TINIE TEMPAH: How a Kid From Peckham Went Multi-Platinum

Tinie Tempah made his name as a pioneer of the grime scene. Over the past 15 years, he’s built an incredible career, racking up more than five billion streams and giving us iconic hits like Pass Out, Miami 2 Ibiza and Girls Like. I was so excited to sit down with him on Great Company. And one thing that really stuck with me was just how much he has always believed that he'd be successful. But for Tinie, that's not just been wishful thinking. He’s always had a clear vision for his life and been intentional about making it happen. Winning at life has always been the goal and that means embracing failures, learning lessons and being open to new opportunities. In this conversation Tinie shares: • How he manifested his music career • What his mum taught him about hard work and success • His fear of being a one hit wonder • Why he stepped back from music for nine years - and what’s brought him back This conversation is a reminder that believing in yourself is the first step to achieving anything. Tinie Tempah is Great Company. Tinie’s new album, The Night’s Not Dead, is out NOW https://open.spotify.com/album/672HqumkmGtAtRejCwG61e?si=e624a49510a64dd3! If you enjoyed the show, you can also follow us: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/greatcompanypodcast/ TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@greatcompanypodcast Jamie - https://www.instagram.com/jamielaing And if you've got thoughts, questions and comments, you can email us at: [email protected] THE CREDITS Producers: Helen Burke & Faye Lawrence Assistant Producers: Issy Weeks-Hankins Video: Josh Bennett Senior Social Media Manager: Laura Coughlan Audio: Rafi Amsili Geovannetti Production Manager: Archan Mohile Executive Producer: Ewan Newbigging-Lister Great Company is an original podcast from JamPot. Shot on Sony Cinema Line cameras FX6, FX2 with Sony G-Master lenses 16-35GM, 24-70GM Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Coming from where I came from, I got the golden ticket.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  You grew up in the Ellsbury Estate in Peckham, right? Which is one of the biggest estates in the whole of Europe.

• 0:07Speaker 00

  I'd basically climb up to where the observatory in Greenwich Park was. And there you can also see the whole city. Just go there at night by myself and I'd be like, how can I do this? Like, how, I want everyone in this city to know me.

• 0:23Speaker 00

  Like, this was like, wow, you know, all your dreams are about to come true. You cannot fuck this up.

• 0:29Speaker 00

  I'm Tiny Temper and I'm in Great Company.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  What was the moment where the music suddenly started? You were like, this is gonna be something.

• 0:37Speaker 00

  I put out this mixtape and it was called Hood Economics. We sampled everyone, rapped on Lily Allen's Can't Knock 'Em Out, rapped on Calvin Harris, I Get All The Girls. I don't know if we're allowed to do that, but most of you guys are my friends now and we've worked together. So, yeah, don't come for me. We started getting like relatively decent billings on some of the festivals. After I did my performance, like maybe about 50% of the crowd left. The A and R was like, who's that guy? Then we started having conversations with record labels and that's when I was like, oh, maybe this is actually gonna happen.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  Twenty-one years old, you completely explode.

• 1:14Speaker 00

  I've been running on this adrenaline for so long. And actually, wow, all the things that I wanted to achieve when I was 12 or 13 or 14, I've achieved it now. Like, I bought Alexander McQueen's house when I was 24. Kind of started getting into like bad habits. And I was just like, this is not who I necessarily was when I came into this. So what happens now?

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• 4:11Speaker 01

  Guys, big episode today. Big episode. Tiny Temper. Okay, I've been messaging Tiny Temper for a while and he's finally coming on. One of the biggest legends in the UK music scene, had huge number ones. You know exactly who he is and he's coming on the show today. One thing I don't, he's, every single time I see him, I say he's topless and he's ripped. So is he gonna be wearing a t-shirt or is he gonna be topless? I don't know. This episode goes all over the place in so many amazing ways. I'm so excited for you to listen. So get ready for it. Now, before you start, if you can click that follow button, it does amazing things for us. And amazing things for you. It means we can keep getting great guests, make the show better for you and for us. If you do that one thing, click the follow button and join the community. I thank you forever. Okay, big episode. Here we go.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Tiny Temper on Great Company.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Do you like baths?

• 5:01Speaker 00

  Oh, I love a bath, man.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  And he'd ask you a big question.

• 5:03Speaker 00

  Go on.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  When you have a bath?

• 5:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Do you sit in it naked and let the water run up around you? Or do you get into it when it's full?

• 5:10Speaker 00

  I wait till it's full. It's gotta be boiling hot as well, which I don't think is actually good for you. I bet it's for the men. I've been reading all this stuff about you need to put ice down there and stuff like that. Yeah, you need to keep that area cool, apparently. But yeah, I wait, it's boiling hot.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  You get into it when it's pulled up?

• 5:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, the smoke has to be coming out and da-da-da-da-da. And then I just step into it gently, especially after a training session and I just...

• 5:34Speaker 01

  But do you do that thing when you, because what I don't, I think it's real ick when you get in and you get in, you have to do the thing, go ha, ha, and you have to lower yourself.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  I do that, but there's no one around to see.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  There's no one seeing you do that?

• 5:43Speaker 00

  There's no one around to see. I'm not posting that on social media. Someone did say to me, oh, if you'd love baths all the time, why don't you do a little segment on your social media where it's just you in a bath? And then you're just talking about stuff. Maybe, let me know what you guys think in the comments. If I get enough comments, I might do it.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  You're pretty healthy, right?

• 6:03Speaker 00

  Very.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  When did that start? When did your sort of focus on health start? Has it always been there?

• 6:07Speaker 00

  It started when I, so in my career, I kind of, everything kind of took off when I was 21. So as a result, I started touring a lot. And the team around me at the time introduced me to a guy called Ruben Tabarez. Now, you might, if you watch a bit of boxing, you might see Ruben Tabarez come out on some of the ring walks with, you know, heavyweight boxers typically, like the Derek Chisora's of the world. He used to do the strength and conditioning for David Haye.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:35Speaker 00

  And he's just a phenomenal athlete. I think he used to do like hurdles or something, you know, in his time. And so the minute I started going on tour, my whole thing was, I basically wanna like live my life like an athlete. Like, I'm an artist, but I wanna operate like an athlete. And he was like, cool, let's do it.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  This is at 21?

• 6:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, 21, yeah.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  That's a wild

• 6:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  way of thinking.

• 6:58Speaker 00

  Not really. I, like, I think it depends. I think coming from where I came from, this was like, you know, I got the golden ticket. Like, this was like, wow, you know, all your dreams are about to come true. You cannot fuck this up. Like, you cannot, but like, there's nothing to fall back on. It's not like you can go back to uncle or auntie or mum or dad or anything like this. If you fuck this up, if you become a one-hit wonder, that's it, you're done, back to square one. Not the, not the council estate, because our parents had moved us out of there by then. But basically, back to pretty much the trenches. So for me, I was like, I wanna do everything in my power to make sure that even if it does go wrong, I can say to myself, I gave it my all and my best. So literally, put Ruben Tabarez on a retainer.

• 7:43Speaker 00

  It was way out of my budget at the time, but I was like, cool, I'm investing in myself. And we would go and train in this gym called The Vault. And like, I'd regularly bump into Keira Knightley in there, just random fact.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  I was not expecting you to say Keira Knightley.

• 7:59Speaker 00

  Of all people.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Of all, mate, she loves to train.

• 8:01Speaker 00

  I don't know if anyone knows, she's on it.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  If anyone, you were gonna say Keira Knightley.

• 8:06Speaker 00

  She's on it, so would regular, just regularly just see her in the corner. But anyway, so training like an athlete, I would, I would regularly join like boxing camps. So some of the heavyweight boxers, I'd go and visit them while they were doing their camps, get involved, maybe not the whole camp, but participate for sure. I guess all of that kind of conditioned me to like, as, to, to the point where as I started to mature as a man, it just became like a standard, normal practice, yeah.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's amazing, Tiny, because that, like, 21 years old, you completely explode. What kind of happens then is that you get introduced to lots of things. Alcohol, money, access, whatever it is.

• 8:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  And it's very easy to shift off those tracks.

• 8:46Speaker 00

  Definitely.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Without a doubt.

• 8:48Speaker 00

  Hundred percent.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  I mean, 80, 90, maybe higher percent of people, they go down that road, right?

• 8:53Speaker 00

  Happens more often than not, yeah.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Without a doubt, but you had that mentality to go, I'm not gonna do that, I'm not gonna fuck this up, I'm gonna stay on this track because this is my chance.

• 9:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm gonna win.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 9:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm gonna win. And I think it was, you know, reflecting on it, because I've done loads of, you know, I took a long hiatus, you know, when I got to 30, I took a hiatus for about maybe six, seven years. Still did other things in the background, in music and TV, et cetera. But it gave me, while I was like having my kids and whatnot, I'd spent a lot of time just reflecting on my life and the reasons why. I also did a bit of therapy as well, which I think is really important, yeah.

• 9:29Speaker 00

  And I think it's something to do with like... I remember the therapist saying like, oh, your nervous system is maybe like, it's been wired and programmed for survival. So you just have like these mad innate survival instincts. Also, being the first child of a family of four, you know, parents who had immigrated from Nigeria in the late eighties. You know, very working class. I felt like everything was riding on me. And then also, when you're black, I think this is sort of different to when you're white. You, you almost feel like when, when the spotlight is on you, you almost feel like you are representing like your whole, like, community, your whole culture, if that makes sense.

• 10:11Speaker 00

  Like, when you're doing this podcast, and, you know, just talking frankly and candidly, I'm sure you're not thinking, you know, I'm doing this on behalf of like the whole white race, like. But for some reason, and you can ask loads of people who are from similar places to where I'm from, but that's how it feels. And sometimes that's how you're almost made to feel as well.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Can you break that down for me so I really understand it? And for anyone, like, so I, I get, I get the sort of nuances, I get the understanding of it, but, but what is that deeper feeling? Why, why does it feel, why is there that you feel like you have to represent your community?

• 10:42Speaker 00

  Um, because I feel now it's a lot more commonplace, you know. I feel like, um, you know, you know, the black British kind of demographic is fully ingrained in like British culture and society. It's very normalized now, but maybe when I started, it still was, but less so. But I think it was maybe something to do with that, the lack of representation from the community. And then, um, not entirely, but maybe negative perceptions of certain aspects of the culture or the community. So when you get spotlight on you, it's like, don't, you know, yeah, yeah, don't fall into the status quo, you know, don't, don't let the side down.

• 11:23Speaker 00

  Like you said, you, you could fall into all of these different things and it doesn't mean don't have a good time, but just basically don't let us down. And I guess another way to look at it and like big up all my Indian brothers and sisters, but like, I was watching Instagram and someone made this, uh, they had this sort of anecdote about how there's a lack of like South Asian football players, right? Which I never really thought about, but they're absolutely right. But when I started thinking about, if we use this as an example, right? If there was all of a sudden, um, an exceptional South Asian player that played for Arsenal tomorrow or Chelsea or Man United, he would almost become like a.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:02Speaker 00

  Do you get what I mean?

• 12:02Speaker 01

  He'd become a figure for people to, for that community to look up to.

• 12:05Speaker 00

  Yes, so something like that.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  And it becomes a lot of pressure. And when you have pressure on yourself, it adds on top of the pressure.

• 12:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  And so then you are in fight or, fight or flight the whole time because the adrenaline is going, going, going.

• 12:15Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  And, because that's, because you, you said, Tony, you had this idea, you had to win, you wanted to win, this, this competitive nature, right?

• 12:22Speaker 00

  Had to, could never lose.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Man, that, that is hard for anyone, it's hard to lose that, right? If you wanna win the whole time.

• 12:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  You're competitive, you compare yourself.

• 12:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Where is that from? Is that from your parents? Is that from your upbringing? Where does that come from within you?

• 12:39Speaker 00

  Um, I think it's some, I think it's partly from my parents. I'd even say my mum also than my dad. I think, um, what I got from both parents who are still together is, you know, uh, an environment that was very loving. Um, you know, they gave us all the, you know, correct values and I feel like us as, you know, four kids from that family grew up with good virtues. But my mum was always like, she would never settle for the situation that we were in. And I, and I always saw that from her. And as a kind of like tiny little woman, I would see this like woman working like three or four jobs, always frustrated at the fact that we were like in a council estate when I was in my early years from like one to 10.

• 13:20Speaker 00

  Like some, I remember there was, um, a next door neighbor and he, basically in our council estate, he went to meet a girl by the bin chute and then he got set up and he got stabbed, which is a very common, typical story. Um, and then I remember when that happened, all I, all I could hear was my mum saying, we have to move out of this situation, we have to move out of here. And then she had three jobs and then she started trading, so she'd go to Switzerland and she'd buy all these like fabrics like satin and organza and all these different things that are quite prominent in the Nigerian community for like weddings, birthdays, stuff like that. She'd bring them back, she'd get a seamstress, she'd turn them into dresses.

• 14:00Speaker 00

  And then that's how she was able to sort of save up, along with my dad, for the first deposit for the first house. So then we moved deeper into South London, more into like the suburbs, kind of bordering Kent. And so I was like, oh, this is it, like, we've got a garden, you know, my next door neighbor's called Billy, life is good. Do you know what I mean? But no, she wasn't settled, she was like, we need another one, we need to move to somewhere bigger, we need to extend this one. And then we need to move to another one, then we're gonna rent this one out, then a couple of years later, next property, then she'd be like, no, we need another one. We need to, and she would just never stop, even to this day, yeah.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Never stop, never stop, never stop.

• 14:36Speaker 00

  Manchester, this, that, like, she's basically, you know, probably saying it for the first time, she's from someone who immigrated from Nigeria in the late eighties. She, in her own right, is a millionaire with no fame, no like, you know, uh, you know, parents gave me this or that. Just a fifty something year old Nigerian woman, just striving, going, not stopping. So I think, I think some, uh, it's something to do with that and everything she instilled in me. She basically treated me like, um, like her second husband. So from nine years old, when she was, when I was nine, and she was doing all the trading that she was doing, she would bring me along to those trips.

• 15:16Speaker 00

  I'd be in the factories in Switzerland, I'd see her haggling with the owner of the factory. Oh, please, you know, you said wholesale price would be this, why? So I'd be watching all of it. When she upgraded from her Vauxhall Astra to a Mercedes C one eighty, I was probably about eleven.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  You remember it?

• 15:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, then she took me up to Sheffield, somewhere where she bought the car. And then she was like, watch what the car dealer is saying, like, tell me what all the buttons mean, because I don't understand. So I was super young, just almost being forced into, some people would maybe argue and say, oh, you didn't get to have that like childhood, where, where, where. But I think it kind of worked out quite well because I was, I was just forced to grow up very early on. So I'd say it was partly because of that and then.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  What an amazing woman.

• 16:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then I'd also say it was probably the reality of the environment around us. I think, you know, for my first couple of years, obviously you know no better. So it's just your normality, you have your friends, you have your family, life is good. But as I started to kind of, you know, living in Peckham at the time, as I started to kind of understand the environment I was in, even though Peckham is super trendy now, it's lovely. But at the time, you know, nineties, et cetera, I was just like, there are, you know, the, the great thing about London is, everything is kind of juxtaposed, right? So even if you're in Chelsea and you're living in three, five, seven, ten million pound houses, a couple of, a, a mile away at least, there's gonna be a council estate, there's gonna be a block of flats.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Not even a mile away?

• 16:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly, there's gonna be social housing. And I think it's, I think I, you know, thank God that I was born in London because to be able to see that contrast very early on made me think, wait, why are we living here and we're not living there? But there's people that live there and they're getting on with their lives. Okay, how can I go from here to there? So I think it's the combination of the two.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  But explain, because you, you, you, you grew up in the Elsbury Estate in Peckham, right? Which is one of the biggest estates in the whole of Europe.

• 17:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Right? And you, you describe it where you used to live on a high floor up and you used to see across London, so you could see the houses.

• 17:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  And you used to say to yourself, why am I not living there?

• 17:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, always.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  How do I get there? Like you said, you live in your environment, right? And you've got your mum who's always striving for more, more and more. To find your way out of that riddle, to get your way out of that jigsaw and like put the pieces together together, how do you do that? Because someone listening right now who looks up to you, right, who, who, you're their complete inspiration. Because maybe they're living in the same place you were. How do you get out of that spot? Or how do you persuade someone that this is not the be all and end all, you can get out of this?

• 17:45Speaker 00

  Um, I think now more so than when I was growing up, it's, it's better to be able to adopt that mindset because we have, we have, uh, more to look at via social media, do you get what I mean?

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:59Speaker 00

  Sometimes to a kind of like, to a detriment, because you end up seeing things that are gonna be very hard to attain, do you get what I mean? Or someone's always living a better life or having some sort of, you know, based on perception, better experience. But I think where we didn't have that, I did have to kind of look out of my block of flats and see the houses. Whereas now, you could just scroll on your feed and there's millions and millions of examples and even tutorials, how tos.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Where before, you had, you had nothing.

• 18:27Speaker 00

  Whereas before, I had nothing.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  You had books, you had to go to the library.

• 18:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I also had Nigeria, and I'll explain. So the thing about going back, so once a year I'd go back to Nigeria and would fly to Lagos, then we'd drive about six hours and go to the village where my parents grew up, which is in the southeast in, in a, a town called Asaba, right? And that's where, for example, with, you know, my, my grandparents had built a block, so they had a block, they lived at the top of the block. And then they had tenants and all of the other flats, but they still had basic things, like would still have to go to like a main water source, for example, get the water, take it up to the block. And then we had one uncle who had done very well for himself, he used to go back and forth to Brazil. And then he set up a factory in Brazil and he was selling shoes.

• 19:14Speaker 00

  So I could see the contrast in Nigeria of someone who lived in a compound or an estate with a gate and a gateman, security guard, ten cars in their driveway, and then I could see the kid on the street who's sitting on a skateboard with his arm missing. So I think, I think going there and seeing, being overstimulated by what you saw and I guess how people would be treated as a result, was also something that kind of resonated with me, that kind of made me think in this kind of way.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Wow, what's your mum's name?

• 19:46Speaker 00

  Rosemary.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Man, what a hero.

• 19:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, she's gonna be on the next extraordinary extension, so you'll see her on there.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Is she really?

• 19:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, and my dad, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exclusive, exclusive.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  What's your dad called?

• 19:57Speaker 00

  Patrick.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Patrick.

• 19:58Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  What do you think they taught you, apart from drive and always bettering yourself and always trying to like, you've got to do more, you've got to keep going? What else? What other things did they instill within you, do you think?

• 20:07Speaker 00

  I think they instilled faith within me, so like, um, a, a, a fear and appreciation and an acknowledgement of God and a creator and a higher being and, uh, I guess the idea that we're here for like a temporary time and we're just like one blip in this universe, you know, of so much vastness and greatness. Um, and that's something I think that kind of anchors me and keeps me very humble.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  Have you always been religious?

• 20:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, always.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  You've never lost your faith at any point?

• 20:35Speaker 00

  No, I've kind of maybe.

• 20:38Speaker 00

  Not focused on it so much over a period of time, but I've never like lost it and said, I've become, you know, agnostic or I'm, you know, you know.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  You know what's funny, Tony, is like I, I used to go to church as a kid a lot, right? And my, my auntie, Lottie, shout out Lottie, amazing, she's very religious. So when we used to spend time with our cousins, it was always church every Sunday. Here we go. And then when I went to school, it was always church, had church every, every evening, boarded, right?

• 21:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  At school, so church every evening and a big service on a Sunday.

• 21:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  And, and so what happened is because I was kind of driven towards that, I kind of was like, it became, it's like telling a kid to go and watch opera.

• 21:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  You don't wanna do it.

• 21:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, you start to reject it, yeah.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  I reject it, I push it away.

• 21:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  And now later in life, you know, every morning, every evening, I pray.

• 21:18Speaker 00

  That's great.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  And, and I don't know what I, who or what I'm praying. I just, I'm, I'm making, I just praying for contentness and happiness and love and all this stuff. And I feel like I'm living a happier, better life from starting doing that.

• 21:32Speaker 00

  One hundred percent, cause it's definitely not gonna be material things. It's not gonna be material things that's gonna keep you happy. It's not even, you know, forgive me for saying this, gonna be people, do you get what I mean? People are fantastic, you know, but they're fickle, do you get what I mean? One minute it's this, maybe your best friend at school or the crew that you hang around with at school, maybe there's one or two of them now that maybe have survived, you know, the, the, the friendship or the relationship. And then the rest, you probably don't even talk to them anymore, do you get what I mean? So when you look at it like that, and then I also look at things like the complexity of the eye, for example, this, the eye, the eyes that we're using to look at, there's still no camera. It doesn't matter who's behind it, Apple or Samsung or whatever, there's still no camera

• 22:16Speaker 00

  that is as sophisticated as the eye. I look at the complexity of the brain, like what even is that? How, what did that just happen? Did it just?

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 22:25Speaker 00

  So when I, when I conceptualize things like that, I'm like, okay, cool, there's definitely a creator or like photosynthesis or all these mad things that they can be explained, but there's obviously clearly a designer, do you get what I mean? There's some, or some, you know, maybe it's not A, but there's a design. Um, so when I look at it like that, I'm like, okay, cool.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  I, I, and I think more people are moving back to religion because the, the world that we're living in is, is a pretty tough place and we kind of want to know there's more or there's something else.

• 22:54Speaker 00

  Hundred percent.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Rather than just leaving it to nothing.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  Hundred percent.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  I think it's the, especially when I've had kids, right? And I think about my kids, for me, I want, I wanna definitely put that faith over to my children.

• 23:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, me too.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  And I, but I don't know how to do that in the right way. And how have you done that with your kids?

• 23:13Speaker 00

  So I also don't have the answer for that. I've put them in a relatively like religious school and even what you just said earlier is kind of scaring me, cause they have to go to church a lot, like the, the person running their schools are non, do you get what I mean? It's the whole shebang.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Survive now.

• 23:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's the whole shebang. So I, I, one of my daughters, she already kind of like, oh, church on Sunday, we go every day at school, da, da, da, da, da. But I think all I can do is show them by the way I live and I'm an imperfect person, do you get me? And I'm definitely flawed, I'm definitely trying to work on myself every day, but I think your parents ultimately will influence, will have an influence over you and also the company that you keep.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 23:56Speaker 00

  Uh, will have an influence on you more than you can kind of quantify. So I'm just trying to live as much of a righteous life as possible and then introduce all of the concepts to them. And then what they do with it over time is up to them, but I, I, I remember feeling how they felt when I was getting dragged to church every Sunday.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  And now, you know, at my age now, I'm like, okay, cool, you know, God at the centre of everything I do. So I just hope, you know, their, their mum is religious, their grandmas are religious, their grandparents are relatively religious, so.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  They have it within them, right?

• 24:28Speaker 00

  Hopefully, yeah.

• 24:33Speaker 06

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• 26:36Speaker 01

  Do you believe in manifestation?

• 26:37Speaker 00

  Absolutely, that's how I, that's also how I got where, where I am now.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  Tell me, what have you manifested?

• 26:42Speaker 00

  Everything. I've manifested being here with you, Jamie.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Thought you freaking had.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  But have you everything? Like, because manifestation is wild.

• 26:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  And I think that, that is aligned with faith.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  Hundred percent, yeah, hundred percent. Just speaking things into existence, like, um, when I was a lot younger, I read The Secret and when I read The Secret, that changed my life and that's literally before, maybe about a year before I released my first album. And I'd say a lot of the.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  And The Secret is about positive thinking.

• 27:12Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Um, that's one, uh, example of it. And then when I used to live in, so after we moved from Peckham to Plumstead, I'd go down to Greenwich, which is not far away from Plumstead. And I'd, I'd basically climb up to where the observatory in Greenwich Park was and there you can also see the whole city. So this is now fast forward from me looking out from the blocks to the houses. Now I'm in the observatory looking at the whole city.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Wow, Tony, you always had this vision, this like you wanted to see the horizon.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  First album, the artwork is like that, of me just holding like everything, yeah, cause I'd literally.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Cause you would see the hot, you would see the, that's it, the horizon.

• 27:47Speaker 00

  Flat, like this, see everything, trains moving, I'd just go there at night by myself and I'd be like, how can I do this? Like how, I want everyone in this city to know me and like know what I do. And I'd, I'd, I was probably like fifteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Explain this, you would go by yourself at night, you would stand there and you would basically talk to the universe and say, I want this city to know who I am.

• 28:08Speaker 00

  I want this city, like, how am I gonna do this? How? Like, look at how vast the city is, look at all the lights, look at how many people are in here, okay, how do I do this? And I just think and think. And I did it on at least more than, more than ten occasions.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Man, you know, cause your first single, Pass Out, right? Straight to number one. February twenty ten, ninety-two thousand copies sold in its first week.

• 28:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, not bad.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  That's, yeah, feels pretty good, that one. Did you know when you were writing it was gonna be a hit?

• 28:38Speaker 00

  No, so, um, it's funny actually, so I actually had, um, another record that, you know, the label at the time were like, you know, this is gonna be the hit. And Pass Out was meant to be like a specialist warm-up song, underground song. So when I, when I wrote it, at the end, at the end of the session, we were playing the song over and over again. And typically like I've been doing this a long time, after you've been in a long session for like twelve hours, when the session's done, you just switch off the thing and you just come back in the next day with fresh ears.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 29:10Speaker 00

  But this track, after me and Lab had made it, we were just listening to it over and over again. And there was another artist who walked into the room and he just stopped in his tracks and he was like, so I knew we had something special.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  He just knew, he was just like, this is good.

• 29:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was like, this is good, but good doesn't necessarily mean a hit. Do you get what I mean? So I, I didn't, to be honest, I didn't know it was a hit, but as soon as it went into the, into the universe, it just kind of did what it did.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  I love that image of you standing on Greenwich and looking above at the horizon just going, right, this, how am I gonna do this?

• 29:41Speaker 00

  How?

• 29:42Speaker 01

  Man, cause that's like, it's again, it's a.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  You know, it's, it's, it's really like inspiring for younger kids to hear that.

• 29:51Speaker 00

  That's good.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  It's really is because I think sometimes, um, I think sometimes what happens is, is that we expect a lot. Definitely me as a kid from a privileged background, I, like, the one thing that I didn't think a lot of the time was, I didn't realise how much hard work you have to put in in order to succeed.

• 30:07Speaker 00

  So hard.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  So hard.

• 30:09Speaker 00

  So hard.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  It is so, so hard.

• 30:11Speaker 00

  And it just gets harder and harder.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  It gets harder and harder and harder. And people think what's going to happen.

• 30:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Is that someone's gonna open a door and say, hey, we've been expecting you, come on in.

• 30:19Speaker 00

  Never.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Never happens. You have to work, you have to go, you have to push for it. And you're that prime example of hard work and that manifestation and looking at and saying, this is what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna achieve this.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  And if you fall, there's gonna be no one there to go, oh, Jamie, don't worry.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  No ways.

• 30:31Speaker 00

  Come on, yeah, let's get you back up there, mate, you're on your own. That's why I say in Passat, I walk alone, cause I was born alone. Like, I very mu- I very, early on in my life, I really did understand that. Um, but like you're saying, maybe it's something to do with the upbringing and not necessarily. My parents definitely tried for us. Like, they took us to, they took us to, um, Orlando, uh, what's that, Universal Studios? Yeah, Disneyland, like, my parents tried, man. Like, we went on, like, good holidays, well, mainly Nigeria, but we went on good holidays. They tried to get us nice things.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  And you saw them working hard.

• 31:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, saw them working so hard, man. Three, four jobs, trying to find other ways to make money, like, it was relentless.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  Well, just going back to growing up in the estate, do you still have friends from the estate?

• 31:18Speaker 00

  Um, I still have friends from the area, not the estate.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Really?

• 31:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, so like, cause obviously I went to school in that area, I went to Saint Francis in Peckham, so I still talk to like, yeah, loads of the kids.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  I mean, how many kids do you think made it out of the estate?

• 31:31Speaker 00

  Um, not very many, to be fair. And actually, thanks, like, you've reminded me. Um, one of the kids, he was like, one of the best at football, his name was Philip Porru, rest in peace. And actually, what was really sad is, um, as Passat had kinda come out, I remember reading like a local newspaper in like, uh, for Greenwich, that Philip had gone to meet a friend in Woolwich, which is near where Plumsid was. And he was basically set up and then he was shot and he was, and this was a guy that was in my year in primary school, used to be the best at football. When I, when I think about him, I think about me standing in a line and he would be the guy who would like pick all the players for the team.

• 32:16Speaker 00

  Like, you, you come on my team, you come on this. And like, yeah, while Passat was taken off, he's, his life, yeah, had ended. So, yeah, I don't, I don't wanna tell that like typical story, but just in reality, yeah, I don't think many people.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Man, you know, it's so, it's like, there, there's a great book called Outliers, I don't know if you've ever read it.

• 32:33Speaker 00

  Outliers.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  You should read it, it's an amazing book, right? It's, it's all about the outliers in life that lead us to certain places. And basically, it's a whole thing about luck and timing, right? There's a lot of luck and ti- it's hard work, hundred percent forget, so all of that, but there's a lot of it down to luck and timing. Where you were at certain time, how, who your parents were, where you were next to, how you get out of the place.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  Right? So, my question to you is like, who's your outlier? Who was that inspiration for you? Who did you admire growing up? They were like, I wanna go and do music, I wanna go and follow that, that's where I wanna go. How do you get into that space?

• 33:04Speaker 00

  So, um, in, like, British, it would have been someone like a dizzy rascal, who's maybe like a couple of years older than me. He was someone who, while I was listening to pirate radio, I was like obsessed. This was the time where you would hear the, the artists, but you wouldn't be able to see them. Do you know what I mean? Pre-social media. Yeah, so in my mind, cause I've got quite a big imagination, like.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  I can feel that on you, by the way. It's what I can feel, like, even your visual of seeing your friend and like, I can see you visualising it in your head.

• 33:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm really good at that. So, I used to imagine, and obviously the stories they'd tell, I feel, I feel were more pertinent because you couldn't see them. So you'd imagine it and like, okay, wow, look, they're talking about this life that is just crazy. I'd say it was him, I'd say it was So Solid Crew as well.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:51Speaker 00

  Uh, obviously Twenty One Seconds went to number one in like two thousand and one or two or three, so I was maybe twelve at the time.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Unbelievable.

• 33:58Speaker 00

  So I think seeing that was my first example. I'm sure there were, no, there definitely were some before, but in my time, that was my first example of like black British success on a commercial level, like comparable to anyone else. So, So Solid Crew, you are number one, I don't know, who, whoever at the time, uh, Blur or the whoever is number three. This, you are in the same thing as that. So, once I saw that, I was like, oh, okay, so it's possible then. And if it's possible, I'm gonna try and pursue that.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  You, you, you got at school, right? You, you're smart, you got the grades, you got every university you could go to, but you decided not to, you decided to pursue music.

• 34:40Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Right? That's kind of like, what were your parents saying at the time? Cause your parents who are hustlers, they've been working their butts off, they're like, you gotta be better, better, better.

• 34:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  I imagine the music industry is an industry that you go into, right? Where there is no plan B.

• 34:54Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  You have to give it all and it's not a stable industry.

• 34:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's not.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  So what are your parents saying?

• 34:59Speaker 00

  Um, those two years, my, my extended gap, gap year, it was, uh, it was, it was hell, it was hell for me.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Was it really?

• 35:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, so at first, I was like, oh, mum and dad, I was getting all of the acceptance letters, like the long, big ones, and I'd just shove them under my bed like this.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Where you accepted, where were you accepted everywhere?

• 35:16Speaker 00

  Uh, everywhere, like every uni that I applied for. I didn't apply for Uxbridge or anything like that, but within my capacity, all of the unis that I went for, I got into. And I remember kinda putting all of them under the bed and I was like, oh, mum, dad, I'm gonna do a gap year. So they were like, wha- what's a gap year? What, what, what are you talking about? I was like, oh, basically, I'm gonna just focus on music. Of course, they can't force me to go, so they kinda just were cold for a little bit. And then when that gap year turned into two years, I got hell.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Really?

• 35:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm the eldest of, um, four.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  So you're the leader.

• 35:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I'm the leader. So then now it's like, oh, you're, you know, you're a bad influence on your siblings, just, and then, and then to be honest with you, like, I was doing the typical teenager thing, right? So I was waking up at like twelve P M in the afternoon. I wasn't like music, where's the structure of music? You know, you just go to the studio, it's not like I'm employed by anyone, it's not like I've got gigs or anything like that.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  So you can't see, the, the, the growth isn't visible.

• 36:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's not visible. I'm just, yeah, typically like in the house or out of the house.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Doing my best, but you're like, what do you mean?

• 36:20Speaker 00

  What are you actually doing? Where's the money? Where's the, what's going on?

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:24Speaker 00

  So, um, yeah, then it got really bad, like, it got really bad to the point where my manager at the time was like, if you want your parents to respect what you're doing, you're gonna have to treat it like a nine to five. So even if you're not doing anything, still wake up at nine A M. Do you get what I mean? Still leave your house at nine A M with an intention of doing something, making something happen. Be back in by three, by five P M and have a structure to your life. Um.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  That's hard, that's self-discipline.

• 36:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly, especially at that time, eighteen, nineteen, do you get what I mean? But, yeah, it was, it was, it was really tough, man. But luckily, twenty twenty one, we were good.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  So what was the moment where the music suddenly started, you were like, this is gonna be something?

• 37:05Speaker 00

  Um, so basically, I put out, uh, this mixtape and it's, it was called Hood Economics. And it was all based on like Adam Smith's like Wealth of Nations, which is kind of essentially, um, in a succinct way. If you basically pursue in a capitalist kinda way, your own progress, then your own progress, sometimes you have to be selfish to pursue your own progress, which will by default kind of inspire others to do the same. So this is me kinda thinking, not like all of my community needed this, cause there's loads of successful people from my community. But this was sort of my mindset in terms of like rap and like grime and da-da. Okay, forget the whole crew thing.

• 37:45Speaker 00

  Just go about it alone and go on your own mission. And then once you make it or you get to a certain point, that will by default inspire other people. So I made this mixtape Hood Economics and we sampled everyone. I'd, I even sampled the Guinness, Guinness advert at the time, do you remember that?

• 38:03Speaker 00

  Big Guinness advert, I rapped on that, rapped on Lily Allen's Can't Knock 'Em Out, rapped on Calvin Harris, I Get All The Girls. Very eclectic mix of music. Um, and then we pressed it and it was in H M V. I don't know if we're allowed to do that, but most of you guys are my friends now and we've worked together. So, yeah, don't come for me. Yeah, but, but, but it was in H M V and we had a very D I Y approach. We were selling them out the back of the car.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Were you really?

• 38:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, every, every little gig that we got, couple hundred quid, come and perform in Luton or High Wycombe or Bucks, somewhere in Bucks. We'd take all the CDs and we'd be selling them to the point where we'd sold ten thousand copies.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  It's a lot.

• 38:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a lot. So once we sold ten thousand copies, then, um, we got a booking agent. And then from the little shows, we started getting like relatively decent billings on some of the festivals. So now, for the first time, I'm playing wireless, but I'm playing like the third stage and at a rogue time. And then, and then, and then something happened where, um, there was an A and R that was in the crowd, because one of their artists was, um, on before me, yeah, no, on after me. So, uh, by coincidence, they were in the tent I was playing and through my, I was doing a bit of social media at the time, I was on YouTube, I had a little J V C which I referenced.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  You used to have your camera.

• 39:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, and I had this blog on wordpress, uh, dot com called Milk and Two Sugars, cause I like tea. Um, and so I'd, I'd use this little J V C that I'd saved up from money from one of the shows from, um, and then I'd film my whole life. So I've met J M E today and he's doing this. I've met Bashy today and I'm shooting it from the perspective as of a young artist who's basically trying to be like these guys and, and integrate into that.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  So you like vlogging in a way before vlogging was even really a thing?

• 39:52Speaker 00

  It's all there, the evidence is online if you wanna go and check it out.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  You were the first vlogger.

• 39:55Speaker 00

  I was, I was.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  You and Zoella.

• 39:57Speaker 00

  No, honestly, guys, honestly, I'm telling you something here, I'm not joking, like, it's all there if you wanna go and check all the dates before everyone. Um, so basically, um, when that A and R was in the crowd, um, I performed and maybe a combination of the selling the mixtapes, the tour, the gigging, um, and the vlogging, my tent was packed, it was packed. I didn't even have like a, act- actually, I had one or two songs that they might have known, a song called Wifey, which I released when I was sixteen, which people are still sampling and using to this day, A J Tracy, Unknown T, et cetera, et cetera.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  You were only sixteen.

• 40:32Speaker 00

  When I was sixteen, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Crazy, right? It's on called Wifey when you're sixteen.

• 40:36Speaker 00

  I know. Random, big imagination, right? Big imagination. Um, so basically, um, after I did my performance, the act who was signed to a major record label came on and like maybe about fifty percent of the crowd left. So when fifty percent of the crowd left, the A and R of that artist was like, who's that guy? You know, it's a ruthless industry, man. So they were like, who's that guy?

• 41:00Speaker 01

  We want that guy.

• 41:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, then they reached out, then we started having conversations with record labels and that's when I was like, oh, maybe this is actually gonna happen. Yeah.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  When you work so hard towards something.

• 41:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  You you want it to happen and you go in your head, you're going, I know this is gonna happen.

• 41:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  But there's always that little bit of doubt.

• 41:18Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Whoever you are.

• 41:20Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  You're, I don't know, there's always a little bit of doubt.

• 41:22Speaker 00

  Hundred percent.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  So when it starts actually happening and you start to see it go, it must be like, this hard work. Those like hours of putting the the effort in, the routine that I put in, the the the parents getting angry at me. Ah, man, it's actually happening.

• 41:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, but what happened during that time was actually magical because it wasn't so much of an excitement. It was more of a kind of uh understanding, like, okay, everything you've ever wanted is finally happening. And then, like I said at the beginning of the podcast, like, don't fuck it up, like, it's finally here. So it wasn't like, oh, yeah, I've made it, let's go and like drink champagne and do this and do that and start hanging out with this person and that person. It was like, you've wanted this for so long, this is when the work begins. And I think maybe at the time I saw like a fifty cent interview where he said, oh, you know, people think that the more successful you become, it gets easier. It actually gets harder and harder. So maybe it was a snippet from that that also resonated with me at the time.

• 42:20Speaker 00

  And I just kind of took it all in my stride. So every, cause I believe that anything you put your mind to, if you are of good, sound mind. Yeah, I think you can actually do it.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Achieve it.

• 42:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, which is why, you know, when I was on my hiatus, I was like, I might take up jiu jitsu. You know, I got inspired, I met Tom Hardy, he was like, yo, come and train in this gym where I train, come and pick up jiu jitsu. And now I've like done several competitions, I've won several medals, I've been doing it for seven years. And it's it's such a, you you have to be so dedicated at jiu jitsu to get good at jiu jitsu. You can't just watch a tutorial and get good at it, you have to actually be in the field. So I'm I'm of the mindset and I understand that everyone doesn't have this mindset. But anything you put your mind to and that you believe with all your heart, it might not happen when you expect it to happen, but it can happen eventually.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Firstly, um, I would fuck you up if we rolled.

• 43:14Speaker 00

  Is it? Do you reckon?

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:16Speaker 00

  Let's see.

• 43:18Speaker 00

  Let's see.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  What about you?

• 43:20Speaker 00

  Do you do it as well?

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Okay, well, I did it for a bit.

• 43:24Speaker 00

  Not good enough, then the answer is no, you would not.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  I tell you, I was wake up every morning and fighting people, I was like, this is hectic.

• 43:30Speaker 00

  It's good for you, man.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  It's really good.

• 43:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's good for you. It de-stresses, decompresses me at the start of the day, yeah.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Without a doubt. But what's interesting, which I think, okay, I I so I'll be a little bit honest, right, maybe. Um, because I because I grew up like a privileged, privileged, right, I had a roof of my head, I didn't have to worry about the mortgage. We went on nice holidays.

• 43:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  I had that mentality a little bit when I was younger, that it was, if something became hard, ah, whatever.

• 43:55Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  I was a I was a natural sportsman, so I was good at sports. So I didn't find it, I found work quite tricky, right, because I was dyslexic, ADHD. So what happened was is in my twenties, I kind of just like, if something became, I wanted to become an actor.

• 44:06Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Right? I went, was gonna go to the Rado audition, realised I had to learn a whole sonnet and all these things, I'm not gonna go do that, so I go and do Made in Chelsea. Right? It's a shortcut.

• 44:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  What I realised then in my twenties is when you take a shortcut, you always have to pay, you have to play the long game at some point.

• 44:20Speaker 00

  Eventually, of course, yeah, yeah. That's why I don't take any shortcuts, yeah.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  That's what I was gonna ask you, right? Because shortcuts, people always try and find a shortcut, shortcut is the worst thing to do. And like with jiu jitsu, jiu jitsu is all about, um, there's no, you can't watch a YouTube video, you can't cheat your way to a black belt.

• 44:36Speaker 00

  Impossible.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  You also, in a way with jiu jitsu, from my limited knowledge, you have to sort of start with the feet, the legs, you have to get control of the legs, right?

• 44:43Speaker 00

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  So it's the bottom up.

• 44:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  And you've done that, you've felt that, you've had that, you've been at the bottom to work your way up.

• 44:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  So you've never taken a shortcut.

• 44:51Speaker 00

  Never taken a shortcut, I don't believe in it. And there's people around me or people that I've grown up with, friends, even certain family members that are happy to take the shortcuts. Do you get what I mean? Some some of my friends I'll talk to, they're like, the system's rigged, man, and it's rigged against us especially. So any shortcut I can see, I'm gonna take it. But what I found, and you know, I'm only in my thirties, but what I found is nine times out of ten, some people make it to the promised land.

• 45:16Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 45:17Speaker 00

  Do you get what I mean? But nine, nine out of the ten people, eight out of the ten people, they've always had to come back and take the long way.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  Without a doubt.

• 45:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, without a doubt.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  And my biggest advice to everyone is, don't take that shortcut.

• 45:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, don't take it, it's not worth it.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  It's not worth it because then in the five, ten years, when you haven't taken the shortcut, you'll be the one winning. And the person who's taking the shortcut is paying back for that at some point.

• 45:35Speaker 00

  And I feel like you, um, I feel like the delayed gratification, it sits better in you, in your being as a as a person. Do you get what I mean? Because if you've really, you know, gone through the motions, taken your time, built something one day at a time, slowly, slowly, slowly. And then you're now sitting on this kind of giant infrastructure. It it's kind of more like, yeah, of course I am, like, why wouldn't I be? Because I've put all of the work in, I've paid the cost to be the boss, yeah.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  So you've had seven U K number ones, smaller than Beyonce, Drake.

• 46:10Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  Man, that is, that's elite level.

• 46:13Speaker 00

  I think so, yeah. I'm now internalising that. Before I used to be shy and be like, oh, shucks, but hey, man, yeah, I guess it is, yeah.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  And and I wanna get into this, right? Because when I spoke to Catherine Ryan, I think it was.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  I love her.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  Oh, man, she's the best.

• 46:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  She said to me, she said, when she went to her first gig, when she was becoming a comedian, the tour manager said to her, this is gonna be the funnest time, this is gonna be your best time. Because what happens is when you start getting the success, you've wanted one, then you get it.

• 46:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Then you're afraid to lose it.

• 46:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  And you have to hold, and that's almost even more pressure.

• 46:44Speaker 00

  It is, tell me about it. I did, yeah. I'll never forget that first um call. I remember we were, sounds so glamorous now, bloody hell, life is good. And we were in like, we were driving around by the Champs Elysees and I got like a call from the accountant and like, he said kind of two things in one breath. And he was like, oh, you know, oh, the album's gone to number one, congratulations. And so it was like a, it was a confirmation that like, all of this hard work had paid off. And then he was also talking about where we were at financially and we'd now, you know, crossed over into a new tier of like finances. Like, obviously, you can probably imagine, it gone from like thousands to, you know, okay, you're now there, and like, you're, you know, twenty twenty three or something like that.

• 47:28Speaker 00

  And then you're thinking, wow, like, oh my goodness, this is amazing. I will never forget that feeling. And then what happens subsequently is you're almost, it's like you've climbed the mountain and then now there's a bigger mountain right behind you. And now you're trying to climb that one, knowing that there's gonna be a bigger one after. And then on top of that, you get more stakeholders. Do you get what I mean? So there's more people that are kind of involved in what you're doing. And so you're getting pulled in all these different directions, which is why I took the hiatus as well. Because you kind of like lose yourself in all of it. And I just found myself like, one of the reasons why I bought my own studio eventually is because I found myself in these swanky studios in Chiswick

• 48:06Speaker 00

  that people were paying out the arse for. And I'd see like the A and Rs and all the stakeholders just like through the glass while I was recording, I'd just see them there. And I would feel so nervous and so anxious. And I was like, this, after a while, I was like, this is not what music is about. This is not why I got into this. Before, I used to go around my mate's house, have some fun and we'd end up with a song. Now, I'm here nervous as shit to not let anyone down, to not disappoint anyone. I didn't even know these guys five years ago. And now, like, my whole being is centred around making sure that they're happy. So I think what Catherine, what Catherine Ryan's manager was saying is absolutely right. The first time is kind of like the purest time.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:48Speaker 00

  Cause nine times out of ten, it happens.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  Cause there's only hope, really. There's like, there's there's like, you're going towards something.

• 48:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then after that, you're almost trying to recreate what you did or outdo what you've done, which is a whole different set of, you know, yeah, thought.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  So you said you did therapy?

• 49:03Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  I I've done therapy.

• 49:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  I encourage, I like encourage everyone to go to therapy, if you can afford it, find a way to do it.

• 49:10Speaker 00

  Dabble in it.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Why why did you go?

• 49:12Speaker 00

  Um, because I remember getting to like twenty seven or twenty eight and again, I was just like, oh, I've been running on this adrenaline for so long. And actually, wow, all the things that I wanted to achieve when I was twelve or thirteen or fourteen, I've achieved it now. So what happens now? Do you get what I mean? What what do I do now? Where do I go from here? And how do I keep going? Um, and then there was at first like a kind of sports therapist who like assisted and supported loads of like major athletes in their kind of journeys. And then there was more of like a traditional therapist, um.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  Interesting, the sports athlete, because you were talking to sportsmen who have achieved the gold medal, whatever it is, and then they're like, what do I do next?

• 49:55Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly. Um, so, yeah.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  You were feeling a bit low?

• 49:59Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, I was feeling a bit low and I was feeling a bit kind of, um, what's the word?

• 50:04Speaker 01

  Unmotivated?

• 50:05Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, unmotivated, unmotivated and kind of just.

• 50:10Speaker 00

  Like, okay, cool. I wanna, I now wanna enjoy all the spoils of my success, but I'm still mad young, like. And I don't really know what I wanna do beyond this point. Maybe I should go and talk to someone about it. Do you get what I mean? And then sometimes, I guess, yeah, just being transparent, I guess, like, I bought Alexander McQueen's house when I was twenty four, right? So I'm living in Alexander McQueen's house and I'm kinda sitting there and I'm just like, how can I explain it? I kinda started getting into like, not crazy habits, but I kinda started getting into like, bad habits. And I was just like, this is not who I necessarily was when I came into this, like. I remember, like, I would like laugh at people that were like this, do you get what I mean?

• 50:54Speaker 00

  Or I would not respect people that were like this. So how can I keep on going? And I guess just to kinda give you more of a context, a family member of mine, brilliant, a brilliant guy, got into RADA. Very humble beginnings, got into RADA, did RADA, and then at the end of it, I remember his whole thing was, I used to say to him, I like, what do you wanna do? And he's like, I, he's, he's, he used to say, I wanna play King Henry the Eighth. And I'd be like, yeah, but, bro, King Henry the Eighth is white, bro. Like, what, like, what are you talking about? He's like, nah, like, he's, the way he was thinking.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:26Speaker 00

  At that time, like, we were like fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, that kinda age. He was like ahead of his time. And then after he came out of RADA, tried to um, get roles, didn't get roles. This is just before the explosion we've seen of like, Dampson Idris and David Oyelowo and David Johnson and all these kinda guys. Um, wasn't getting any roles. And then he started following this crowd or fell into this sort of crowd where they started like, doing like hard stuff, do you get what I mean? Without going into too much detail, like dabbling, hard stuff. And then everything just curtailed after that and just went in the complete opposite direction.

• 52:08Speaker 00

  And you know, I'm sure he's gonna bounce back, cause he's a genius, but is now not in a good place. And so this is someone that me and him were like.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  This.

• 52:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, and and Dec, literally, we were like tied at the hip. And now I don't see him anymore and I haven't seen him properly for years. So I think.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  And you could see yourself maybe drifting down.

• 52:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe not to that extremity, because I am a very disciplined person.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  But you could feel your discipline dropping. You could feel that you were getting into bad habits and that you.

• 52:35Speaker 00

  And I was enjoying, I feel like I was enjoying spoils. I was thinking of like the tortoise and the hare. And I was like, I'm enjoying these spoils too early and I'm thinking that everything's plain sailing and it's gonna be like this forever, but I'm still young. So I need to keep working, but I'm now demotivated to work and I'm sitting in this big house kinda thinking that I've made it. Nah, this is not good. And like, look at what just happened to like my closest friend. If this has happened to him, we're not too dissimilar. It could probably happen to me. I need to check in. Yeah, yeah.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Thirty years old, you take this hiatus. For someone who wants to win, and I'm touching this before, like, I admire you, man. Because I, I, looking at myself or my friends or people I know, there are definitely people that, if I was to speak to myself, I'd say, take a break, take a break, reset, understand where you're going.

• 53:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Otherwise you're on this hamster wheel and you're going.

• 53:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  And I admire the fact that you did that. That must have been hard to make that decision. The person, the competitive nature in you, the wanting to win.

• 53:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  Maybe the idea, especially with the music of not to be forgotten, all that. Talk me through that moment.

• 53:43Speaker 00

  Um, it was a combination of quite a few different things. So, um, obviously I was in a situation now where I was kind of like thinking about all settling down and having kids and, and that can do that to you.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:57Speaker 00

  Um, and I was kind of enjoying that. Like, I was, you know, at the time, I was very much like, oh, wow, you know, someone actually, likes me for me and it's not really about everything else that probably everyone else likes and everyone else wants. And I kind of really like relished in that. And I was in, I've probably enjoyed it a bit too much, actually. I was like, oh, this is great. Um.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  But that's beautiful.

• 54:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is beautiful. It is. I'm grateful. I'm thankful to God. Absolutely. It's beautiful, cause not everyone gets to experience that. Um, and so that was probably part of it. And then there was also, like, you've been a frontman and you've been like, pulled in all these different directions after your success, yeah, that like, do you even understand totally the business you're in? Like, like, you know, I didn't go to university, so this was an opportunity for me to like, I set up a publishing company at the time. And then that's when I had to like, understand totally what I was doing, understand every contract that maybe in the past I would have skimmed over and just looked at the cheque and been like,

• 55:00Speaker 00

  hell to the yes, like, let's go. Um, I, I took on management, like, of other artists, which I, I wouldn't do again, but like.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Cause managing people is hard.

• 55:09Speaker 00

  Oh, my goodness, it's hard. It's hard. Sorry to all the managers out there. But like, yeah. Um, so I kinda took on all these other things. And for me, it was still challenging and interesting, but just not, me being on this hamster wheel where I'd seen the burnout of so many people that had come before me or seen that drop off the edge of the cliff, into complete obscurity. So I was like, okay, cool, like, seven number ones or whatever at the time, I've done pretty well. It's gonna be hard to kinda like top this. Let me just get into publishing. So we got into publishing. And then one of the first records that we were part of was Passion Fruit for Drake. So one of the producers that we signed, guy from Hackney, you know, a couple of years into our working relationship, sent Drake a beat.

• 55:52Speaker 00

  Drake was like, I love this. And then he makes Passion Fruit, which I believe is his third biggest record of all time. So I'm like, yes, I'm good at other stuff as well. This is good, yeah. And then we, like, we've done stuff for Alicia Keys, we've done some stuff for Dave, for Central C. So all this stuff, like, one day come to the studio, you'll see all the plaques.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  I would fucking love that.

• 56:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So we did all that stuff in the background, never ever spoke about it, never ever posted it, never really, until now, like, hadn't really spoken about. So I was like, okay, cool, I'm good at other stuff. Tried the management, didn't really work out. Had this kind of creative agency where we got like models that had come from similar backgrounds to me. We had them walk in for like Dolce and Gabbana in Milan and stuff like that, just really like good looking young people. But maybe they didn't have the conventionals like modeling agency. So we're doing all this stuff, set up a clothing brand, parked it off currently, but it will probably come back at some point. But then realized the complexities of that and how hard that was. Um, so just wanted to try loads of different things.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  You're investing, doing shows.

• 56:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, investing, doing shows, taking up jiu jitsu, travelling. Like, just stuff that was more like centered around what I wanted as opposed to what I thought I wanted, um, amidst my shareholders and stakeholders. Do you get what I mean?

• 57:10Speaker 01

  You know what, what I love is that you're, you can talk about your successes, but you're also having to talk about the failures. That didn't work. And that's okay.

• 57:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  And, and that.

• 57:18Speaker 00

  Failure is cool, man.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 57:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, man, it's part of the process.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  But why is failure cool to you? Why do you think it's a good thing to happen?

• 57:23Speaker 00

  Um, well, in one of my new records, I say, um, I've been cheered, I've been booed, like, uh, uh, pulling up in twin coops, been cheered, I've been booed. All this suicide accrued, fans getting tattoos, glad ain't nothing like you. Like, so for me, if I, if I hadn't gone through the, being berated or feeling like you failed and having like a hot face and being embarrassed, feeling like you have to go away for a bit and then come back. I don't think I would have the minerals to still be here today. Do you get what I mean? I think, I think it kinda makes, it makes the man, it makes the woman, do you get what I mean? If you're able to fail and get up from your failure.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  And keep going.

• 58:02Speaker 00

  And keep going, like, that's also how you learn. Because for me.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  And it makes you humble.

• 58:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it humbles you.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  Without a doubt, it makes you a kind, humble person.

• 58:11Speaker 00

  Cause you know it could go either way, right? And you know that sometimes it's within your control, sometimes it's not. So it just kinda is what it is.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  And dude, you did Dragon's Den.

• 58:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, I did.

• 58:19Speaker 01

  And I haven't ever, I haven't said this to anyone yet, I'm, I've just done Dragon's Den.

• 58:23Speaker 00

  Have you?

• 58:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:24Speaker 00

  Come on, mate. Come on, mate. We are more alike than we think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well done. How did you find it?

• 58:31Speaker 01

  I, I, I, I liked how real it was.

• 58:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  Very real.

• 58:35Speaker 00

  It is very real.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  It's very real.

• 58:36Speaker 00

  And I thi- I think actually it's, um, I think actually it's, it's one of the most important, um, shows or types of shows we have in this country.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  Why do you think that? Because?

• 58:45Speaker 00

  Because I think you're, I don't know about your school, but in my school, we didn't really learn how to, or college or school, secondary school, college, we didn't really learn how to think in a kind of, as, as, as an entrepreneur.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, nor do we, neither way. I, I, I didn't even know entrepreneurial, I didn't, I didn't understand like entrepreneur was a thing.

• 59:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  When I left university, I didn't, I didn't, I think you have to go and get a job. I didn't get it.

• 59:09Speaker 00

  And in a time we're living in where like STEM subjects almost are at the mercy of like AI to a certain degree, in the not too distant future, I think to have personality, confidence, to be able to like deliver a pitch.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  Without a doubt, that's what's gonna win.

• 59:23Speaker 00

  Talk, prove your point, challenge someone if they try and challenge you, um, and to build things and to create and to, fail and start again, oh, this is my second business, I had this business before and this and that. I think it's important for that to be reflected on our screens.

• 59:39Speaker 01

  I think the, the best thing people can do who are the younger age is go to like acting classes.

• 59:44Speaker 00

  Hundred percent.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  Because you learn how to stand up, you learn how to be confident, you learn how to, and that's the thing that's going to, that's what's gonna win.

• 59:51Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  With AI and everything coming, go to acting classes, understand improv, understand how to walk in, do drama.

• 59:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, know how to connect with human beings, how to make human beings feel something. Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  Man, your new album.

• 1:00:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  The Night's Not Dead is out sixteenth of October.

• 1:00:08Speaker 00

  The Night Is Not Dead.

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  There we fricking go.

• 1:00:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, man, let's party.

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  Dude, I I saw you, I was um, I was in Hyde Park.

• 1:00:17Speaker 00

  B S T.

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  I saw you come on stage, the crowd just went like electric.

• 1:00:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, we obliterated it, seventy five thousand people.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  Unfucking believable, dude.

• 1:00:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, mad.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  And I saw you with your top off.

• 1:00:29Speaker 00

  Yes, jiu jitsu.

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  That what I'll look like if I start doing jiu jitsu.

• 1:00:34Speaker 00

  Every day, or at least not every day, not every day, about three, four times a week at least, and weights.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  You're fricking rip.

• 1:00:40Speaker 00

  I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready for anything, let's go. I'm ready.

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  Man, it's unbelievable.

• 1:00:47Speaker 00

  I'm ready.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  Are you excited for this new music?

• 1:00:50Speaker 00

  So excited, so excited, I've got like a new lease on life, um, and I I feel like I'm actually coming back with a purpose and with something to kind of.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  Cause you've had that reset, you're just like, here we go.

• 1:01:03Speaker 00

  I've had that reset and I thought about when I was making this album, because this album is basically a dance inspired album and it's centered around. Club culture or the lack of, and obviously, you know, I I know you to a certain extent and I'm sure we've all had those moments, the West End, Central London. And we've enjoyed it and maybe we've matured out of it to a certain extent, but we both, I'm sure you would agree that it's a rite of passage. It's something that you need to experience, it's almost like freshers week for a uni student.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:32Speaker 00

  You need to experience it, even if you just do it for that week and that's it, do you get what I mean? And the fact that we are in a place now where we're losing, we've lost about thirty of these small grassroots music venues this year.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  I didn't realise it was that much.

• 1:01:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, and this, and the stats are saying that by twenty twenty nine, there may be no clubs in the UK left now.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  Cause people are not going out.

• 1:01:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, people are not going out, people have changed their kind of lifestyle habits, it's like, which is, I think is great. You know, people are doing more, you know, run clubs, paddle, this and that, so they're socializing in a different way. And I do think that the effects of like Covid, post Covid, you know, social distancing, this and that and that, like. I think the trauma from that definitely impacted nightlife culture. But then as an artist, who basically spent their formative years going up and down these venues in the, in the UK. As an artist who, you know, at around fifteen or sixteen, snuck into my first Eskimo dance and saw, you know, the origins of this very exciting scene that we call grime.

• 1:02:34Speaker 00

  Kind of being formed right in front of my eyes, the artists, the DJs, the fashion, the this and that. I'm just like, if we don't have these places and spaces, like, I just feel for the next generation, because, you know, when, when you're streaming music, which is the time that we're in now. Like for a million streams, if you got a million, if you got a million streams every single month. You'd probably net as an artist probably about fifteen grand in the year. Yeah, yeah, so when I was, when I think about all of these venues, being able to go to this club on a Friday night, Saturday night, test out your music.

• 1:03:11Speaker 00

  Like I said in rude, get cheered, get booed, know that you need to refine this, change that, like, it's such an important part of the artistic process.

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  Start becoming a comedian, you you get the, you get the, you get the reactions right away, you need that as an artist.

• 1:03:25Speaker 00

  And then your brain just quickly makes an edit, cool, change that, change that, change that. Yeah, so if you don't have that, then I think it's gonna stifle a lot of like talent that has potential to be great and to become global stars. It's gonna stagnate their longevity, because we're living in a time now where you could put one thing out on social media without thinking about it, it explodes. And then you're there scratching your head, trying to work out how to recreate that, whereas if you're consistent with your fan base and you're going from place to place, gigging. Looking into the whites of their eyes, explaining your story, they get to feel your energy, you're making that real genuine connection. Like all the greats before us have done, um, you're in for more of a chance to have a more longer, like a longer and a more illustrious career.

• 1:04:10Speaker 00

  So this was my way of kind of celebrating UK nightlife culture, celebrating all of the scenes and genres that have come from that. Garage, grime, drum and bass, dubstep, all of this, all of these sounds that I've um, just mentioned, they all started in small. Grubby, dingy little places and now exploded into mainstream culture. And then even beyond, you know, one of our biggest soft powers as Brits is our export of the arts, do you get what I'm saying? So if we're, if we're getting rid of these places and spaces, we're basically stifling our creatives, which is just horrific. It's like, it's an absolute no, so of all the things I could have spoken about, you know, I could have spoken about my family and what fatherhood is like and this and that.

• 1:04:52Speaker 00

  That will probably come in the future, but right now I think this is important and so that's, that's why I put it out.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  Fucking dads, I feel the passion, dude.

• 1:05:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's genuine.

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  It's a hundred percent, dude, it's amazing.

• 1:05:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  And I mean, there's so many things that you've done, you performed at the twenty twelve Olympic ceremony with Spice Girls and, I mean, unbelievable, you high fived Prince William.

• 1:05:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  At the BAFTAs.

• 1:05:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, I did, I don't know if I was allowed to do that, but I think he, I think he was cool with it, yeah.

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  That clearly is unbelievable.

• 1:05:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, it's iconic, man, it's iconic.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  It's unbelievable, in your head, were you thinking and gonna go for it?

• 1:05:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, King Charles came to see me do some jiu jitsu the other day at Roger Gracie's, I don't know if you saw that.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  I didn't see that.

• 1:05:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, not just me, but he came, he came to Roger Gracie's, like, and we, a select few of us was there, it was through Reorg, this happened maybe like. Three months ago and he came and he came with all his team and stuff like that, um, they, they made him put on the, you know, the protected things. Cause he would put his feet on the mat, same rules for everyone, guys.

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  Same rules for everyone, respect the Roger, right?

• 1:05:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, and he came in really interested in jiu jitsu and wanting to know more about it, so, so many crazy things have happened in my life, man, it's, it's ridiculous.

• 1:06:05Speaker 06

  Hi, it's Paloma Faith, my podcast Mad, Sad and Bad is back for season four. I'm sitting down with some amazing people, including Natisha Wright. When I'm really fearful of something, I just run towards it. Judy Love.

• 1:06:17Speaker 07

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• 1:06:18Speaker 06

  Out of Troy.

• 1:06:19Speaker 07

  Yeah, I could get it any day.

• 1:06:21Speaker 06

  Grace Campbell, here we have Anita, who's a dog psychic. Tell Eddie, stop barking when I'm, she said you're too noisy. And plenty more, Mad, Sad and Bad with me, Paloma Faith, listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:06:35Speaker 07

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• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  Your energy's the greatest, man.

• 1:07:10Speaker 00

  Good.

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  You're the greatest, dude.

• 1:07:11Speaker 00

  Thank, I'm trying to be one of.

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:13Speaker 00

  I'm trying.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  What does greatness feel like to you? What is greatness to you?

• 1:07:16Speaker 00

  Greatness to me is, for me personally, if I can go out in this life and say, I brought joy to the world. And I brought people together and unlikely people together, people that, you know, not without me, but if I wasn't there, there's a chance they may not have connected. So for example, when I'm at a festival and I see people of all different races and backgrounds and sexual orientations and they're all together chanting the same lyrics. I think that is greatness, like me, I've, I I'm not a perfect person by any stretch of imagination, but. I've done nothing but just try and bring joy to the world and just try and make people feel good, make people dance, create memories for people.

• 1:07:58Speaker 00

  When people say to me, oh, you was the soundtrack of my uni years, man, or like, I met my misses at, at freshers week or on this holiday in Marbella. And now we're, we're married and we've got two kids, for me, I'm like, that is greatness, like, that is what greatness is. And so I'm actually tuning into the frequency of it now and I think that is the essence of what greatness is. And I think it's subjective to every individual person, but for me, that's it, it's not, it's not monetary, it's not, you know, the tangible, material things that you have to show. It's how you made people feel and I think when I go out, loads of people are gonna be like, that guy, that guy's a G, he made me feel good, yeah, he made me feel great.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  Mate, people don't remember what you say, they don't remember what you do, they remember how you make them feel.

• 1:08:42Speaker 00

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  Without a doubt.

• 1:08:44Speaker 00

  Hundred percent.

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  Listen, we'd like to finish our conversation with eight quick questions, you ready for this? What's the saying or phrase that makes you smile and cheers you up?

• 1:08:50Speaker 00

  Um, it's nice to be important, it's more important to be nice, I said that earlier, I love it.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  Best compliment anyone's ever given you?

• 1:08:58Speaker 00

  So what we were just saying now about understanding what your power or your essence is, and someone was literally saying to me yesterday, you know. Um, you know how to make people feel good, like your energy makes people feel good, like that's not a joke, not everybody possesses that. You need to hone in on that, um, and tune into that, he, he was basically saying, you know, just like the Bob Marleys of the world. Who today, we're still all listening to one love and it makes us feel a certain way, your music, maybe not me as a person, but. Your music possesses elements of that sort of power and so, cause you know, you know, like for a long time, like rap in the UK, it wasn't even taken seriously.

• 1:09:38Speaker 00

  It was like a marginalized thing, oh, you're trying to be like the Americans and this and that and that, even now, even though now UK music is, some of UK rap is doing better than the US rap. But, so there's always a part of me that has felt kind of like imposter syndrome, like.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:09:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, even though I know I have conviction in what I'm doing, maybe like I'm winging it to a certain degree and maybe. At some point, someone's gonna say, this isn't, you know, what you think it is or whatever, but I think once I had this conversation with this guy yesterday. It made me understand the power of what I do and the fact that it's special, it's actually very, very special, not everybody possesses that, so that, that really.

• 1:10:17Speaker 01

  Man, that's amazing that someone like you has imposter syndrome.

• 1:10:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  And it's also refreshing to hear for some people that it feels like all of us are guessing.

• 1:10:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course, and everyone's kind of winging it.

• 1:10:28Speaker 01

  And we always feel like we're gonna be caught out at some point.

• 1:10:30Speaker 00

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  Man, what scares you most about yourself?

• 1:10:35Speaker 00

  My determination to succeed.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  When was the last time you cried?

• 1:10:39Speaker 00

  Weirdly, fun fact, for some reason, I don't know if it's the altitude, yeah, but whenever I'm on a plane and I watch a film, like, it could be any film, could even be a funny film, I just start crying. Like, there could be a little moment, you know, like, the guy sees his son again, or like, but I think it's something to do with the altitude, because I could watch the same films at home and it doesn't happen. So every time I'm on a plane watching a film, I cry.

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  I watched a film called Wonder. I don't know if you've seen this.

• 1:11:06Speaker 00

  No, I haven't seen that.

• 1:11:07Speaker 01

  Dude, it's with, like, Owen Wilson and Julia Roberts about their baby and their son. I mean, I honestly, I was crying so much, it was like Noah's Ark. I was like, this is, I was like, I was like, what is, I couldn't stop. Yeah, you know when you get that.

• 1:11:24Speaker 00

  It feels quite nice to do it once in a while. It's like a release, isn't it?

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  Well, I like doing some nice, going by myself in my room, getting YouTube up, watching like, like, emotional videos. Have a little cry, go downstairs to the world. Yeah, I feel good now.

• 1:11:36Speaker 00

  Hello, everyone.

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  What's something you can't let go of?

• 1:11:40Speaker 00

  Um, my faith, God.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  What's your guilty pleasure?

• 1:11:45Speaker 00

  My guilty pleasure is actually very specific. It's a, it's a show at the moment, and it's made by Tyler Perry and it's called Beauty in Black. Now, I know this show's not gonna be for everyone, definitely not. It's on Netflix, but I have to be honest with you. I've watched the last three seasons in a matter of maybe like two weeks. And there's like, there's like sixteen episodes in each season and they're all like an hour long. So in a matter of weeks, I've just crammed this all in. And I absolutely love it. I'm addicted to it. Beauty in Black.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  Isn't that good?

• 1:12:17Speaker 00

  It is. It's, forgive me, Tyler Perry, because you are a genius and, you know, massive respect to you. But I would say that it's so bad that it's really good, if that makes sense.

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  You've consumed like forty-five hours.

• 1:12:33Speaker 00

  Quickly.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  Quickly.

• 1:12:34Speaker 00

  I love it, man. It's crazy. It's like, anything you could imagine that is so outrageous and that would never actually happen in real life, happens in this show.

• 1:12:43Speaker 01

  But when you're the same age, you would have been like, do you remember twenty-four?

• 1:12:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  And like, yeah, I used to consume that.

• 1:12:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:48Speaker 01

  That and like One Tree Hill.

• 1:12:50Speaker 00

  What about Breaking Bad?

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, Breaking Bad.

• 1:12:51Speaker 00

  Come on.

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:52Speaker 00

  Come on. But yeah, Beauty in Black, check it out, man.

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  What's your biggest turn off?

• 1:12:57Speaker 00

  Uh, my biggest turn off is arrogance, arrogance, ego, too much ego. I just, I just think you're, yeah, for me, it's like, you haven't, there's a part of you that hasn't fully, like, come into realisation or actualised yet, or developed, do you get what I mean?

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. What's your biggest turn on?

• 1:13:17Speaker 00

  Uh, my biggest turn on is, um, like kindness, grace, elegance, you know, someone who treats everyone with respect, you know, regardless of their social standing, their race, their gender, someone who just, you know, genuinely, in their essence, like, treats everyone with respect.

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 1:13:39Speaker 00

  I think it's one of the most, like, attractive things ever.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  What do you like most about yourself?

• 1:13:43Speaker 00

  Um, I like most about myself that I, uh,

• 1:13:50Speaker 00

  I think work ethic is too much of a cop out. I like that I'm very family oriented. Like, I have, like I said, three other siblings and we are together, like, all the time.

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  Are you really?

• 1:14:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. And people always react like that.

• 1:14:03Speaker 01

  That's amazing. Yeah, because that's rare.

• 1:14:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, because as you get older, it happens less and less and less, but we're together all the time and it's just so fun.

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:11Speaker 00

  Like, everyone's in their thirties, but like, we'll all gather around mum and dad's new house and like, we'll just chill, like, the whole day, like, hours can just go past.

• 1:14:19Speaker 01

  That's amazing. And so comfortable.

• 1:14:21Speaker 00

  So comfortable. Everyone's open, everyone will talk about their highs, their lows, their this and that, super transparent. It's like the best thing ever. I love it.

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  Okay, bonus one. Favorite lyric you've ever written?

• 1:14:34Speaker 00

  You know what? Um, there's, there's loads on the new album, but I saw this, I saw this, um, a sweet girl on Instagram recently and she was like, um, now I drive past the bus I used to run for, where's my fucking clout, where's my uncle? She was like, I don't think you guys are understanding the gravity of those lyrics. And like, I'm not gonna like paraphrase what she said, I think you just need to find the clip and you need to watch it. But, um, she explained it so well. She, because she was like, if this was like Taylor Swift or someone else that wrote this, or someone that has been acknowledged by Rolling Stones as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, like, this would be so celebrated, but maybe because it's him, you guys are not understanding what he's saying. And then she was breaking down the fact, like, I was saying that,

• 1:15:18Speaker 00

  you know, I used to run for the bus as opposed to I used to get on the bus, I used to stand, and where I would have been at the time and where I would be now to be there. But the way she, some of it was a bit off, but the way she, but the way she explained it, I was just like, wow, like, I didn't ever think anyone would have gone in so deep to kind of understand where my mindset was at the time. So it's not my overall favourite lyric, because there's so many on The Night's Not Dead that are just gorgeous, like, um, uh, oh, there's so many, um, but I'll just wait for you guys to hear it. But I think the fact that that lyric is so iconic and people have now started doing breakdowns, I'll let you guys have that one.

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  Tony, man, you're a legend, dude.

• 1:15:59Speaker 00

  No, you're a legend.

• 1:15:59Speaker 01

  I appreciate everything about this. You've been the best company. I can leave all the links in our show description. Go and check out your music, your pages, all your shows you do, everything at all. You're the best. I can't wait for the new music.

• 1:16:09Speaker 00

  Appreciate you, man.

• 1:16:09Speaker 01

  You're a hero.

• 1:16:10Speaker 00

  Thank you, Jamie.

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  Man. Unbelievable. Tony, unbelievable, man. Unbelievable.

• 1:16:28Speaker 06

  Hi, it's Paloma Faith. My podcast, Mad, Sad and Bad, is back for season four. I'm sitting down with some amazing people, including Letitia Wright.

• 1:16:37Speaker 07

  When I'm really fearful of something, I just run towards it.

• 1:16:40Speaker 06

  Judy Love.

• 1:16:40Speaker 07

  I'm celibate.

• 1:16:41Speaker 06

  Out of choice.

• 1:16:42Speaker 07

  Yeah, I could get it any day.

• 1:16:44Speaker 06

  Grace Campbell. Here we have Anita, who's a dog psychic. Tell Eddie, stop barking when I'm.

• 1:16:50Speaker 02

  She said you're too noisy.

• 1:16:52Speaker 06

  And plenty more. Mad, Sad and Bad with me, Paloma Faith. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

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