Electro-grime is dead. It's official. Last month Skepta's Timmy Mallett-endorsed Rolex Sweep was unable to make it past number 86 in the UK charts and Roll Deep's subsequent electro-grime hip-shaker, Do Me Wrong, failed to make any type of impact on the charts at all.

This, remember, is the genre that was invented to popularise grime. This was the answer to grime's numerous commercial problems. This was the sound that would bring grime to the masses and help the genre conquer the charts like UK garage did. And the second best-known track in the genre is barely able to break into the top 100 – even with the help of a kids' TV presenter? Surely regular grime was equally capable of not doing very well in the charts. These acts have compromised their integrity and massively dented their street cred for nothing.

Since Wiley reached number 2 with Wearing My Rolex earlier this year, a cornucopia of grime acts with big flashing cartoon pound signs in their eyes have tried to emulate his success. We've had Lethal Bizzle's Keys to the Bentley, Tinchy Stryder's Stryderman, Flow Dan's Moving To Me and God's Gift's Ringtone all competing for the title of Most Desperate and Obvious Attempt to Make a Commercial Song 2008. (The last of these tracks I initially thought was an hilarious parody of an electro-grime song until I was reliably informed otherwise.)

Recently my friend James went to watch a DJ set by Wearing My Rolex producer Bless Beats, expecting to be treated to an hour of unreleased grime exclusives, only to be bombarded with lots of very similar-sounding electro-grime numbers. At the time of making these Bless Beats probably thought he was on the cusp of emulating the Stock-Aitken-Waterman hit factory of the 80s. Now it's obvious that won't be the case. Teenagers and stuffed polar bears may enjoy doing dance routines to songs like Rolex Sweep at home but nobody wants to part with any cash for them.

So where next for grime? So far we've had to endure things like grindie and grime's R&B analogue, R&G, but there's one gold mine which is yet to be exploited: the tween market. If Skepta et al can somehow make it onto the Disney Channel, they'll have an army of eight-year-olds behind them overnight. Miley Cyrus even kind of sounds like the name of a grime MC. If that fails they could take some tips from Barney the Dinosaur and dress up as bright cuddly animals. Sing and dance-along DVDs for mother and baby with Wiley the Grimosaur could well be the future of grime.