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The rapper will be heading to his hometown for a 2023 UK Exclusive show - his own curated ‘This Is What We Mean Day’ on Friday 18th August 2023 as part of Luno presents All Points East. I feel like there was a period when music was about the industry. People worried about whether a radio station would play them,” he says in his basso profundo voice, referring to a fear among artists of speaking out politically. “Now people are just walking their truth.” I always had difficulty taking a break, going on holiday, taking a vacation, anything like that… usually if I take a break, I always feel like the world is still moving. But this time everyone stopped. The world stopped.” DC So I was born … [ Everyone laughs] No, seriously, I grew up in a single-parent household. I honestly don’t know how my mum did it. It really got tough in secondary school, because we were made homeless. You’re dealing with studying for your GCSEs but also not knowing where you’re going to stay. My family made a lot of sacrifices for me. My mum was very protective and didn’t want me disturbed while I was studying. Then she got very ill, so I was barely at school. Things were just compounding, compounding. I also have dyslexia. I was trying to find ways to learn, but everything took me longer, and I had less time to study. It was all very stressful.
The exchange made the British tabloids, and their fans couldn’t get enough of it: “Stormzy and Maya Jama are actually goals,” read one typical tweet. Academically brilliant students’: Joseph Vambe and Drew Chateau. Photograph: Karis Beaumont/The Guardian DC One of the reasons I wanted to go into law is my family situation. When we were made homeless, we got legal advice, including how to get accommodation for the night. If we didn’t have that, we would have been on the street. That was my main driver, and financial stability. I’d love to be able to start a legal charity that also supports people in social housing. Even though landlords shouldn’t, they do reject a lot of people who are on benefits. I’m also a creative person and want to do theatre, acting and writing. Possibly this is due to the length and time at which he dropped it, which marks it as a standalone release. His desire to change was in no small part driven by unresolved emotions he held about his painful split with the radio and TV presenter Maya Jama, whom he dated for four years before they broke up in 2019. “I think my break up with Maya was still really heavy on my heart. I’d never experienced a breakup and the feelings that come with a breakup. And I never wanted to ever be in a position again where I felt what I was feeling. Because it showed me that I was a boy. And I do not want to go any further as a boy. I’ve seen how that manifests in other people. And I don’t want to be like that.He and Jama have worked together several times: Jama interviewed him on her drive-time radio show, and she appears in the video for his single “Big for Your Boots,” in which the two of them are hanging out—where else?—in a takeaway fast-food joint. He dedicated his song “Birthday Girl” to her. His responses, in these moments, are less personal and pensive than collective and reflexive. “I’ll go on a march and then someone will write an elaborate think piece on why I’ve done this or that. But when it comes to my journey with my people and that side of things I just think, What are we on? What do we need to do? Do we need to grab the mic? What are we on? And of course it’s great to be someone who can use their platform and their voice so I never take that for granted because my involvement might get more coverage. But at the same time I’m just a musician and I’m not really in it.” The growth in question was both metamorphic and cathartic. Stormzy says he left for Jamaica a boy and returned a man. “I know that physically, in my face and how I stand in the world, and even my age says I’m a man. But deep down I knew that I was a boy. And that used to scare me, that God might bring me to a position where I’m successful and my life is set up and I’ve climbed these ladders and been on this journey and I’m still a boy inside.” As the first recipients of the Stormzy Scholarship to Cambridge in 2018, Drew Chateau and Joseph Vambe didn’t know what to expect. They had already been accepted, to do law, and human, social and political sciences respectively; this was the flake in the 99. What makes them even cooler is the fact that both Stormzy and Jama have used their platforms to talk about personal subjects that matter to them. Jama has spoken of the pain she felt as a child when her father served multiple jail sentences. (She is no longer in touch with him.) “When I was starting out I felt a bit nervous about people finding out, because I thought they’d think less of me,” she says. “But then I decided I should be that person that speaks about it.” Last year she made a critically acclaimed documentary, When Dad Kills: Murderer in the Family, about children of fathers who are incarcerated, or addicts.
If so, how did Banksy get Stormzy to wear one of his works unknowingly? Did he leave the vest in the Glastonbury dressing room with a note: “From an anonymous well-wisher?” Surely the rapper was in on the stunt, for the vest was perfectly coordinated with the rest of his show. Its stark design showed up powerfully against the spectacular swirl of multicoloured lights and flashed-up messages. It seems too much to believe that Banksy happened to infiltrate a work of art that balanced the optics of the performance so precisely. DC If there’s one thing I want people to take away from the scholarship and our stories, it’s that your struggles are your own, and you can be successful. Before the interview began, Stormzy was mic’d up, trailed with a camera by director Jordan “Zebie” Boza. I wonder if we’re going to be filmed – no, it turns out, but they are recording the audio. His team say it’s for a documentary, but Stormzy says the collection of footage is just part and parcel of his everyday life. Is it all right, always having someone in your space like that, I ask? “He’s my brother,” he says of Boza. “Not my blood brother, but … He’d be there anyway. It’s been happening. He’s been doing it for years now.” For someone who claims to be a homebody, most likely to be found spending time with his two rottweilers – Stormzy calls them his “sons” – being documented 24/7 seems like the most unusual aspect of his lifestyle. That, of course, and the fact that he’s throwing a literal gala for his 30th birthday. Overall, he’s looking forward to his birthday, though. “In a beautiful way – because I mean, I thank God I’ve done a lot of growing these past four or five years. I’ve done the serious bit, so now it’s just enjoy,” he says. JV I think Stormzy felt connected to us because we’ve all experienced different forms of hardship, and in our own avenues we’ve become successful.
For all the ways he may have grown during that time, his politics remain much as they were. He’s still a big fan of Jeremy Corbyn, even after Labour’s 2019 trouncing at the polls under its former leader. When I ask him how he felt about the election, a long sigh fades into short silence as he seeks to conjure the appropriate metaphor. “It’s like when you encourage children to make the right decision and they make the wrong one even after you’ve explained everything. And you think, A’ight, that’s your decision… you try have your cake and eat it then.” He shrugs and then lets out a big laugh. “Even the way things have panned out… I’m not gonna say I told you so, but…” Joseph Vambe, Drew Chateau and Stormzy. Photograph: Karis Beaumont/The Guardian Stormzy and the students
So what is the necessary work I have to do to make sure I’m not in this position again? That means growth, accountability, changing my character, changing my routines, my habits, my tradition, my values, my morals. Because how I feel right now and how I’ve made someone else feel and how I’ve devastated a world that I was living in – I just never want to be in this position again. So what do I need to do?” Stormzy came to fame more abruptly. He attended a notoriously tough school in the London suburb of Croydon and worked briefly as a manager on an oil rig, watching grime videos during his lunch break. He’d always loved music and performed where he could. In 2014, he released an independent EP. Instantly, without even having a record deal, he began getting awards and bookings on national TV. Jama, who grew up in Bristol, has steadily built a reputation as a front woman on TV and radio. At sixteen she moved to London, where she set up her own YouTube channel and was hired by MTV. She was recently a host for the popular Saturday-night TV game show Cannonball and is soon to appear on Sky One’s extreme-sports program Revolution. Park Chinois, an absurdly over-the-top Chinese restaurant in Mayfair, London’s most chichi neighborhood, is exactly the kind of place you expect to find your average celebrities and wannabes. So it is very much not the kind of place true originals like grime superstar Stormzy, 24, and his girlfriend, Maya Jama, 23, a rising TV and radio presenter, usually hang out.
Stormzy and grace, or how they beat the labels
Stormzy says he thinks of them as his younger siblings. Although he and his team have no say in who is chosen for the scholarship, Chateau and Vambe both happen to be from south London, and the trio share commonalities in life experience . “I’ve seen them at least once a year since the scholarship. We got together at Cambridge,” Stormzy says. “I just feel it was very spiritual. You know, I’m proud of them. I love them from afar.” Yeah, I don’t think we want to tell a simplistic story : you went through hardship , got out of the hood , and then … Wealth and fame, for all their perks, can make changing your life more difficult. For Stormzy, success felt like something that was shielding him from making the changes he felt were necessary.
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