A Quote by Stormzy
I know a lot of grime artists started off on pirate radio, but I missed that era; I was way too young.
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I have four older siblings and one younger, and all three of my brothers are in the music industry. My dad was really involved in music, too, with the disco, and he also started Radio Caroline and was the one who invented pirate radio, if you like, off on a coast in England on a boat.
When I first started acting, I was actually working with the National Youth Theatre in London doing anti-knife crime workshops, so I was listening to a lot of music that was around us all the time, around the guys I was working with, and the kids - lots of young grime artists from London.
Growing up, there was only classical music on BBC Radio. We had to listen to the American Forces Network in Germany, which played pop songs, or the pirate radio boats off the coast.
Grime, in particular, is not really about pirate radio and local raves on top of pubs anymore. There are things I miss about those times but as an up-and-coming MC, back then, I would have loved to have had SoundCloud and YouTube and all these platforms to promote my music.
Now, [hip-hop/grime artists] Stormzy, Skepta, or the Section Boyz have to be validated by Drake, Rihanna or Beyoncé. They're rolled into this one urban culture bubble; it's not really to do with, "I'm specifically f - ked off about my country and what's going on in my town." We're very much only showing success to artists who impress American artists, and I'm one of them.
The danger is that the artists who'll put grime into the commercial and public eye will put grime at the back of their closets and jump on another genre of music.
I literally make music for my wife and my friends. I don't feel beholden to my fans. I don't even really know who they are. But, I know that this whole thing started with me making stuff that I got off on, and I've gotta believe that that's how it's going to end, too. That's the only way it can go. There are a lot of artists who have gotten pretty caught up in that. That's why I like the defeatist attitude. Just assume that no one is going to like it and that no one cares, and you'll end up making something that you really like.
I tell people too young to know that we came up during two of the most dogmatic times in recent history - the so-called hippie era and the punk era, both of which had a set of codes and rules that you had to look and dress and think a certain way, and for sure, to be of a certain age.
I think people who say radio is gone or radio is irrelevant are way off the mark. It's still by a huge degree the dominant medium. I know it's changing but radio is still incredibly important.
I had no idea I was gonna be a songwriter, because I was too young to know my own evolution. I started playing the violin as a way to express myself because I didn't have a lot of vocabulary when I was 14.
In the record business, if you sign an artist that don't really know too much about the business, you can really get over on them in a lot of different ways, so it's a lot of people that don't give artist the game because they're trying to make the most money in the fastest way off their artists.
My access to music when I was growing up was through pirate radio, you know, transistor radio under the pillow, listening to one more and then 'just one more' until your favourite track comes on.
I've tried to help a lot of young artists get started.
I started DJing soundclashes. I used to go to Jamaica a lot. I was like a hip-hop sound boy, where I took the dancehall culture and mixed it up with the hip-hop as well. I kept going, going, and I got real hot in the streets of Miami - you know, doing pirate radio - then ended up doing 99 Jamz, the big station out there.
If you look at the charts, there's not a lot of male artists and for whatever reason, female artists sell a lot more records and get played a lot more on the radio.
I believe your success is based off what your goals are. Are you trying to feed your family or have plaques on the wall and be broke? In that case, I think the game is in a better place. We have all heard of famous artists who are broke. Then we know of artists who may have had only a song or two on radio, but have a million or two dollars off that quick come up.
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