Industry outsider ... Wiley
Wiley has rarely paid much attention to music industry protocol, but last Thursday was extraordinary even by his standards. With a couple of top-10 hits under his belt, and a second album with a major label on the way, the "godfather of grime" (aka 31-year-old Richard Cowie) suddenly gave away 203 songs for free, all at once.
His fans went into a frenzy, sparking a meltdown on the Grime Forum website, which collated the giveaway, while his label was stunned into silence. Wiley had been quietly getting on with preparing tracks for The Elusive, his forthcoming LP to be released on Island, when something snapped. Suddenly, he launched into a Twitter tirade against his manager and business partner, John Woolf, and began uploading 11 folders of unreleased material, much of which had been intended for The Elusive (after some honing).
Was it a publicity stunt? Was it petulant revenge on his manager and his label? Or was it a stroke of genius – generating a huge buzz, clearing the creative slate, and thrilling the fans? Wiley is, as ever, conflicted: agitated that he still doesn't see eye-to-eye with the music business, but pleased at the gratitude of his fans. "It shouldn't have come to this," he says. "I didn't want to do it – but I think it might just have been a good idea."
In the same week that Prince gave away his new album for free via a Daily Mirror CD, denouncing the internet's devaluation of music, Wiley inverted the US pop star's logic to dazzling effect. His restless creative energy has never settled easily into record-label spreadsheets – and, he tells me, continually failing to agree with Island about what The Elusive should sound like, what tracks it should and shouldn't feature, meant he had no choice. Island is refusing to comment on the matter.
The musical giveaway, being called the Zip Files by fans (who have already mocked up a cover), has proved an act of catharsis: "I just need people in England to listen to me. I need people to embrace me, otherwise I'm just in my own little world going mad. And people who I want to hear me can't hear me. I've got all this music sitting on hard drives, and in the end it started to make me feel sick. I thought, let me give it away, and then move on to make the greatest music I've ever made. I just had to get this out from under me, then start again from scratch. The Zip Files are just the foundation."
For a mere foundation, the songs are high quality: from avant-garde grime with quick-fire MC-ing (Elusive Intro), to unabashed chart-toppers (Aim High), to tracks sampling The Muppets (Gonzo), the gargantuan Zip Files span the range of Wiley's talent. They are everything, in other words, that grime can be, from edgy to poppy to just plain silly. As leading US blogger and producer DJ /rupture wrote in response: "Wiley is a major force of change, fearless, constantly imagining how things could be Very Different (music industry norms, synth settings, common sense etc), then making his fundamentally 'other' vision real."
As well as gifting them vast quantities of free music, Wiley is letting his fans do the job he thinks his record label failed at. "Which 15 tracks would you have chosen from the 200 to go on the album?" he asks me at one point. His fans are already on the case, selecting their perfect Wiley album from the raw materials he's given away. These self-curated LPs are also available at grimeforum.com.
Wiley's frustration with the industry is partly because it hasn't yet worked out how to martial his anarchic talent: of the 12 or so full-length LPs he's put out since 2003, no single album captures him at his best. Like many musical auteurs, he can't live with the industry, and can't live without it. "I might not be the easiest person to manage in the world," he concedes with a chuckle, as he confirms that he is once again working with Woolf, the man he swore never to speak to again.
While his fans wade through them with relish, the Zip Files are fast becoming old news to Wiley. He's already hurtling through what he hopes will be his definitive album: the plan is to do a song a day for 15 days, but he's already ahead of schedule. "I've been in the studio all day. I'm tired. When you're on it, there ain't much rest involved." Before going back to what he loves, he leaves me with the question: "Do you think I should release the big single in the autumn, or wait until next year? Because I don't really think I can wait."
Clearly not. Shortly after we speak, he tweets: "I'm defo doing a single end of sep early oct."
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