From Konnichiwa to Corteiz: Ten Years of Skepta's Influence

Ten years after Konnichiwa, its language is being worn by another generation. Corteiz's anniversary collection says as much about the album's lasting weight as it does the clothes themselves.

Ten years on, Konnichiwa hasn't become a relic of grime's past. Its language is still being worn, referenced and passed down by a generation that was barely old enough to experience the album first-hand.

Corteiz x Skepta turns that legacy into a bridge between the generation that lived through Konnichiwa and the one inheriting its influence. The collaboration matters because it treats the album not as a finished moment to commemorate, but as living British cultural language.

That language appears across the collection: ‘It Ain't Safe’ running down sleeves, BBK stitched onto fitted caps and the postage-stamp graphics associated with Konnichiwa reworked across the clothes. These references reach back to Skepta's 2016 Konnichiwa era while placing it inside the visual language of a younger British generation.

So this is bigger than anniversary merchandise. It's a test of how a grime album moves beyond nostalgia and continues to mean something to people who weren't there when it changed the conversation.

Released in May 2016, Konnichiwa arrived after Skepta had already started pulling himself back towards the grime that made him. His 2012 mixtape Blacklisted began that rethink, before “That’s Not Me” brought it sharply into focus in 2014. Its deliberately stripped-back Tim & Barry video cost just £80, turning the rejection of major-label scale into something visible as well as audible. “It Ain’t Safe” followed later that year, before “Shutdown” became one of the defining records of the run towards the album.

By the time Konnichiwa arrived, Skepta’s audience had grown considerably, but the music hadn’t been rebuilt to make that attention easier to handle. Self-released through Boy Better Know, the album remained tied to grime, London and the crew around him, with Skepta’s independence sitting at its centre.

That award gives Konnichiwa an obvious place in British music history, but a trophy isn't why people still care about it ten years later. ‘Shutdown’, ‘That's Not Me’, ‘It Ain't Safe’ and ‘Man’ remain part of Skepta's catalogue, while the attitude surrounding the album has lasted alongside them.

Konnichiwa caught Skepta at a point where refusing to move away from his own identity was no longer limiting how far he could go.

Corteiz’s story isn’t the same, and it doesn’t need to be forced into a neat comparison. The connection comes through control, but also through the way both have treated clothing as part of cultural identity. Skepta’s Tracksuit Mafia made everyday sportswear part of the language surrounding his music, while Corteiz has built its identity around deciding how it presents itself and how people access it. That makes it a fitting place for Konnichiwa to reappear ten years later.

Someone who was 18 when Konnichiwa arrived is now approaching 30. Someone who was eight could now be buying this collection themselves. For one audience, ‘It Ain't Safe’, BBK and the album's postage imagery bring back a period they experienced as it happened. For another, those references are inherited.

That's where nostalgia starts becoming legacy. Corteiz has pulled directly from that history rather than simply putting Skepta's name across a T-shirt. ‘It Ain't Safe’ appears across knitwear and outerwear. ‘Ladies Hit Squad’ and ‘Revenge’ are referenced on graphic tees, while the postage-stamp motif runs through other pieces. BBK and Corteiz branding meet across New Era fitted caps.

‘It Ain't Safe’ is particularly telling. The track predates Konnichiwa, arriving during the run that eventually led into the album. A decade later, the phrase can sit across a Corteiz sleeve and carry meaning without needing the album artwork beside it.

The BBK references work in much the same way. They're a reminder that Konnichiwa wasn't simply Skepta arriving as an individual star. Boy Better Know, grime and the identity surrounding them remained visible as his profile grew. Taken together, the clothes start to resemble an archive of the period rather than standard anniversary merchandise.

There is a difference between selling somebody a memory and watching that memory reach people who weren't there for it. Konnichiwa now does both.

The generation coming through since hasn't tried to recreate the sound of 2016. UK rap has moved in several directions, absorbing American influences, returning to grime's harder edges and stripping some of those same foundations into slower, more spacious sounds. The connection to the generation before isn't imitation. It's reference.

Corteiz doesn't need to recreate 2016 to pay homage to it either. It can take pieces of that period and put them inside something belonging to its own generation. A BBK fitted or an ‘It Ain't Safe’ knit doesn't suggest British culture has spent ten years standing still. It shows how references survive while everything around them keeps moving.

Konnichiwa didn’t create everything that followed. Grime already had well over a decade of history behind it by 2016, built by artists, DJs, producers, crews, radio stations and communities long before Skepta lifted the Mercury Prize.

What the album provided was a clear document of a particular point in that history: a grime artist commanding attention far beyond the scene without making the music feel detached from where it came from. A decade later, you can see the afterlife of that moment in something as simple as a jacket.

Skepta is still making music. Corteiz is still building its own story. This isn't some distant era reconstructed for people who only know it through archive footage. Plenty of those who experienced Konnichiwa first-hand are still part of the audienceBut now they're joined by people who didn't.

The Corteiz x Skepta collection drops online on Sunday, 20 September. The clothes might trigger nostalgia for 2016, but their existence points towards something bigger. The references have survived long enough to move beyond the people who experienced them first-hand.

Corteiz putting them on clothes doesn't give Konnichiwa its importance. The fact it can, ten years later, tells you how much was already there.