GRM Daily CEO Posty on how he created 'the holy grail of black British music'

"It’s just the holy grail of black British music.” That’s how Stormzy describes GRM Daily on a new YouTube documentary dedicated to the story of the hugely influential online platform, and it explains why the list of interviewees on the film reads like a who’s who of grime and UK rap; in addition to last year’s Glastonbury headliner, we hear from Kano, Jme, Ghetts, Giggs, Skepta, Ms Banks and Julie Adenuga, to name a few. “It was definitely overwhelming, just to see how much love people have for the platform,” says Koby “Posty” Hagan, co-founder of GRM Daily, “because we have so much love for them.”

He adds: “Sometimes people don’t turn up. But everyone did. It was like, ‘Wow, this is so nice.’”

Truth be told, the calibre of people involved in the film is no surprise. For more than a decade, GRM Daily (GRM as in Grime and Rap Music) has been at the beating heart of the UK’s most important music scene this century. It’s been a tireless champion of the sound, and given a leg-up to countless artists. As Aitch, the Manchester rapper whose videos have more than 100 million views on the platform, says: “There are people in the position they are now because of GRM.”

Pirate radio sparked the flames of grime in the early 2000s, followed by DVDs (remember them?) such as Risky Roadz and Lord of the Mics. The footage put faces to MCs’ voices and captured on film now-legendary artists spitting freestyles and locked in fierce lyrical spars. Those releases, paired with the rise of music videos on the TV station Channel U, shaped the scene.

“Just like anyone else, I always wanted to be on the DVDs,” says Posty. Born in England, he grew up in Ghana before becoming hooked on grime after moving to east London aged 12. He “fell in love” with YouTube at university and as the DVDs gave way to the digital age, the idea arose for something fresh. In 2009, alongside long-time friend Pierre Godson-Amamoo and website developer Matt Thorne, he launched GRM Daily, or Grime Daily, as it was first known.

It was an assuredly bold title. Those DVDs appeared once in a blue moon — this was a commitment to providing new content every single day. “The confidence stemmed from the knowledge that we had in the music,” he says, “and the knowledge we had in the people that were good at making music — we knew who everyone was.”

He devised a plan: interview an MC for 20 minutes, split the footage up into four-minute chunks and post one segment each day from Monday to Friday. For the weekends, he’d film a “crep check” — highlighting the artist’s footwear, good or bad — and a freestyle. Doing that just four times a week generated a whole month of content.

The output level was unprecedented, but as Posty explains, “there wasn’t really an ‘us’ before us”, so part of the struggle was simply getting the word out. One method was to find the Facebook page of an established grime artist — Logan Sama, for example, the DJ with around 5,000 followers at that point — and painstakingly message each of those fans with a link.

But much of the growth was organic. Word of mouth among artists soon spread and things snowballed. Soon the roles had reversed: no longer was Grime Daily asking MCs to come on the channel, but the other way round.

Other platforms were emerging, too. SB.TV and Link Up TV — two major players in the scene, now with 1.19 million and 1.88 million YouTube subscribers respectively — were also making moves. In the same way that MCs on those DVDs would push each other to write harder, funnier, more piercing bars, the channels tried to outdo each others’ videos. “There’s a lot of respect there for the other platforms,” Posty says. “They’re definitely a huge factor in a lot of our successes because we want to try and improve things and so do they. They genuinely care about the music still, as well, so it’s a great batch of people to have as your competition.”

That sense of community is something Posty often brings up in our interview, and it’s the main reason for the full title of the documentary, Together We Rise: The Uncompromised Story of GRM Daily. The four-part film is anchored on the platform’s history, but incorporates a wider context.

Koby 'Posty' Hagan

“It’s always been a joint effort by so many people from so many different backgrounds, trying to push towards the goal of making UK music the biggest thing it can be,” he says. “It’s like an unspoken thing between us — everyone pushing towards the same goal. And that’s the reason we’re here today.”

Still, there were times when it looked like GRM Daily might not survive to tell the tale. In 2011, their YouTube channel was deleted without warning or explanation. Rumours swirled as to why, but nothing was ever confirmed. Posty tells me it’s all covered in the documentary (I was only allowed to watch the first episode, with the other three under wraps). Whatever the reason, the loss was devastating.

“To lose all our videos on our platform and not really know why, it was heartbreaking. We were very depressed over it,” he says. It created a cultural chasm, too. “There’s a huge section of UK rap and grime that is missing off the internet — off the face of the Earth. That was really sad.”

Undeterred, in 2012 they relaunched as GRM Daily (the “GRM” signalling a slightly wider scope) and they eventually returned to prominence, buoyed by the “second wave” of grime in the mid-2010s. Heroes of the scene finally started getting international recognition after years of grind, and a new cohort of artists such as Stormzy and AJ Tracey began to break through.

Still, it took time for the unengaged establishment to catch up. The glaring absence of black nominees in any major BRIT Awards categories in 2016 led to the #BritsSoWhite campaign, and although Skepta won the Mercury Prize that year, it felt like an anomaly.

For Posty, it seemed like the scene deserved better. In 2015, he set up the GRM Daily Rated Awards, which have run each year since. “The motivation came from wanting to celebrate with the people we’ve been building this platform with,” he says. “There are a lot of people who have won a Legacy Award at the Rated Awards and some of these people might not have been given the credit they deserve, because there’s no place for them to be celebrated.

“The reason [the Rated Awards] are successful is because it’s very authentic,” he adds. “Anyone can start an award show, but with this, it’s from the people who actually care about it. It’s definitely one of my proudest achievements.”

Now, 11 years after it started, GRM Daily is bigger and more important than ever. The numbers are huge: 3.28 million subscribers on YouTube, 1.7 million Instagram followers. For Posty, the plan going forward is the same as it ever was.

“We came here to support UK music and to try and represent that in the best way we can,” he says. “Creating a platform, a voice, creating as much opportunity for other people as we can — that will always be our motive. That’s always been the route to our success.”

TOGETHER WE RISE: The Uncompromised Story of GRM Daily launches on YouTube from today