‘You're as Taz as Tazzy Can Be': Transgressing Racial and Class Boundaries in Australian Grime

Grime music emerged in the early 2000s as a vital avenue for creative expression amongst Black British young people. It is now international in reach, in part owing to the success of Skepta, Stormzy and Dizzee Rascal. This chapter explores how grime is performed in Australia, demonstrating two things: firstly, how artists’ performance practice can help map global cultural flows in the digital age; secondly, how its majority white male scene of MCs and DJs negotiate authenticity, and address dynamics pertaining to class and race. To do so, it focuses on the first ever Australian MC ‘clash’ between Mr Wrighty from Brisbane and Wombat from Tasmania. Drawing from interviews with the scene’s principal artists and on-site ethnography undertaken in Melbourne, it will explore how artists interweave distinct claims to locality and class within contemporary Australia with wider affiliation to grime music as an increasingly global form. Fundamentally, it will address how a Black British musical form is repositioned as a space to confront so-called “Bogan” − or Australian working-class culture – whiteness and privilege within a settler colonial state.