2024: Backbone at Number One and Metalheadz at Thirty

In 2024 drum & bass and jungle were visible in places that had rarely reached them: a BRIT Award, the Mercury Prize shortlist, the top of the UK singles chart. At the same time the music kept its own working life, with a label turning thirty, a 160 bpm jungle album on a label best known for dubstep and a steady stream of new names in the clubs.

The year is easier to read as three lines running side by side. One was the commercial peak of a duo who had spent two decades building towards it. One was a generation of jungle-minded producers who treated old breakbeat language as a living tool. The third was the geography: American promoters, Asian festivals and European club nights all treated drum & bass as a headline attraction rather than a late-night extra.

Chase & Status began 2024 as the most visible drum & bass act in Britain. In February the BRIT Awards named them Producer of the Year, with the winners announced before the ceremony at London's O2 Arena on 2 March, where they performed with Becky Hill. Music Week noted that they had been the first act since 2010 to have four singles in the UK Top 40 at the same time: "Baddadan", "Liquor + Cigarettes", "Selecta" and "Disconnect".

The bigger moment came in August. "Backbone", with Stormzy, was released on 8 August and entered the Official Singles Chart at number one on the chart published 16 August, with 6.4 million streams in its first week. It was the first UK number one for Chase & Status and the fourth for Stormzy, and the Official Charts Company later reported a second week at the top. The duo's own reaction was "It couldn't get any better for us".

It matters for the wider scene because "Backbone" is not a diluted crossover cut. It is a club track first, and Beatport's year-end sales list for drum & bass placed its club edit fifth for 2024. A chart-topper that DJs actually played gave the genre a talking point that had nothing to do with nostalgia.

4am Kru, a London duo, collected recent singles on the album Incognito Rhythm in September, and Tim Reaper and Kloke released In Full Effect on Hyperdub on 20 September. Resident Advisor reported it as the label's first jungle album, an eight-track record from a label that built its name on dubstep and adjacent sounds. The release placed jungle on a label usually associated with other corners of UK bass music. Reaper also ran Future Retro London and, with Kasra, started the experimental label Best Intentions, according to UKF.

The Mercury shortlist included Nia Archives's Silence Is Loud, a sign of wider recognition for the new jungle wave. That recognition sat alongside the more durable story of producers building labels, records and club audiences on their own terms.

Not everything that mattered in 2024 was fast and rough. Alix Perez released the mini-album Entanglements on his own 1985 Music, a soul-led set that UKF's writer called a favourite of the year. Zar's debut Anima on Space Cadet, built around his Italian heritage and Manchester home with local vocalists including aya dia and DRS, and Redeyes's Slow showed the melodic, vocal-led end of the genre still had room to grow.

Beatport's year-end figures give a rough sense of what clubs were buying: Sub Focus was the top drum & bass artist, "Go Back" with John Summit and Julia Church was the top track, and Jungle Cakes was the top label, ahead of UKF, Souped Up Records, Critical Music and Crucast. The 2025 IMS Business Report later said drum & bass rose from sixth to third most popular genre on Beatport during 2024, although the report gave the ranking and not the underlying numbers.

Metalheadz spent the year celebrating its thirtieth anniversary, a run of shows that began in autumn 2023. The final London date, at KOKO on 18 October 2024, was billed as the last London show of the series and was led by Goldie back to back with Special Request, with Doc Scott, Loxy and DJ Storm on the bill. A label still touring a thirty-year catalogue, with Doc Scott and Goldie on the same bill, was itself a story about continuity.

The year also took several of the people who built the music. MC Conrad, a vocalist and co-founder of Good Looking Records with LTJ Bukem, was reported dead on 30 April aged 52. DJ Randall, an early breakbeat hardcore and jungle DJ who ran the DeUnderground shop and co-produced Andy C's 1995 "Sound Control", died on 31 July aged 54, shortly after playing Glastonbury's Shangri-La and Outlook Origins in Croatia. Their deaths prompted tributes from artists across generations, a reminder of how recent this history is.

The commercial and cultural picture was increasingly international. Chartmetric reported in March that Spotify city data showed drum & bass had the smallest US–UK gap among the four genres it studied. Producer Hamdi from Oxford made "Push" with Skrillex, Taichu and Offaiah, which UKF said was used in an Apple iPhone 16 advert, while Tape B played over thirty consecutive sold-out North American dates. In the UK, Freddy B from Manchester emerged as one of UKF's breakout names, and Adam F's "Circles", sampled by PinkPantheress on "Break It Off", was revisited by its own creator.

Three threads ran forward. The album format had returned as a place for drum & bass to speak at length. Chase & Status proved a club track could reach number one, while Hyperdub's first jungle album showed the music moving across independent label boundaries. And the US appetite, visible in Beatport sales and club tours, pointed to arena and amphitheatre ambitions that 2025 would test.