The return of Simon Wheatley, grime’s most revered photographer

Having shot the most striking photographs of grime’s first wave, Simon Wheatley’s work is part of London’s cultural iconography. If you’re into the genre, then Simon’s classics are likely etched into your consciousness. There’s the one of Skepta in the chicken shop. Kano in the Scarface suit. Crazy Titch and his dog.

The latter image, of the now-incarcerated Stratford MC having a smoke while his tongue-wagging pitbull peers over his shoulder, is the cover of Simon’s sought-after 2011 book Don’t Call Me Urban. For years, the book has been a treasured collector’s item among grime loyalists (there’s a signed copy going for £325 on eBay.) Now, he’s dropping a brand new edition which is almost twice as thick. And this time, Simon is publishing via it his own imprint, Backdoor Editions. You can and should pre-order that here.

Back in the summer of 2023, I connected with Simon, who’d permanently moved back to London after a stint in India, about photographing a story on Victory Lap – the DIY radio platform channelling grime’s communal essence for a new generation. When we attended a cypher in Peckham and organised shoots with rappers in their early twenties, I was struck by how honoured they all were to be shot by Simon. These days, he’s the unc of the Victory Lap scene.

Simon’s most vocal and most influential supporter is Corteiz mastermind Clint, who dropped a collection of ski jackets last year emblazoned with Simon’s photos of Crazy Titch. In the foreword for the new edition of Don’t Call Me Urban, Clint writes that ​“Simon is the fly on the wall needed by the people who were and still are under-represented, shunned and disregarded in the media. What he did during that time went on to shape how I wanted to see London represented in my work.”

Ahead of the London launch party for Don’t Call Me Urban, Simon popped into THE FACE’s office to talk about Titch’s voicenotes, Clint’s support and the energy he’s searching for in the new generation.

How does it feel to have so much support from Clint?

If I could go back to my 25 year old self and try to picture this situation – having someone who is so influential in street fashion and culture, with the circles that he keeps and his influence, [be] one of my biggest fans and promote me like this – I wouldn’t be able to believe it, bro. Now, I take it in my stride, because there’s a lot of other people also making noise about my work. But to think that he said ​“Right, I want to bring this book back and I want to do a jacket with your picture” and that he’s now also going to do a T‑shirt… It’s so touching.

Crazy Titch is a big part of all this. Have you had much contact with him in recent years?

He sends me voice notes from jail. The first time was after I posted an outtake from the shot we did when he’s sitting on a bench with his dog, and I heard his voice: ​“Any more shots you got for me? What’s that, ain’t seen that one before, rah”. He loves the fact that I’ve kind of immortalised him by making him the cover of the book. Yeah, Crazy Titch… That’s another story, man. He’d have been quite something if he’d hung around, I think. He’d definitely be up there. He was the favourite in youth clubs.

When you were shooting this material, I assume you didn’t look, speak or dress like a grime MC. How come they let you into their homes and didn’t just tell you to fuck off?

I did get that, too! Some people say, ​“We were always a bit suspicious that you were undercover”. But I think maybe my patience and perseverance, and the fact that I’ve always been a bit odd has has helped me. I’ve always been someone who people have found a little bit amusing, really, because I’m a bit weird! I think that helps. I don’t know, you have to talk to Hak [Baker], Roll Deep, Flowdan – talk to someone who knows me from those days and say, what was it about Simon that engaged you, that you allowed him to hang around?

I [also] feel that it was because of my interest in the social issue. Grime wasn’t a particularly conscious genre, but it didn’t mean the people [who were part of it] weren’t intelligent or that they hadn’t come from conscious backgrounds. I remember Wiley’s father, for example, he was on first name terms with Benjamin Zephaniah. And so people had grown up with that kind of conscious influence of the ​’60s and ​’70s in their homes. So I think a lot of people understood that I was interested in the broader themes of their life, rather than just making them look cool, getting them into a tracksuit and getting some commercial work off the back of it. Because I never did any commercial in those days. Never.

What are the most striking differences between a UK MC cypher in 2025 and one in 2005?

It’s massively different from back in the day, because those days were just raucous. And now it’s almost polite. People will wave a mic around – ​“would you like it?” – whereas back in the day, they were grabbing it out of each other’s hands. That’s the main difference.

I wonder if that community element, and that friendliness, feels refreshing in the context of it coming after the drill era though. Because although there was some great music coming from the drill scene, you probably wouldn’t have been able to have had a clash…

I stayed away from drill, really. I look back at it now – I’ve got a few pictures here and there, and there is a bit of regret that I didn’t photograph it. But I was in a different place in my life. I was very much in India. My mother passed away. And [drill] wasn’t very colourful. Grime was colourful. Grime was full of characters – you had people like Scratchy, Bruza, Riko [Dan], Wiley. There was just a lot of character around. And drill was all about the black tracksuit. I write about it [in the book], I say ​“even if I did feel a correlation between grime’s boisterous culture of clashing and the rising street violence, those times seem almost innocent after the subsequent age of drill’s mandatory face mask”.

When there was a big grime and UK rap renaissance in the mid-2010s, did you notice a new wave of interest in your work?

I would come back [to England] and people would call me a legend. And I’m obviously very grateful, but it is an overused term – a legend is somebody who’s almost passed from physical form! I write at the back of the [new edition] about how I remained active in my visits to London, when the book was gradually establishing a legacy, and my absence was making me something of a myth. When I started photographing and filming [Lewisham grime crew] The Square in 2015 – 16, they were gassed that I was around them, and that took me by surprise. Because, because I never made any money out of Don’t Call Me Urban. The publisher took all the money, I got less than a London bus fare per copy. I got, like, less than £1.30 per copy sold, after 12 years of working. That’s why Clint coming in has helped me to self-publish this time. Clint helped get me out of that contract.

You’ve got a strong connection with Victory Lap now. When you go to a VL cypher, which new gen MCs stand out to you as your favourite characters?

I like Kibo. It’s interesting because some of them are real historians, like Kibo and DJ Chamber 45. They’re born in like, 2003 or something. But it’s like they know every detail of every set that ever took place. It’s like they’ve done some kind of PhD in grime history. But Kibo’s different, he’s a character. He reminds me of that early generation of MCs, he’s not just a marketable product. I also like Joe James and BXKS. I’ve written about how profiles are so often manufactured and managed nowadays. Who has the courage to really be themselves and not give a fuck what a brand or a record label thinks? To just be yourself and imagine that you turned up outside at the bottom of a tower block and someone’s come and let you in, you’ve gone inside, and there’s no consequence. You’ve got nothing to lose. It’s that spirit that I’m interested in.