KwolleM & the Making of Mellow Grime

A decade-long journey through 140 BPM, emotion, and East London streets.

In 2015, while Skepta’s ‘Shutdown’ and Jme’s ‘Man Don’t Care’ were hijacking mainstream attention, another sound was quietly brewing underground. Spearheaded by one man, KwolleM, this new movement was introduced through his debut EP, ‘Mellow’. Released on November 4th of that year, ‘Mellow’ arrived without chart-topping singles or radio campaigns. Promotion remained largely within the UK Grime underground and blogosphere, aside from a premiere on Vice’s Noisey, which labelled it “perhaps the most complete collection of Mellow Grime so far”. Critics praised the project for its originality, and in a retrospective earlier this year, DJ Mag credited ‘Mellow’ with kickstarting the Mellow Grime movement.

Produced throughout 2015, mostly on FL studio, and with no additional studios or engineers involved, ‘Mellow’ is a raw and self-contained project. It consists largely of reimagined grime verses layered over lush, sample-based instrumentals, though KwolleM resists calling them remixes. “I wanted to create a whole new song... a whole new concept,” he explained. Executive produced by Vidal Holness, the EP was built on a central idea - contrast. KwolleM said his aim was to “illustrate” a “juxtaposition,” to show that “Tempa T can caress a Dr. Dre-esque beat and still be grimy.”

Blending vocals from grime pioneers like Dizzee Rascal, Skepta, and WIley, with rising voices like AJ Tracey and Joe James, ‘Mellow’ recontextualised the genre’s aggression within soulful, melodic frameworks. The tape opens with harder, grittier textures, before softening into romantic and introspective moods, a sonic arc that’s mirrored in the EP’s moody cover, shot in front of the “Welcome to Newham” sign.

In hindsight, ‘Mellow’ laid the groundwork for a new wave of producers - Wilfred, BexBlu, afrosurrealist, 808mystic - and offered an early hint at a more palatable evolution of grime, one tailor-made for modern streaming and social media platforms. As Joe James put it, “Mellow Grime gave [him] an outlet to write musical love letters.”

Almost 5 years later, KwolleM returned with his defining work, ‘C2C’. A concept album rooted in geography and memory, C2C maps KwolleM and Joe James’ life experiences to stops on the East London-to-Essex train line of the same name. All the tracks hover around grime’s 140 BPM foundation, but with softer, jazz- and soul-adjacent instrumentation. It’s a clear continuation of KwolleM’s desire to marry the unrestrained rawness of grime with silkier and smoother textures.

The art direction, handled by Jack Harper, leans into trainline iconography - the cover and rollout reinforcing the idea that this is a sonic journey through place and feeling. From seaside nostalgia to inner-city intensity, each track offers a snapshot of life along the C2C.

‘SSS’, the opener, begins with the sound of children playing and seaside chants of “sea sea seasiders”. From there, ‘Basildon’ sees Joe James recounting his early years as a Black teen navigating young love and social tension in Essex. As the train starts getting into East London, the tone darkens. ‘Barking (& Dagenham)’ introduces a brooding shift, featuring a reworked verse from local veteran Devlin, while ‘West Ham’ plunges us deeper with an old school Roachee verse, setting us loose into the darker side of the Newham night.

From ‘Mellow’ to ‘C2C’ to 2023’s ‘Melo’, and now with eyes on a rumoured 2025 release titled ‘Mellow Grime’, KwolleM has done more than pioneer a sound. He’s built a subgenre rooted in grime tradition but expansive in tone, emotion, and accessibility. Over the past 10 years, he’s mapped not only a musical evolution but a deeply personal and geographic one, taking listeners from Newham to Shoeburyness and back again.

His is a career defined not simply by innovation, but by reflection - a mirror held up to a generation growing up in and around East London, navigating love, loss, and life to the rhythm of 140 BPM.

Words: Sik Frydas