene

Photo by Steve Wheeler
I spent an interesting 15 minutes interviewing double MOBO Award winner and UK grime artist Guvna B yesterday, backstage at Creation Fest. Born in the East End docklands area of London to first generation Ghanian immigrants, he has seen a lot of trouble in his life. As he grew up he experienced poverty, violence, drug abuse and personal loss. These experiences became instrumental in his journey to faith. He now spends his time recording and performing his own music, a mix of rap, gospel, grime and hip hop styles.

He's a busy man and very difficult man to get hold of (I failed to grab an interview with him at last year's event), and I had to be patient, but after some time loitering around the backstage,  and a few false starts, I finally got to record an interview with Guvna B for CrossRhythms Radio, and it will be aired in the next few days.

I also recorded enough conversation with him to do a pilot show for the new Upon This Rock series I'm creating for broadcast later this year. In it I will be presenting in depth interviews and bios of several contemporary Christian music artists, who will talk about their life, their faith and their work.

I won't tell you exactly what Guvna B and I talked about right now, I will leave it for the radio show. I will tell you that we discussed some burning issues around urban life, faith, family, culture and community, alongside an analysis of some of his most popular tracks. And we did talk about the culture around grime, hip hop and drill music. Here's a photo I shot backstage of his headline performance last night, which really tore up the stage, seriously.

Creative Commons License
Grime scene by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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