Get to know Sir Spyro, the East London grime artist hitting a serious purple patch

With tracks like ‘Side By Side’ and ‘Topper Top’ doing the rounds, Sir Spyro has been on a serious roll for the past 12 months or so. But while he’s riding high now, it’s certainly not been an overnight success for the grime producer. In fact, for Spy, it’s been over 10 years in the making. Starting out in 2005 with a show on Rinse FM – which he still broadcasts weekly – Spyro ended up as the tour DJ for good friend and grime pop star Tinchy Stryder during his late noughties heyday. But now it’s his name up in lights as his slow and steady rise sees him become one of the most sought after beatmakers in the grime game.

“I first started producing when I was about fourteen,” 30-year-old Karl Joseph tells us. “I used Fruity Loops 3, mainly, and I wanted to make grime because it was something I was around on a daily basis.” While the late 2000s saw Spyro’s focus shift a little from beat-making to focus on the club and radio circuit, he got back in the saddle in 2012 when he was commissioned to make a Night Slugs edit. “I got asked by Bok Bok to remix ‘Silo Pass,’” he tells us. “And that got the fire burning again.”