Grime artist Dizzee Rascal returned to his East End roots to film the music video for a track on his latest release.
Dizzee, who grew up in Bow, was keen to return to shoot his vintage-inspired video for his Don’t Gas Me EP.
He regularly attended as a teenager the Linc community centre in Poplar and chose it to shoot the video, which has already had 350,000 views on YouTube since its release earlier this month.
Dizzee offered work experience as actors and runners to youngsters at the Spotlight youth service that’s run by Poplar Harca housing organisation.
Dizzee’s production team chose five youngsters from Spotlight to take part, including 17-year-old Jerry Ananga.
“I feel like I’m slowly on my way into the music industry,” Jerry said. “This video shoot showed me how professional it really is and how much of a big step it is from where I am now. Yet it’s given a lot of motivation.”
Another 17-year-old, Joshua Curlz, intend going into the music industry as an artist—but the video production has made him look at “the bigger picture”.
Spotlight’s music programme runs from its state-of-the-art studios, one at Langdon Park and the other at the Bow East centre, where producers help youngsters to engineer and record their own tracks.
It also has its own record label, Spotlight Sounds, launched a year ago, that has already released two albums on various online platforms.
That would have been a good platform for Dizzee to launch his own career, had it been around at the time.
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