96 TiMe October 21–28, 2019
stage. In the past two years, alongside
his work in music, he has launched
Merky Books, a publishing imprint with
Penguin Random House U.K., as well
as partnering with Cambridge Univer-
sity to launch the Storm zy Scholarship,
funding the tuition fees and living costs
of two black students during their degree
studies. “There’s a whole side of black-
ness and black Britishness that doesn’t
often fall under the kind of umbrella
term that everyone uses of ‘black cul-
ture,’ ” he says. “It’s like black culture al-
most becomes music, acting, sports and
just kind of celebrity and whatever. I was
like, Yo, there’s theater, there’s literature,
books, there’s ballet.”
Merky Books is Stor-
mzy’s platform for aspiring
black British writers, who
often struggle for recogni-
tion in Britain. In 2016, re-
search from the Bookseller, a
publishing trade magazine,
found that of the thousands
of books published in Brit-
ain that year, fewer than
100 were by British authors
of color. Through an annual
New Writers Prize, Merky
Books offers a clear route to
publication. “We’re trying
to push young black writers,
first and foremost,” he says.
Meanwhile, the Storm zy
Scholarship is intended to counter the
overwhelming homogeneity of Brit-
ain’s most elite universities. From 2010
to 2015, around a quarter of Cambridge
University’s 31 colleges failed to admit
any black British students. The fund-
ing, which comes out of Stormzy’s own
pocket, is open to both black and mixed-
heritage students. The scholarship has
encouraged a surge in applications, ac-
cording to Jon Beard, director of Cam-
bridge’s admissions office, who says the
number of black students admitted in
2019 was a third higher than before the
scholarship launched. “It’s made a real
difference to our numbers already.”
Stormzy says he gets blowback for
these kinds of initiatives: “What I al-
ways get is ‘Why black people?’ ‘Ah, it’s
racist, why are you doing it for black peo-
ple first?’ ” But black people, who make
up 3% of the British population, still face
structural and institutional barriers.
Most live in England’s most prosperous
cities (including over 1 million in Lon-
don) yet are chronically underrepre-
sented in the cultural sphere. From 2006
to 2016, only 0.5% of roles in British films
were played by black actors. In 2015, the
Reuters Institute for the Study of Jour-
nalism found that only 0.2% of British re-
porters were black.
Stormzy can’t help but be inspired by
the “dark, defining times” his country
is currently experiencing, he says. The
Brexit referendum in 2016 precipitated
a surge of hate crimes and racial discrim-
ination. “The more I become self-aware,
it’s like we can’t shy away from [poli-
tics]. Especially being an artist who has
a platform,” he says.
With that platform,
Stormzy is determined to
make room for others. In
his lyrics, he often raps
about his team and his fam-
ily. When he received an in-
vitation to be on the cover
of Elle UK, he persuaded the
magazine to shift the focus
from himself to a group of
black British talents whom
he admired. “I was like,
the only way this is gonna
be sick is if we bring every-
one,” he says. “Everyone”
included model Leomie
Anderson, poet Yrsa Daley-
Ward, antiviolence activist Temi Mwale
and sprinter Dina Asher-Smith, who also
happens to be Britain’s fastest woman.
“I know not all my peers have the lux-
ury of having the opportunity to go on
that sofa or go on that TV show or go on
that radio show or do that, or be here, or
be in this magazine,” he says. “I know
I definitely do deserve all of these op-
portunities, 100%, I’ve worked for that.
But also, I’m not the only black [per-
son]... There’s loads of us.”
Stormzy is invested in black excel-
lence. It is clear that he intends to rise
with his class, rather than out of it. “Being
so championed by my community, I feel
like everyone’s put me on this pedestal
and, like, everyone’s put me on top of the
world... I know it’s my purpose to just
shine a light where I can, do something
where I can, just whatever I can, in what-
ever way, shape or form.” —With reporting
by suyin Haynes/london‘I know
it ’s my
purpose to
just shine a
light where
I can, do
something
in whatever
way, shape
or form.’Next Generation Leaders