London grime MC Skepta has crossed the Channel for one of French rap’s best-known rituals. Grünt, the freestyle series that has filmed French rappers on its YouTube channel since 2012, has posted “Skepta | Grünt #79,” an episode billed under his name alone on its official channel.
For an English-speaking MC, that is unusual company. Grünt is a mostly French-language show, and its archive reads like a roll call of the country’s rap stars: Nekfeu, Lomepal, Alpha Wann, PLK, Josman. Its first episode went up on January 31, 2012, with Nekfeu, Keroué, Lomepal and James Legalize trading verses.
How a Grünt session works
The format is simple and unforgiving. According to the series’ history, a session runs from 30 minutes to an hour, performed live over unreleased instrumentals, most of them picked and mixed by Costo, with Jean Morel, the show’s founder, usually hosting. On most episodes one lead rapper is chosen and then invites the other guests; on others a whole crew is booked together.
The series has stretched that template over the years. It took the format abroad with the Grünt Tour, which spotlighted rappers from Morocco, Ivory Coast, Mali and Senegal, and in 2022 it filmed its first session live on stage at the Bataclan in Paris. In 2023, Wallace Cleaver held the floor for a 34-minute freestyle. A London grime headliner fits that outward-looking streak.
Why Skepta, and why now
The timing lines up with the biggest release of his year. Skepta put out The Fork and Knife, his first solo album in seven years, on November 6, through his own Big Smoke label and Epic. The record follows Ignorance Is Bliss from 2019 and sits a decade after Konnichiwa, the 2016 album that won the Mercury Prize and became grime’s highest-charting album at No. 2 in the UK.
He has also been working with French artists lately. In May he appeared on “Chippie,” a single by French-Malian singer Aya Nakamura, the biggest crossover name in francophone pop. A Grünt session is the street-level counterpart to that: a room of rappers, a mic and an audience that knows its freestyles.
American listeners may know him best from his verse and production on A$AP Rocky’s 2018 hit “Praise the Lord (Da Shine).” Rocky has had his own busy fall, with Shroom Clouds opening Disc 2 of his album Don’t Be Dumb.
What we can and cannot say about the episode
The video sits on Grünt’s own channel, which confirms the booking and the episode number. We could not view the full session, so this piece does not describe which beats he chose, how long he rapped or whether other MCs joined him; the title names only Skepta. Viewers who want the full picture should watch it on the channel itself.
The fact of the booking matters on its own. Grime and French rap grew up in parallel, in London estates and Paris banlieues, fed by pirate radio and sound-system culture on one side and freestyle radio shows on the other. Skepta started as a DJ on London pirate station Heat FM with Meridian Crew before he ever picked up a mic, and Grünt, linked to Paris station Radio Nova, comes from a similar tradition of rapping live for listeners.
Episode 79 arrives 78 numbered episodes and nearly 15 years after the first Grünt went online on January 31, 2012.
Further reading
Image: Jwslubbock, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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