Artists Tim & Barry
Date 4 April – 3 May 2025
Venue Goswell Road, Paris
Tim & Barry’s video platform — Tim & Barry TV — launched in 2006, is key to their legacy. As pioneers of content creation and YouTube culture, they transformed how underground music was shared with the world. Later, expanding it with other channels such as Just Jam which The Guardian described as a punk alternative to Boiler Room, it became a powerful live event and live stream, creating a raw, unfiltered space for performances that broke down the barriers between artists and their audiences.
In 2018, they launched two influential YouTube series’: The Lift and No Miming. Both platforms became essential in their own right. The Lift turned the traditional music booth on its head, replacing it with an actual lift, showcasing artists in a unique, intimate space that highlighted the raw, unscripted nature of the performances. No Miming, which frequently opens with the phrase, This Freestyle was Recorded Live on Road, furthered Tim & Barry’s vision of documenting the unvarnished, real side of homegrown underground black electronic music.
Tim & Barry’s work also includes the iconic Tempa T Hext Hype video, which remains one of the standout moments in grime’s visual history. The video perfectly encapsulated the raw and energetic spirit of the genre, adding another layer to Tim & Barry’s extensive archive of groundbreaking work. In 2014, Tim & Barry won a MOBO Award for That’s Not Me, the video they made for grime pioneers Skepta and JME, a recognition of their contribution to the visual culture surrounding black electronic music. Unaware that the video had even been nominated, they famously celebrated by tweeting a photo of a bag of crisps and a pint—a fittingly understated response.
Tim & Barry’s approach has always been about collaboration and respect, working directly with artists to document their creativity in a way that feels real and unfiltered. As Complex Magazine aptly puts it, “Tim & Barry have meticulously documented and supported nearly every facet of British underground music,” making them key figures in shaping how these cultures are viewed and understood globally.
While many are happy to frame underground music and its key players as aggressive as their bars and flows, Tim & Barry have always approached their subjects with honesty and endearment. They don’t film the likes of Skengdo X AM or 67 because they think they have a dangerous edge, they do it because those people have a talent they want to show to the world. In short, as the world becomes more and more cynical—as tower-blocks are reduced to an aesthetic and kids are stopped in the streets for apparently ‘looking like’ they belong to a gang—Tim & Barry have made a career out of stripping all that nonsense away to showcase the realness.
— James Keith, TRENCH
