How your favourite genre got its name

Dubstep became the name for the dark garage mutations that South London producers El-B, Benny Ill, Hatcha, Skream and Benga, among others, were making in the early 00s. It was coined by Neil Joliffe, who co-founded influential dubstep label Tempa, during a conversation at the imprint’s offices. In an interview with Vice, Oris Jay remembers it like: “We were talking about Benny Ill, and a magazine feature that was due. ‘It's like 2-step, but it's got dub in it. It's kind of like... dubstep.’ At that point we were like, ‘Yeah, yeah: it's bass-driven, the beats are steppier. Why don't we just call it dubstep?’” The magazine he refers to is XLR8R, who put Benny Ill’s Horsepower Productions on its cover in 2002 to celebrate the release of debut album ‘In Fine Style’ (the first release on Tempa). In a press release to the mag, Joliffe would use the name dubstep to describe the Horsepower sound and in 2004, Tempa would release ‘Dubstep Allstars Vol. 1’, mixed by Hatcha, featuring the aforementioned names as well as Kode9 and Mark One.

When UK garage began to shift into darker and murkier territory, Wiley was a key figure pioneering the new sound that came to be known as grime. In typical fashion, he wanted to attach his own personal label to the music he was making, which had a slightly more prominent hip hop influence than other grime.

His creation of the word eskibeat derives from the word Eskimo, a title he also used for a 2002 instrumental considered to be the archetype of the genre.

In an interview with Hyperdub in 2003, the London-based MC who counts Eskiboy among his monikers explained he was drawn to the term’s association with coldness, saying: “I’m a winter person but the cold… sometimes I just feel cold hearted. I felt cold at that time, towards my family, towards everyone. I was going to use “North Pole” but I didn’t even get that far. It was all things that were cold because that’s how I was feeling. There are times when I feel warm. I am a nice person but sometimes I switch off and I’m just cold. I feel angry and cold.”