Where We Come From

This music was not only music, and these musicians not only musicians, they were emblems of hope for communities right across Britain. They were spokespeople for the silenced, carrying their stories out into the light. Neef Ekpoudom was born in Lewisham, the son of parents from Nigeria and Cameroon, but he spent most of his childhood in Orpington, where London bleeds into Kent. Out there, where red buses met green fields, he grew up caught between one thing and another - wary of the St George's flags in the gardens on his walk home, never quite sure where he belonged. The emergence of grime and UK rap changed his life: here, for the first time, were artists articulating what he had spent a lifetime struggling to pin down. This isn't a book about grime and rap music. It's about the people behind the movement, the communities transformed by local sons and daughters breaking onto the scene, the cultures that fused together to create new sounds, new voices, and a new picture of modern Britain. From South London to the West Midlands and South Wales, Ekpoudom uncovers the stories of strength, resilience and determination that have taken this music from the underground to the heart of British pop culture. It's about how the most diverse backgrounds can create a shared experience, music that resonates widely enough to see teenagers recording freestyles on their iPhones catapulted into the charts, and about the lives that have been rewritten in the process.