Moment 21 - Professor Green on The Source Of Your Success

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. Professor Green’s accomplishments as a white rapper, at the time he found success, is a staggering achievement. An achievement which, perhaps, wouldn’t be expected from a young guy dealing drugs to get by. So in this clip I ask Professor Green, aka Stephen Paul Manderson, to explain how he found success in his career, and then happiness. Episode 80: https://g2ul0.app.link/7FV8iDIJcjb Professor Green: https://www.instagram.com/professorgreen/ https://twitter.com/professorgreen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Steven Bartlett?

  I remember listening to your music when I was in, when I was in secondary school a lot and I remember listening to a lot of your records more recently as well and even, you know, like as, as when I knew you were coming in today, I started like going back through my old back catalogue of, of your music.

• 0:19Steven Bartlett?

  At the time when you made it, as you said then, in the UK, in the UK hip hop scene, as a white male. That's a fucking staggering accomplishment. Like, do you know, no, genuinely it is. I'm like, I know a lot because you might not know this, but you're from the jump off days.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 0:37Steven Bartlett?

  And I'm all the don't flop boys that are all best friends of mine. Like, I don't know if you know, you know unanimous? I don't know if you know unanimous. Okay. He'll be offended, but.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Do you know what? I can't jump to it. Yeah, of course I know. I know.

• 0:48Steven Bartlett?

  These are all my boys. We lived in Manchester and like, they used to come to my house sometimes for five days in a row and like stay at my house and they'd rap and stuff. I used to write music back in those days as well, but watching how talented a lot of these people are. At what they do and still a lot of them haven't made it like you did.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04Steven Bartlett?

  Makes me beg the question. It's like, what were the factors that came to play to make sure that you, as a white rapper in the UK scene, got through?

• 1:12Speaker 01

  Do you know what? Just persistence. Persistence. Persistence. I just didn't stop. You know, there were so many false starts as well, starting to Mike Skinner's record label, me and him, me being lazy, not working as hard as I should have.

• 1:26Steven Bartlett?

  When?

• 1:27Speaker 01

  During the period when I signed to his label. And I can put my hands up and say that, but us also biting heads and not agreeing on music up until a point. And then just as we did. And he sent a really kind email and he was like, look, I've been spending too long trying to make you into something that you're not, rather than focusing on what you're good at. Let's go. And it was almost at that point when Warner pulled the financing from his label. They were subsidising his label. They moved everything in-house apart from all of their, the rest, uh, sorry, I think it was six, seven, nine. Was the label they kept and they moved that in-house and then they, they pulled the financing from the rest of their subsidiaries because of Napster and LimeWire, you know, the, the, the money they were seeing had, had fallen subsequently because of all the.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Piracy. Um. So the album never came out for two reasons, because the label lost their financing, because I never worked hard enough. Um. And then after that, I went back to what I knew. Um. And what facilitated me being able to continue my my quest to become a successful musician, which, by the way, I thought would absolve me of everything in my past.

• 2:31Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  And just make me happy.

• 2:32Steven Bartlett?

  What did you find out?

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Uh, well, that was bullshit, wasn't it?

• 2:37Speaker 01

  What a stupid fucking idea that was.

• 2:40Steven Bartlett?

  So you thought that becoming a successful musician would make your part, would put your past at ease, basically, right?

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, you just, you just, you, you, and this is what's dangerous about pinning um. Your happiness or your your hopes of happiness on an ever moving goalpost, that quite often you move yourself. If I sell this many records, I'm gonna be happy. Uh. And then you sell that many records and then it's like, okay, if I get a number one single, I'm gonna be happy. Then you get the number one single and then it's like, well, what's next?

• 3:06Steven Bartlett?

  You talked about this earlier. You said about how you've got to enjoy the moment more.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:10Steven Bartlett?

  Else you'll never enjoy like.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:11Steven Bartlett?

  How do you do that, though, in the moment?

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Um. In the moment, I don't like, so for me, I'm just, it's just. It's been a really, really long journey towards not, you know, going back to the corners you can't see around this. It's just taking it for what it is. It's like I'm here and I'm I'm entirely present. My head is not worrying about the meeting that I've got to go to afterwards. I'm aware of it because I've seen my schedule, but I'm not thinking about it. And I used to, like, I would lay in bed and my mind would be spinning, spinning, spinning about everything that I had coming up. There's no, like, it's good to plan, like, and I find you worry more if you don't plan, but. I try and look at, you know, I don't look at my calendar too far ahead anymore because it doesn't help me.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  You know, I I want to be present. I want to be able to be here and have a conversation with you, to look you in the eye and talk to you without having other shit in my head. You know, an empty head and an open heart, man. That's that's that's how you're present. And they're not the easiest things to achieve when we all have so much going on in our lives.

• 4:09Steven Bartlett?

  And when we're always so like ambitious, because when, like, as you say, the moving goalpost analogy, I really like, because. I will achieve something today, but before the date of even achieving it, I've already set the new goal, do you know what I mean? And so you never experience the achievement. And I've I've actually, since leaving my business, one of my mentors said to me, he's like, you just need to. He's that old and he's done it all and he's way more successful than I'll probably ever be. And he was like, the one advice I'll give you, Steve, is just like. Try your very best to enjoy it in the moment.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:36Steven Bartlett?

  Cause you look back on it with your rose tinted glasses and you, you know, you wish you had just savored it more.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you can enjoy it in hindsight, isn't it? It's what I was saying earlier. You look back on it and you go, wow, I did that. But actually, it's the, the accolades are not that important. The rewards are, are, they're, they're part of it if you're lucky enough to achieve, but

• 4:57Speaker 01

  the process is the part of it that you have to enjoy. And that's the, I think that's the struggle. That's why a lot of people don't necessarily find themselves that happy because they're not in situations where they're happy to be doing the work that they're doing to get to where they want to be. And that's perhaps because they're in the wrong place. Where they want to be and what they're doing to get there don't, you know, they don't marry up. And we're, we're fortunate. We do things we love. We get to pick and choose. That's, that's, you know, I was gonna say that's lucky, but it's, it's not. It's hard work and perseverance.

• 5:30Steven Bartlett?

  What do you worry about then, these days?

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Um, I mean, most recently in the last two weeks, it's been like, is that noise that my son's making in his sleep normal?

• 5:40Steven Bartlett?

  So for context, uh, Steve's just had a new kid.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:44Steven Bartlett?

  Um, a new baby boy.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:46Steven Bartlett?

  Which is amazing.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  My first child. Um, and really, you know,

• 5:52Speaker 01

  just, I mean, yeah, just the, the things that I encounter day to day. I, I'm not really too, I don't know, man. Like it's weird to be at this point in my life, in my career, about to sign a new record deal, to be putting music out again, but to not have that. Like my energy's different. I'm just excited in being able to have a route to market. I've had all this music that because of some stupid problems I had with, uh, the label I was with that I couldn't put out. I wasn't able to, to, to exercise that. Part of, you know, what I did and that I missed terribly because that's my output. That's my creative output.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  You know, I enjoy working on all the other things I'm doing, whether it's a gulp or giz and greens, anything, all the ideas that I have that I, you know, will hopefully come into fruition later on that I'm chipping away at behind the scenes. But music is my output. That's my hobby. It always has been. So when I get suppressed and I'm not able to, to, to work on music or, or release music. And they kind of go hand in hand because it's kind of weird working on music that you know you can't release. Or that you know someone is standing in the way of. You, that you don't feel as motivated to get in the studio and work. Whereas now I'm like, no, but I'm not worried about how it's received. I'm just really happy to be able to put music out. My worries are not, not what they were.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  All the things I used to worry about. You know, I mean, I don't have financial security yet. And I'm in a much better place than, than I could have been growing up where I grew up. It wasn't what was expected. Um, but you know, I have to pay my mortgage. I have things like that, but there's, you know, they're not worries. I have to work to pay, you know, that's again, you know, work can be a stress or it can just be work. You know, my mortgage can be a stress or it can just be a mortgage. I just have to work. There was, there's quite simple things that I have to do in order to pay my mortgage, you know? So I try and not get bogged down by, by the everyday shit. My worries are, are just whatever pops up and are they worries? You know? And I get into, to know a child, like, am I holding my child correctly? Things like that, that they're, they're my current concerns.