Until recently, you might have been forgiven for assuming grime – the scene born in the bowels of Bow in east London around 2002 – was all but extinct. For years, little been heard about or from the 140bpm-based sound that drew from the UK garage scene that preceded it, from the dub and reggae sound-systems of a previous generation, from the DIY attitude of punk. It had been a visceral, exhilarating, peculiarly local, genre. When it emerged, it was slated to be the next big thing.

Except, it wasn't quite, not commercially, at any rate. It didn't colonise the charts in the way garage did, or travel the globe as widely as would dubstep, its successor. It suffered from poor infrastructure, the decline of both pirate radio and specialist record shops, and from the dogged determination of the police – which associated grime with violence – to shut down each and every rave. It was also cliquey, being not just almost exclusively London-based, but almost exclusively east London-based. It could be rowdy and aggressive, which probably scared some potential fans – Lethal B's brilliantly ebullient Pow (Forward) was deemed so disruptive it was banned from clubs around the country on its release in 2004. But between Pow and 2008, the sound changed. Grime's stars shed their 140bpm backbone in favour of more chart-friendly fodder. Tinchy Stryder released Take Me Back, Ironik merged grime and R&B with Stay With Me and Dizzee Rascal collaborated with Calvin Harris. When Wiley, one of the scene's founding fathers, went to No 1 with Heatwave in 2012, it felt like the final nail in the coffin for the original grime sound.

Footsie performing in London. Photograph: Getty Images

In fact, grime is doing quite well away from the spotlight. There are plenty of regular nights; Jammer's Lord of the Mics DVD series, in which popular MCs clash with each other, does well the iTunes chart with little traditional promotion. DJ Target, a member of the original grime crew Roll Deep, was recently promoted from Radio 1Xtra to a slot on Radio 1. Ghetts, Frisco and Footsie all released albums in March. Wiley, who has announced his final album will be strictly grime, continues to hold the hugely popular Eskimo Dance at the Indigo2. And one of this spring's urban anthems, German Whip by Meridian Dan featuring Big H and JME, is spearheading grime's return to prominence.

"Grime ain't dead, are you mad?" splutters Ghetts, who comes from Plaistow in grime's east London heartland. "I will rep grime until I'm in my grave. It should be on my tombstone: here lies grime." All well and good, but what about the scene's big stars, who have upped and left to live in Miami (Dizzee Rascal) or Canada (Wiley, albeit temporarily)? "We all need to work together more and be proud of our culture," Ghetts says. "Jay Z is bigger than rap culture, but never once does he act like he's not part of that scene. That's what I'm asking my brothers in grime to do; be proud and promote our music. After punk rock, this is the truest music Britain has produced."

Mainstream … Dizzee Rascal at Glastonbury. Photograph: Redferns via Getty Images

Earlier this month, Ghetts staged a surprise performance outside the Barbican in London. Via a Facebook post, he managed to gather an audience of more than 200 people with just an hour's notice. The night was held for two reasons: to promote the release of his new album, Rebel With a Cause, and in response to the Barbican's cancellation, after consulting City of London police, of Just Jam, which wasn't even a grime night per se; it merely had grime acts on its bill.

It's a matter of respect, says Skepta, one of the scene's most enduring and enigmatic MCs and producers. Britain, simply, does not value the music it produces enough. "They respect rappers in the US but in England, it's the Queen's country. She'll forever be putting out the message on these BBC networks that there's no hood, it's tea and red phoneboxes. Hip-hop is celebrated in the US; Obama talks about having Ludacris on his iPod. But in the UK, there are a lot of obstacles in our way," he says.

But nor does he want grime to become a mass-market commodity. "I'm happy that grime remains underground," he insists. "A lot of people talk like it's some underrated or ignored genre, but to me that's the beauty of it. You've got our voices recording the heart and the aggressiveness of London. It will catch on and not just in America; we want the whole world to hear it, which it will one day."

There certainly appears to be a renewed interest in grime in 2014. In recent years, many grime producers have become influenced by trap, originally a style of southern US hip-hop; for grime purists this was a disaster, but for a new generation raised on funky house, bassline and deep house, it offered a totally new experience: it put grime in a position where it could be considered seriously as a member of the dance family, but did so without the music losing its essence. "The way grime is now, today, influences people without them even realising," Skepta says. "Beyoncé's Bow Down, to me, that could be a grime tune. If it's electronic and 140-ish bpm and people go crazy to it, to me that's grime. The lines are so blurred right now."

Meridian Dan, the man behind German Whip, recently signed an album deal with house label PMR, the home of Disclosure and Jessie Ware, suggesting Skepta's right about the lines becoming blurred. "It's all the same scene; house and grime is all dance music," he says. What's perhaps so joyous about German Whip, and why it's been played on Radio 1's breakfast show as well as the underground stations, is that it captures the spirit of grime's first wave. "I went away from music for a while and now I'm back, I'm making grime in the same way I knew it to be made," Dan says. "I've got the same energy and spirit towards it now as I did in the days of Heat FM and Deja Vu. I hope grime is more accessible to people now; there's less of a stigma attached to it. We're all from the same place, we all play on the same pitch."

Grime matters because it's a timely metaphor for our mixed-race society, taking influences from many cultures yet managing to sound utterly, resolutely, determinedly British. It is an important part of the British experience, one of the few genuinely working-class music scenes to have emerged in recent years, and one whose influence is written through pop's mainstream, in the form of people such as Tinie Tempah and SBTV's Jamal Edwards. Just as scenes like punk have been celebrated and nurtured, so this new wave of grime deserves the same treatment.

Ghetts.

For all its Britishness, though, Skepta believes looking beyond the UK will be the key to grime's continuing success. "Soul II Soul brought house to America and we can do the same. There's a whole new generation coming through who are the voice of London and of the UK, so it can't stop. Grime will always churn out new talent, thoughts and ideas. It's up to us to discover where it's possible for this scene to go."