On the day of the release of his free EP ‘Another Contender 2‘ – guest mistajam.com writer Once Upon a Grime‘s Graeme Day introduces us to a guy who’s been the fuel of Grime since day one: Diesle.

Hailing from Walthamstow, East London, we’ve got the Grime artist named Diesle. Initially Diesle started playing Drum and Bass when he was 13 before moving into the now popular genre of urban music, Grime. Way back in 1996, Diesle started DJing on the underground station Pressure Fm alongside one-time Roll Deep member Riko, and Eskman. A year later he moved to another underground station for two years called Rinse FM. At that time, Diesle was playing Jungle until taking over Deju Vu in 1999. As you can see, the now Grime artist shot up the ladder pretty quickly establishing his name as a DJ at an alarming rate moving from station to station.

During 1999, Garage was the in sound; this was also Diesle’s new sound too. Diesle used to DJ for the likes of N.A.S.T.Y Crew, chart topping Roll Deep, the crew Tinchy Stryder is still apart of – Ruff Sqwad, plus for the likes of Dizzee Rascal, Essentials and Meridian too. At the time, he was also running regular popular under eighteen events.

In 2008, Diesle started to MC fromo scratch and has improved rapidly, and dramatically. The Grime artist is also the founding member of the crew D-Power. Within the crew, Diesle has had underground success with two mixtape entitled ‘Power Moves Volume 1 & 2’. For those who don’t know, D-Power also consists of Jookie Mundo, Fumin, Top Kat and Stutta. When Channel U was at it’s peak, this is the time you saw the crew emerge from the underground and pop-up on your televisions. The first video being ‘Who’s That Girl?’. The track samples the 80’s hit by Eurythmics. Another video was shot for the track ‘Let It Go’ too. ‘Even If’ is also another noticeable underground hit by the D-Power crew. The name has also been taken and turned into a label too, D-Power Recordings.

Moving away from the whole crew/group scene, Diesle is now focussing on his solo career. Expect recordings via EskiBeat soon and a new single out in 2011 produced by Skepta. The new single being entitled ‘I Got the Power’, and yes, it is sampling that infamous track by Snap! Grime has changed dramatically since it first broke out via the pirate radios back in the early 2000s. The new fans love the sound, yet the older fans seem a bit down hearted with how the music has changed. If your one of the latter fans, Another Contender 2 is the EP for you. Download it here

By Graeme Day