Oxford researcher Warren Stanislaus has published an important article in the Japan Forum journal called From Cool Japan To Cold Japan: Grime Cyborgs In Black Britain, an exploration of Japanese pop culture's influence on grime and Black British culture.

His research touches on games and anime series like Street Fighter, Sonic, Dragon Ball Z, Streets Of Rage, Akira, Pokemon, Naruto, which many of the scene's creatives who grew up through the '90s were raised on and which are now embedded in their art. For grime specifically, it can be found in the futuristic production, abstract music videos, or the tongue-in-cheek game jargon of their lyrical spiels.

Speaking on what inspired the study, Warren Stanislaus explains: "When we talk about grime and Black British youth culture or identity, we've also got to talk about the impact of Japanese games, technologies, and anime. Or when we talk about the global spread of Japanese pop culture, we have to include the story of grime. Even in the ends, Black Britons have always been global.

"People often talk about lyrics that reference the Street Fighter games, but grime and Black Britain's links to Japanese pop culture and even East Asian culture runs much deeper. If in the '70s and '80s it was Bruce Lee and Chinese Kung Fu movies that inspired Black youth, from the '90s it became the SNES, Sonic, Pokémon, Dragon Ball Z, etc. A whole generation grew up on this stuff made in Japan, and remixed it."

This article is an example of one of the many ways in which the world is a network of influences passing through one art form to the other. You can read it in full here.