The entirely homemade creation of Boy Better Know was an extension of grime artists’ remarkable ability to hustle: the conventional music industry was foreign to them, but they had their own infrastructure, and the genre was thriving. “It was so DIY back then,” recalls Skepta. Each time he played Heat FM, he would pay £20 toward the running of the station. Even in the short term, it was an investment worth making: he says he sold “literally thousands” of his white label vinyl instrumentals in London’s record shops, typically driven straight from the pressing plant in the back of a friend’s car. “It was a priceless hustle, man,” he says of his success marketing and selling his own music without the support of a major label or management team. “Pirates were like the sickest, most rebellious type of pop-up that you could ever have.”

Skepta’s 2007 debut album, Greatest Hits, arrived just as the UK music industry was beginning to lose interest in black British music. There had been a major-label goldrush following Dizzee Rascal’s success, with a handful of album deals for the likes of Shystie, Lethal Bizzle, Kano, and Roll Deep, but these album projects were often commercial disappointments or didn’t come out at all, and the industry quickly moved on. Meanwhile, the internet was rendering grime’s grassroots infrastructure—its pirate stations, raves, record shops, and vinyl dubplate culture—increasingly obsolete.

By the end of the decade, a handful of underground MCs finally started having major chart hits—but it wasn’t with grime. Beginning with Wiley’s “Wearing My Rolex,” a clear pop formula emerged, seeming to promise MCs a chance at becoming household names alongside their American peers. A succession of electro-pop bangers primed for poolside parties in Ibiza followed, typically involving simpler or slower rapping, lyrics about cars and girls and holidays, and sung or Auto-Tuned choruses. Skepta joined the party for a moment, releasing a succession of dance singles between 2008 and 2012, about which he has no regrets. “In my head, Dizzee and Wiley were the people that I was looking up to,” he says. “That was all I knew! If my man makes a dance tune, I’m making a dance tune. But then I came to this point in my life recently where I was like ‘Rah, I’m a man—like, maybe I’m a leader? Maybe I should make a new path?’ And that was when I just stopped looking to Wiley and Dizzee as the blueprint. You’ve got to fucking take that baton and run with it, to make your own blueprint.”

To hear him speak of it, Skepta’s recent resurgence was the direct result of an epiphany about who he is, and who he isn’t. “I’m on Tottenham High Road, bro, and I’ve never seen anybody topless with all their chains on, outside a brand new convertible, popping champagne,” he says. “And as soon as I realized that, everything started going well.” It’s the same philosophy he outlines on “That’s Not Me,” one about rejecting all pretension and compromise and returning to the source: the sound of London’s streets. That renewed sense of purpose seems to have come at the right time, as the off-kilter beats and lyrical velocity always present in grime began to coincide with a growing sonic openmindedness in American hip-hop. When Drake is posting YouTube screenshots of Skepta’s infamous 2006 clash with Devilman on his Instagram, it’s hard not to notice the way the wind is blowing.