Back in 2003 a new style of music started to flourish in the East End of London. It came off the back of the UK Garage scene and was pioneered by the artist Wiley. Six years on and it has grown and evolved into a widely accepted music genre, entitled Grime, and Wiley, now dubbed ‘The Godfather of Grime’, has enjoyed mainstream success. Look out for a young Kano (02:22), and a very very very young Tinchy Stryder (03:04).

A really clever advert for Jay-Z’s new album The Blueprint 3, featuring an almost continuous shot of all ten of his previous album covers merging together. Great use of the stained glass window (00:19) to produce the overlay pattern for his The Dynasty: Roc La Familia album.

British hip hop group Foreign Beggars features in this sci-fi-style music video, where all the beats are produced by the group’s champion beatboxer Shlomo. What makes this video stand out is the post-production used to make the heads on the turntables. Unfortunately, there is no mention on what techniques were used, but to speculate, 360 degrees shots may have been composited onto the turn tables and timed with the mixing of the DJ. The heads look so life-like. Production stills can be found here.

This homage to computer games from the 1980s reportedly took 1,200 hours to make entirely from Lego, and features characters such as Mario Bros, Raccoon Mario, Bubble Bobble, Pong and more. The close up shots are a great touch (01:50 & 02:59) but what really sets this Lego stop-motion apart are the pixellated two-colour animations which portray some of the frustrations (01:35) and some of the ecstasy (03:02) that all of us felt at times when playing these games. Video produced by Tomas Redigh, music by Daniel Larsson.

Heartless was a huge hit for Kanye West, a highly experimental use of auto-tune, but this acoustic version by The Fray gives the song a totally different feel and is accompanied by a music video with a befitting level of quality.

Set in a classroom, it features a boy whose doodles in his exercise book come to life and tells the story of his heartache for a girl sitting at the front of the class. The storytelling is strong in both the animation on the pages and in the classroom scene. The director does well to choose shots that show the boys hurt, like the close up of his eyes which cuts to a shot of the girl in slow motion (01:35), it is almost as though she makes time slower and more agonising for him. All the while his sketch of a human heart travels across his pages getting battered and bruised by imaginary monsters and hazardous terrains, amongst his algebra calculations. The highlight of the post-production is when the band are visible on a scrunched piece of paper falling to the floor (02:35).