6. WileyTreddin On Thin Ice
This album was closer to home for me, because Wiley is my friend and I got to see its impact with my own eyes. When you’ve got bouncers coming outside telling you to come into the club and they’re forming a cordon so you can walk is when you realise the impact. Wiley brought everyone in Roll Deep in; he used to buy cars and let us borrow them, he would take us on holiday. He’s a done a lot for us, he’s a good geezer. Even now, he hasn’t stopped spitting at the top of his game. With this album, he wanted to do something that wasn’t garage, because grime was still being categorised as garage. Wiley wanted to make it clear that it wasn’t garage, and he succeeded. We weren’t even calling it grime at the time and garage MCs would always look down on us. So, when Wiley would get booked for Sidewinders alongside those MCs, he would just take the microphone and finish them all off until garage started dying out. They had to accept him in the end.
