Dizzee Rascal - Dream

What this video is

Released November 2004 as the second single from Dizzee Rascal's second album Showtime (XL Recordings), 'Dream' arrived at the moment grime was transitioning from East London pirate radio (Deja Vu FM, Rinse FM) into mainstream UK chart pop. Dizzee had already won the Mercury Prize in 2003 for Boy in da Corner, establishing him as the genre's crossover figurehead. The video's subversive use of 1950s BBC children's…

Why it matters

A landmark artifact of grime's early mainstream crossover, demonstrating how the genre's lyrical specificity about UK urban experience could be paired with internationally legible, high-concept visual language. The video's intertextual puppetry approach distinguished it sharply from contemporary…

The director

Dougal Stewart Wilson (born August 1971, Heswall, Merseyside) is an English director of commercials, music videos, and films. After studying natural sciences at Durham University (graduating 1992), he worked as a copywriter at The Leith Agency, Edinburgh,…