Grime's coming of age

It's winter and I'm browsing in a high-end Italian boutique in Connaught Place, New Delhi's equivalent of New Bond Street, when Wiley's "Wearing My Rolex" filters through the speakers. I nearly fall over in shock: we may live in a global village but this is grime. In India.

As a metaphor for just how far grime has come in five years from its origins in East London's tower blocks, it speaks volumes. In 2008, grime's exploded the stereotype that it's music for feral, knife-wielding youth, and crossed over to the mainstream, conquering the charts (Wiley's No 2 hit "Wearing My Rolex", and Dizzee Rascal's No 1 "Dance Wiv Me").

The catalyst for this evolution is self-styled "godfather of grime" Wiley – who might be more appropriately described as grime's Pied Piper – and, more specifically, "Wearing My Rolex". Produced by 19-year-old Bless Beats, it's pop perfection as electro-house meets euphoric old school rave and provides the backdrop for "party guy" Wiley to charm a girl in a club. Undoubtedly one of the year's best singles, "Wearing My Rolex" has set the tone for grime in 2008.

"I deliberately made the vocals to 'Wearing My Rolex' simple, I could have spat [rapped] all over it, but I knew this song is for Radio 1. I wanted a No 1 and only got a No 2," says a disappointed Wiley. "But I've got other material which has No 1 written all over it."

This statement represents a seismic shift in Wiley's outlook and ambition, and the 29-year-old is clearly gunning for chart success: he spent much of this year broadening appeal beyond his usual audience by performing at Manumission in Ibiza, festivals including Glastonbury, Wireless and Global Gathering, and toured with Hot Chip and Mark Ronson.

Forthcoming album See Clear Now features tuneful collaborations with Hot Chip and Ronson, and English-American producer's protégés Kenna and Daniel Merriweather. Rather than jagged grime, the bright and breezy album is full of electro, rock, soul, and indie, and focuses on typical pop themes such as boy meets girl, love, and summer fun.

Familiar, radio-friendly samples, sing-a-long choruses, the Daisy Age-style video for "Summertime", and the viral promo for forthcoming single "Money In My Pocket", featuring a credit-crunch weary Gordon Brown mouthing the lyrics, is evidence that grime's appealing to a broader audience, and accepting that its raw fieriness is not everyone's cup of tea.

"You can't be limited to one type of music: there are a lot of people in the world and they don't all like one kind of sound, so you have to try and cater for all tastes," says Wiley. "You want to challenge yourself and experiment, and I've learnt that the more open-minded you are, the more people will accept you. I've been scared of collaborations like this because I've thought: 'If I do something with this person, then my original people won't like me'."

Instead, Wiley's "original people" have mirrored his approach by having fun and sending themselves up: before Kano took to the stage at his October gig, the audience was treated to a spoof film in which the MC is refused entry to his own show. Meanwhile Skepta's "Rolex Sweep" single spawned a Soulja Boy-style dance with 1.2 million YouTube views.

Roll Deep's sophomore LP, Return of the Big Money Sound, released last month, takes in ska, folk, bassline and crunk, and is indicative of grime's growing confidence. "The music has come a long way since 2003. The scene is growing up. Grime came out of UK garage and was MC-based music for raves and pirate radio stations, where you would have 10 MCs battling to see who was the best," explains Roll Deep's Target. "Early on it wasn't studio- or album-based, so a certain style came to dominate. We all grew up listening to varied music like soul, hip-hop, R&B, rock and that wasn't coming out in the music two years ago, but it is now."

In the last two years grime's benefited hugely from the growth of independent record labels (Boy Better Know, True Tiger and No Hats No Hoods), online resources (leading retailer ukrecordshop. com, and grimepedia.co.uk), radio shows (Logan Sama Kiss FM grime show draws over 100,000 listeners, 1Xtra, Rinse FM), club and live nights (Dirty Canvas).

Grime is no longer the localised cottage industry of 2003, when Dizzee Rascal's Mercury Music Prize win thrust the fledgling genre into the spotlight. "There are more gigs and outlets for the music across radio, TV and the internet than five years ago – the future's definitely looking good," says Target. "We needed a few years to grow: five years ago it seemed unorganised and full of hoodlums, but the whole look has changed. It's progressing in different directions with experimentation and out-of-the-box thinking. I'm hearing music and thinking, 'I didn't expect a grime artist to do that'."

JME, Skepta's brother, is one such artist. His independently released Famous? LP is another grime highlight of 2008, and picks apart gangster posturing and postcode territorialism, yearns for disputes to be solved with fists (rather than knives), and celebrates holidaying in Aya Napa and university education. In October, JME headlined the Astoria, which is an impressive feat for an unsigned artist, while both Skepta and Wiley have performed in Newcastle this year, dispelling the notion that grime is a London thing.

Another "out-of-the-box" grime MC is the 19-year-old Afrikan Boy, who has enjoyed a meteoric rise since appearing on M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" single. The final-year university student, is a firm grime fan, but has conceived a jocular persona and style drawing on his Nigerian heritage, dubbed "Afro-grime".

"I started rapping when I was 14 and love grime: Dizzee and Kano are inspirations. I always developed the African side because I thought, 'What makes me different to everyone else who's MCing in the playground?' So I started using African references, like food, as a way of standing out," he explains.

Humour isn't a trait associated with grime. However, Afrikan Boy first came to M.I.A.'s attention through the single "Lidl", a cheeky account of shoplifting in the supermarket. "Humour is a part of my personality, and it means anyone can listen to my music – it's light-hearted, there's no swearing, and it mixes comedy in with the music," he says.

Afrikan Boy's autumn mix tape Can of Whoop Ass is a primer for his debut album The Rise of Captain Afrika next summer. Considering taste makers, including the director Spike Jonze and M.I.A., are firm fans, the Afro-grime superhero offers a glimpse into grime's future.

Grime remains the soapbox of disenfranchised, inner city youth and probably always will: indeed the genre's core audience remains as seduced as ever by its outlaw mentality and fiery intensity – as the rise of Giggs's gangsta cocaine grime, and popularity of the graphic violent imagery of "Ghetto", testifies.

However this year grime has been about having fun, growing up and developing beyond the caricature of angry young men. "A lot of the MCs have charisma and are very funny and that doesn't always come across on record. Grime MCs don't just stand round council estates all day being moody; they have fun and a laugh," explains DJ Magic, promoter of London's leading club and live night Dirty Canvas.

Grime has moved forward by remembering its origins in clubs, where people go to dance, escape and flirt. Club-based urban music in 2008, whether dubstep, grime, bassline or funky, reflects a move away from groups of boys spitting lyrics.

"Funky is all about fun, and that's had an influence on grime – it's made people think, 'Does spraying bar after bar without thinking, work?' Less is more," says Magic.

And just as the title of Wiley's LP, See Clear Now, suggests, grime is perhaps only now beginning to realise its massive potential: "We want to be taken as seriously as US hip-hop. That was a little scene that came from kids on the streets, like us, and progressed gradually," says Target. "It's one step at the time, though, and at the moment grime's a lot of fun."

Wiley's LP 'See Clear Now' is out on 8 December on Asylum; Roll Deep's 'Return of the Big Money Sound' is out now on their own label; JME's 'Famous?' is out now on Boy Better Know