When I suggest to Trim that his unique style ensures he’s a one-of-one emcee, I didn’t expect gentle pushback: “I swear to God, there’s so many versions of me, where people have just taken a little bit of me and run off and forged careers.” From most artists, that statement might sound like sour grapes, but coming midway through our extended conversation, Trim exudes confidence in his pen, clarity on his impact, and gratitude for his success.

Over 20 years since debuting as part of Roll Deep amidst grime’s initial explosion, Trim’s career feels both singular and influential. Whereas many members of grime’s first generation stumbled after the genre’s first big look, Trim doubled down, cementing himself as a solo act able to release project after project, balancing grime’s garage and bashment roots and its newfound rap star ambitions. Simultaneously, he became your favourite dubstep producer’s favourite barrer, blessing everyone from James Blake and Skream to Last Japan with fiery vocals that not only ignite the rave, but also stand up to in-depth home listening, thanks to Trim’s witty double entendres and unique, East LDN sensibility.

This emphasis on lyricism not only ensures Trim is a fierce competitor in a clash, it’s quietly made him grime’s poet laureate, one of UK music’s most pioneering writers and an oft-uncredited influence on subsequent generations of rappers and grime MCs. His preference for cleverness and menace over hype and volume notably made its way into the deliveries of countless stone-faced and Stone Island-rocking drill rappers, and his propensity to explore a variety of tempos and adapt to different instrumentals is mirrored in the current generation’s eclectic musical selection.

Finally, as Trim’s matured and grown into adulthood, he’s been unafraid to both follow his muse towards more serious topics while keeping an eye on the youthful energy that first won him his fanbase. Though perhaps contradictory on the surface, it’s this drive towards both freshness and maturity that allows Trim to continue standing out from his peers so many years later, all while quietly influencing multiple generations of artists both directly and via the multitude of ways he’s expanded UK lyricism over the years. To put it bluntly: there may not be a single UK rhymer out today that hasn’t nicked at least a bit from Trim’s playbook.

He’s showing no sign of slowing down either: after a couple of years adapting to being a dad, Trim has returned to his prolific ways, launching a spiritual sequel to his 14+ edition Soulfood series with RoadWorx, expanding his reach to instrumental production with multiple volumes of Trim Wuz Here, and developing his collaboration with Bristol’s Pinch into a potent 6-track project titled No Caller ID. On a brisk London afternoon, we reached out to Trim to discuss all of the above, the opportunities available to veteran MCs today, and the roots of his musical talent.

Son Raw: How did No Caller ID come about? You’ve been working with Pinch for a minute now, but a proper EP really expands what you two can do together as a full project across different styles and tempos. What pushed you guys to take it further?

Trim: I think we just push each other. We both love music differently, and both have an eclectic taste so when we worked together, a lot of it was trying to test each other’s world and seeing where we could merge. We know what people want to hear and I think it was done very naturally.

One of the things that I find interesting with what you and Pinch do is that you can go and kill a set and the rave goes off, but it’s not all hype and shouting; you guys managed to find that space where it works even outside that context.

Both of us have come from the beginnings of grime and dubstep. When grime first came out, I was running around trying to be an MC just like everybody else; the Dizzees and whoever else was around. For Pinch, he was around the dubstep era when it first came out as well, and was also possibly into music way before I was. So we’re like pillars. I feel like there’s a lot out there that is very similar to us, yet we’re not similar to anyone else because we were the founders of a lot of music out there today. It branches off of us. We wanted to bring it back to the roots by just being ourselves and wanted a future version of what we should sound like. Also, I pride myself on having a certain IQ: playing with metaphors, puns, similes... I find myself always trying to get the listener’s attention. Grime’s easy to do that on, and so is dubstep. I feel like we found that because it’s in us; it’s always gonna be in us. We are what it means to be dubstep or grime. It’s English, even if Pinch is born in Wales; it’s a UK thing.

There seems to be this love of that classic grime and dubstep era, but people are also hungry to hear it be expanded upon. It’s not trapped in amber where it has to sound exactly the same as 2005; as long as someone’s putting their heart in it and doing something new, there’s still that appetite for it.

Yeah, there’s always going to be the appetite for it: doing something new but also sticking to our morals, or whatever it may be. Me and Pinch are probably guilty of being stubborn about what we like and what we are. We care about what we let go and what we permit, musically. I’d say getting people to embrace the beginnings as well as the new is the beauty in the work. Us as artists, along with several others, we keep that core and remind people of what it was and where it will be—that’s an art form in itself. It’s not actually something we can set out and plan to do; it’s just us being stubborn as the artists we are and where we’ve come from.

When it comes to your process, is there a difference between writing on a beat that Pinch wrote that might lean more towards dubstep, versus one of your RoadWorx releases that are more oriented towards grime or rap?

The music tells me what to do. I feel like most beats that I’ve ever written for, I have a message, but the music tells me what to say. I always approach it by what the beat tells me. It sounds weird but I’ve been saying it for years. With Pinch and several other artists I’ve worked with, I tend to not want to listen to the music for too long, because a film or a storyline plays out in my head and I go with that. It’s never really about a predetermined subject: I get the beat, listen to it and then wander off into my weird world. I grew up on all kinds of music so I feel like I will always challenge myself. It’s like a martial art: each music has a different style and I feel like me and Pinch master Snake and Crane style together.

A lot of UK MCs have common touch points—be it dancehall or jungle or ‘90s hip-hop—but you’ve often mentioned you listen to a lot of different styles of music. What was some of the first stuff that really caught your ear when you were young?

I grew up on soca, bashment and revival. Those are my three main reference points of music. Obviously, I live in East London, so there was a lot of pop music and bashment dances; that’s something that’s embedded in my family. My dad was a singer and my mum was a singer, so I’ve always had music in my life. My mum and dad, they were powerful influences in my life—it would probably be them before anything else, you know? Making music is my challenge, and has always been. I feel like all music is made by a feeling, whether it’s through a beat or something else. So, no matter what the music was, there’s always been a version of it, some form of music that’s touched me. It could have been rock ‘n’ roll, it could have been Nirvana: there’ll be a part of it in there for me because someone made it on a feeling. To say what stood out… Music stood out! Growing up, music was my safe space, my freedom, time to just be myself—whether that was dancing or relating to my own culture, or other cultures. Music was the link between us all.

That parental influence is so key. It’s wild because I recently spoke to Tre Mission about his story in Toronto and there are so many parallels; it comes down to community and family first.

In Black music, from the beginning, it’s always been a togetherness because of the slavery and all of the dark parts of history that Black people came through. A lot of our music is always about being together and loving one another and loving your wife, your missus. It was always about some kind of bond within the music when we were growing up. It was a lot more love and a lot more fighting against the man, just based on a togetherness. There are so many artists that have influenced me, I couldn’t even start to name them all. But if you want to find me, it’ll be on the basis of bashment, soul and reggae.

In terms of your catalogue, years ago, you were putting out a lot of music with the Soulfood series. Recently, with RoadWorx, it feels like you’re tapping into that prolific energy again. What is it about these two moments that inspired you to write and record so much?

Independence. With Soulfood, I wanted my independence. I wanted the world to know me and I thought: how could I do that without pushing myself to do the most work? With the Soulfood projects, it was a statement: this is how I want to go about my work. Now, with RoadWorx, because I’ve spent so much time trying to be a dad and living life, music took a seat back. I actually started working with Pinch on another job; he got me a job writing for other people—ads, games, films and stuff like that. It kind of blew my mind and I realised I was neglecting my talent, so I challenged myself to basically see if I could replicate the Soulfood series again and give that feeling back to the world. Because, no matter where I go, everybody reminds me of Soulfood. It was like a challenge that I set for myself: could I release another 14 EPs, just as cold or maybe even better than the Soulfood series? So that was the spark, working with Pinch to begin with, and then realising: “Oh, wait a minute—I should be challenging myself! I should be mirroring the work that I’ve done.”

A lot of people throughout the years were like, “Trim’s inconsistent,” but not really realising that I’ve done more work than most grime artists out there. I don’t think there’s many artists who can say they’ve released 25 EPs or mixtapes or whatever you want to call them, minus my previous work in a crew and minus my feature work. It’s a lot of work. So it was about reiterating that point again as well and being like: “Alright, you didn’t notice the 14 I did before—let’s see if you notice these 14 and also let me see if I can show you that I’m still just as cold as I used to be.”

Was it tough to ramp back up to that after a few years focusing on being a dad?

I’ve never fallen out of love for music, but I’ve never wanted to do it just for the sake of it. I give it my full time and want to own it all myself. Some of that period of time, not working or releasing, was me waiting for contracts and deals to go away. That, and also life: life hit me in a different way, in many ways. I’ve had a lot of things go on in my life that would probably send some people mad. But music’s always helped me. Music and exercising or football has always helped my mental health. I pride myself on challenging myself and putting the best in for myself: I was always going to come back and go much harder. I think last year was the time where I released eight EPs, four vocals and four instrumental ones, just to show everybody I can produce now.

What was it that pushed you to start on the beats? A lot of MCs of your generation started out as producers—Wiley, Dizzee, Jammer, Rapid and those guys. Was making beats a brand new thing for you or did you always have that talent and wanted to come back to it?

I was one of the last ones to start producing. Scratchy [from Roll Deep] used to try and teach me when I was… in a crew [laughs]. I’ve known him since secondary school, so he used to try and teach me. Then, as the years went on, I learned more and more. Scratchy and then Geeneus helped as well: every time I got a computer or throughout my solo era, G would always help me with plugins and stuff. So I did learn, but I neglected it because I felt like writing was my main source of income and everybody just wanted to hear me clash and do whatever else, so I spent more time doing that. Being a dad and having a life, though, you end up spending more time sitting around. So I thought, “Oh, actually, I can actually produce as well.” All of that is another tip to Pinch because when I did find the confidence, people like Pinch and Mark Pritchard said, “These are actually good!” Coming from guys like that, I felt that was really powerful, so I continued and got confident enough to release them. I'm lucky to have some of the friends that I do have.

That’s another aspect of working across those different lanes: you’re just as comfortable shelling over straight grime riddims as you are on experimental productions from James Blake or Pinch or Blackdown. What do you think it is that gets you in all these different musical circles where other people are gravitating towards your artistry?

I’ve always based it on the art. That’s the key. I find that because of that, I found a lot of people that really care about the music. I’ve been lucky in that sense because, yeah, if I was thinking of other things, I might have been in another world, but because I’ve spent more time on the art, I found that it’s pushed me into those pockets of people that truly love the music. That also is a tip to a lot of people like Skream or James Blake, you know? I’ve worked with loads of people but they're all people who are passionate about the music. Also, Last Japan, Nico Lindsay—everybody that I’ve tried to surround myself with. I've managed to forge a family of great actual musicians, which is where I wanted to be. I didn’t want to be in a space where… Look: I love grime, I came from it, but I didn’t want to be limited. Before grime, I was listening to bashment, I was listening to rap—ODB was an influence of mine, as were Wu-Tang—so there’s a lot more that I wanted to express. I couldn’t do it with just your everyday bedroom producer; I had to explore.

The ODB thing is, I never thought of it, but you’re both singular. No one sounds quite like ODB and no one sounds like Trim.

No, but there are many versions! I swear to God, there’s so many versions of me, where people have just taken a little bit of me and run off and forged careers. I’m not gonna mention names, but if you’ve listened to me from beginning to now, you’ll see there’s so many versions of me out there. That’s possibly why I’ve always kept going as well, because I’m like, “Oh, so no one can hear the similarities in that? Okay, here’s another flow! You can have that one.”

Obviously, there’s the history of you clashing/sending for pretty much everyone in the grime scene [laughs]. But keeping that competitive spirit going and using it to fuel new creativity is one of the things that makes UK music so vital.

Yeah, that’s my whole thing. “Okay, you’re gonna do that? Okay, I’ll do this!” I think there’s only a few others who are capable of doing that. Everybody else has to stick to what they know. That’s also probably a bad thing in some senses, because people want you to stick to the one thing they like about you. I think it’s Jay-Z that said it: “If you like my old shit, listen to my old albums.”

And with a career like yours, it’s easy to do that. There are over a dozen Soulfood projects! It’s not like Nas back in the day, where he dropped Illmatic and never revisited that sound—we never got that version again.

Yeah, you can always listen back. To be honest, I also pride myself on going back and trying to replicate versions of myself that people like. It’s a challenge and I’ll accept the challenge each time it comes around, especially when it comes to writing.

In terms of what’s been happening in the UK more recently, do you still keep an ear out to what people younger than us are doing?

A couple, yeah: Capo Lee, AJ Tracey, Big Zuu, Nico Lindsay, 140Aks, Hak Baker… I like all of them. I feel really proud of the unity they keep between themselves: the money’s not more important—friendship is. That’s some of the way they carry themselves, keep it tight-knit and push each other. I think it’s brilliant, because if we would have done that for our era of grime, we would have been a more powerful, bigger thing. I feel like people from my era, it was all about “me, me, me”, you know? But yeah, now and again, I tap into all of the youngers. My little cousin, Nico Lindsay, is always keeping me up to date.

On RoadWorx 5, you jumped on the Kendrick beat for “Not Like Us”. For you to jump on that track—something that was, possibly in all of music, the biggest song last year—and do it justice, it felt big.

Rap was the first style of music I was writing to. When I was coming into grime, in the early stages of my career, I was spitting rap bars over grime. I’d write a rap song and try and work it out on a grime beat. So yeah, when it comes to rap, I’m in love with it because I find it’s the next step.It’s got a lot of educational values to it. There are so many ways of articulating yourself and, you know, showing your education. Grime’s very adolescent—a kid could probably do it—and that’s no disrespect because I came from it. But rap, it just gives you that mature, adult vibe… If you can do it, that is! Kendrick’s been an influence of mine for a very long time; he stands for a lot of things that I stand for. So, in some ways, it was an honour. I was just hoping he heard it, if I’m honest. But with that being said, I feel like a lot of people in England showed me a lot of love for that song.

I feel like a lot of us want to see grime grow in the way that rap was able to, where you have 40+ year-old artists like Griselda able to see that independent success. Even what they do with drumless beats, grime did that with Devil mixes!

We were all nicking snares and drums from reggae and bashment and using them to make rap and whatever else. Griselda are in their own right; I think they’re a beautiful, beautiful bunch. How they’ve gone about it is a lot like what I want to do. It’s all independent and no one’s changing, no one’s compromising. That’s where I come from; like, as soon as my old crew started making pop songs, I felt like it wasn’t me. And don’t get me wrong: there will be a pop song that comes out of me, but it’s how I‘d go about making a pop song. So yeah, I rate Griselda and Wu-Tang and Mobb Deep and DMX—all those guys. They’ve all been giving me that goal to be able to be that independent guy selling a T-shirt for 50 quid, where it’ll be a fashionable one, not one that you can just throw away.

It’s all about that independence and knowing your worth. Staying on that, you mentioned about doing writing jobs in the wider culture industry—how has that allowed you to stretch your creativity?

I just love writing. That’s my thing, bro. It’s a challenge. If you call up tomorrow and say, “Trim, there’s a grey rim on the floor with bloodshot bogeys coming out of it. Could you make a rhyme about this please?” For me, it’s another challenge, especially if I know I’m getting paid for it as well! I feel that if I was put on this planet to do anything, it was to do this. I possibly have more fun doing that than most things in life. I’ve been lucky to have friends like Pinch and get the job that I have, but I’m also really talented in a lot of ways and I ain’t holding back on that. I feel like that’s something I have proven.