The Times Magazine 33You might have thought it was cool when you
were an immature youth, but you quickly
discover that you don’t want to have to spend
your life looking over your shoulder... Anyone
who makes it seem exciting is lying.”
Why, then, did he get into it in the first
place? “It’s the need for money, obviously, but
also the life I was in at the time, the people
I was with. It’s not something you sit down
and really think about. It’s a one-second thing:
we’re going here. And then you’re in it.”
Edna is all part of Adjei’s attempts to move
on from that life. It features reflections on what
might have happened had his mother lived, the
importance of staying positive, and the scars
that remain. “Music or road, I can’t decide,” he
raps on Bumpy Ride, while on Psalm 35, named
after the sacred verse he turned to most in jail,
he announces, “My mind is a war zone.” Aligned
to backing tracks that veer between classical
elegance, hard-hitting brutalism and even
the odd New Age pan pipe, it makes for the
musical equivalent of a prison diary: evocative,
irreverent and heavy in equal measures.
“If someone asked me to define boredom,
I would say, ‘Jail,’ ” declares Adjei. “You have
nothing to do, and all the things people do
not to be bored are boring too. The drugs and
violence on the street are there on the inside;
it’s just that the freedom is taken away from
you to walk away from those situations. The
whole system is built to break you down
mentally. You have to be a very strong person
to come out with a positive outlook. I came to
a point where I recognised that if I continued
in this trap, it would have me for ever.”
The only good thing about prison, says
Adjei, is that it puts you into contact with
people you wouldn’t normally meet, and
contrary to popular belief communities are
not separated by race, class or religion. “It
comes down to the individual. I’ve been in jail
in Durham, Falkirk, Bristol and Weymouth,
and you meet different people with the same
struggles, so I learnt how to open my mind. I’d
sit down with someone twice my age, from a
different religion, mindset and country.”
A lot of Headie One’s lyrics contain coded
messages. I’d assumed an early track called
Soldiers, with its line, “Reminiscing about the
roads with your flannel and Radox,” to be about
county lines drug dealing. “Nah, flannel and
Radox is a popular thing we could buy from the
canteen sheet in jail,” he corrects. “Everyone
who has been away will recognise that.”
Prison also forged Adjei’s ambition. Realising
that avenues were closing to him as the years
passed and higher education was no longer an
option, he passed the hours in his cell by reading
self-help books, listening to music and coming
up with rhymes. And he’s been making up
for lost time. Since 2014 he has released eight
mixtapes – essentially an album released free
of charge – with his last one, 2019’s Music xRoad, going to No 5. These all fall for the most
part into drill, which remains a controversial
genre. When in 2018 a 17-year-old rapper called
Junior Simpson, who had written lyrics about
knife attacks, received a life sentence for being
part of a gang that stabbed a 15-year-old boy to
death, you can understand why Metropolitan
Police commissioner Cressida Dick cited the
popularity of drill as one of the reasons for a
rise in knife crime.
“From the start, I said that argument was
rubbish,” says Adjei. “There are so many more
things going on that to put the blame on a
genre of music is wrong. If we’re going to rap
about what we’re going through and where we
come from, this is what it will sound like. It’s
not gonna sound like gospel or pop.” How
does he define drill? “Reality, raw and uncut.
It’s straight to the point with no sugar-coating.
People are saying how they feel. That’s why
a lot of people are afraid of it, but this stuff
happens and it shouldn’t be hidden away.”
On the face of it, Adjei is in an enviable
position. He’s working with the megastars
whose music he once listened to in his jail
cell; he describes Drake as “a normal person
who likes to joke around, just like me”. He
has left Tottenham for the significantly leafier
Richmond, and he has the talent and drive to
take a style of music previously confined to the
margins into the mainstream. Still, crime andprison leave a long shadow. In 2018, Adjei
was attacked by rivals while performing at
the University of Bedfordshire, to which he
responded with the diss track Know Better,
and when he returned to jail this year,
Music x Road was still in the charts. His
convictions mean he can’t tour the US. In the
Dalston studio, a request by the photographer
to do a shoot on the streets is met with a
strong no from Adjei’s manager. Whether this
is to avoid a clichéd image of a rapper against
an inner-city backdrop or because it would
actually be dangerous for him, I’m not sure.
“It was a step backwards,” he says of
returning to jail earlier this year. “It reminded
me that this is a marathon, not a sprint, and
just because things are looking good, it doesn’t
mean the hard work is done. When you’re
coming from such a negative way of life, it
wants to follow you around everywhere you
go. Any second you lose concentration, you
can be back in a situation where you are
staring that negativity in the face. It is hard
to be successful – and stay successful.”
The knife that landed him with a fourth jail
sentence, it seems, was protection against a
world that wasn’t ready to let him go. “On a
council estate, people get jealous over your
trainers. Imagine what a successful rapper is
going to receive.”
Not all of Headie One’s output is about life’s
dark edges. He compares his process of making
music to drawing a picture without planning,
of not knowing what your destination is until
you get there, and he says that doing the work
itself has proved the greatest therapy. There
are moments of humour too. “Sometimes
I think every girl is into me/ Is that what they
call toxic masculinity?” he asks on a track
called You Me. And after talking to him for an
hour or so, I begin to realise how different life
looks from the perspective of someone who
has been through gang culture, drug dealing
and prison and come out the other side.
For most of us, coronavirus has brought the
weirdest seven months of our lives. For Adjei,
it is just another bump in the road.
“I was released just as lockdown started
and the streets were a ghost town,” he says.
“That was weird, but there’s been plenty
of these moments in the history of the planet.
Nothing lasts for ever.” As for his own life’s
moments, he has decided that it is best not
to analyse things too much.
“I’m a go-with-the-flow person,” he
concludes. “I find it works best when I try not
to overthink.” Can he see himself doing this
for the rest of his life? “That’s the plan. I’ll do
this for as long as God allows me to.”
Then comes a thank-you, a fist bump and
a prayer sign, and he’s gone. nEdna by Headie One is out now on
Relentless RecordsAttending a Naomi Campbell fashion gala in London, 2019‘I RECOGNISED IN JAIL
THAT IF I CONTINUED IN
THIS TRAP, IT WOULD
HAVE ME FOR EVER’
GETTY IMAGES