94 TiMe October 21–28, 2019
Next Generation Leaders
secondary school, something that has re-
ceived significant media attention in the
U.K. “They’re always a bit shocked that
there’s academic brilliance in a young
black South London brother with a street
background,” he says. “If you saw a group
of lads outside the chicken shop on push-
bikes, I’m sure a lot of them are academi-
cally brilliant. Little did you know!”
Success didn’t come overnight. At 20,
he got a job on an oil rig in the English
port city of Southampton, and he remem-
bers writing lyrics on Post-it notes while
working. Within a year he made the de-
cision to quit his job and pursue music
full-time. It was 2014. “I don’t remember
a crazy feeling of fear,” he says. “I remem-
ber feeling very sure that I’m a good MC.
I didn’t ever feel stuck or at a dead end.”
It ended up being a good decision.
His first EP, Dreamers Disease, won him
a MOBO Award, Britain’s highest- profile
honor celebrating music of black origin.
Next came “Shut Up,” an improvised rap
that catapulted him to nationwide fame,
garnering millions of views on YouTube.
In 2017, his debut studio album, Gang
Signs and Prayer, went straight to No. 1
on the U.K. album charts, the first grime
album to do so in the genre’s 20-year his-
tory. Grime had arguably found its first
mainstream star.
Now riding the crest of his fame,
Storm zy is determined not to pull the lad-
der up behind him. Instead, he is dedicat-
ing himself to bringing greater visibility
to a wider community of black musicians,
artists and creators in Britain. “There’s al-
ways been a kind of lack of spotlight and
shine on the black British side of British
culture,” he says. “[But] there’s a whole
world of it... It’s a beautiful thing, and
it’s coming of age right now.”
In the early days of grime, the music
was broadcast through pirate radio sta-
tions, MP3 files on mobile phones, and
word of mouth. By 2003, the genre
earned a badge of establishment legiti-
macy when 19-year-old Dylan Mills, also
known as Dizzee Rascal, won the pres-
tigious high-end Mercury Music Prize
for his first album, Boy in da Corner. It is
widely credited as one of the pioneering
albums of the genre.
Grime’s standout stars were, and
still are, overwhelmingly young and
black, with working-class roots. It was
a combination that invited intense scru-
tiny. The genre became maligned by
certain politicians. The same year Diz-
zee Rascal won the Mercury Prize, Brit-
ain’s then Culture Minister Kim Howells
linked the deaths of two teenagers to the
British rap scene. By 2006, David Cam-
eron, then the Conservative Party leader,
was criticizing BBC Radio 1’s Saturday-
night hip-hop show for “encouraging
people to carry guns and knives.” Lon-
don’s Metropolitan Police had introduced
a risk- assessment document named
Form 696, targeted at musical events
that “predominantly feature DJs or MCs
performing to a recorded backing track.”
The form required each performer to be
checked against a police database before
taking the stage. Most controversially,
until 2009, it asked for the details of the△
Stormzy performs the headline set
at Glastonbury Festival on June 28,
wearing a stab-proof Union Jack
vest designed by Banksy