I FELL in love last week, readers. I did. On Thursday I left for work, skipping towards the bus stop. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping and the whole world was smiling.
Who was responsible for this lovestruck new Angela, you ask? It was, of course, the force of nature that is Stormzy.
Many people didn’t know who Stormzy was until this year’s Brit Awards, but they’re going to know all about him in the future. The grime artist – grime is a music genre related to hip hop and garage – became an instant cultural icon when he closed the awards ceremony, after winning two major gongs, by slamming Prime Minister Theresa May in a rap over the shambolic handling of the Grenfell Tower disaster, and taking a pop at the Daily Mail.
“Yo Theresa May where’s the money for Grenfell? What, you thought we just forgot about Grenfell? You criminals, and you've got the cheek to call us savages, you should do some jail time, you should pay some damages, you should burn your house down and see if you can manage this,” blasted Stormzy, before taking aim at the Daily Mail newspaper, which has run notoriously anti-immigration material for years, and which last year even Wikipedia, a website often mocked for its own inaccuracies, dropped as a legitimate source of information.
Thank God for Stormzy. This is everything that we need. There has been a painful drought in recent years in much of our culture. In the incredible era of Trump, Brexit and the rise of the far right, we’ve been lacking real, meaningful, high-profile cultural rebellion. There has been no UK equivalent of Russian rebels Pussy Riot, and the shock effect of punk bands like the Sex Pistols have largely been consigned to nostalgia.
Instead, we’ve had to make do with the mind-numbingly backwards political rantings of angry man Morrisey. Our controversial cultural shocking has been the domain of excruciatingly bland and unoriginal types like Katie Hopkins and Piers Morgan.
Anything coming from a more progressive side has been too shiny and careful to pierce through; while Hopkins has been considered good media fodder, genuinely interesting and entertaining voices like Frankie Boyle have been left in something of a wilderness. Platforms like the Guardian and the BBC have been brave enough to at least offer some space, although I can’t help but feel it is a sanitised version of what it could be.
Now we have Stormzy. He is a black, working-class man from south London at the forefront of a genre now becoming mainstream. Anyone who has followed this music scene in detail already sees the exciting potential; this is art and culture at its best – as the vehicle for the underrepresented, marginalised of society to smash through the established structures and demand, unapologetically, to say whatever the hell they want.
Grenfell was a pivotal moment. Anyone who thinks the aftermath has quietened and life has resumed is not paying attention. Britain is broken, utterly. The forced sympathy from the Tories and pathetic offers of assistance to the victims fuelled an anger that has no turning back.
And make no mistake, the fake news and misinformation emanating from some UK news brands leads directly to the discrimination of Stormzy and everyone in this country from a BME background.
The defence has too often been safe, television-friendly satire, or the kind of "outrage" pieces that leave many angry young people feeling further frustrated at the rules of social discourse that have left them behind, that they no longer care for.
And this is why Stormzy could be so important. It’s easy to take a pop at the Prime Minister, but it’s riskier as an emerging artist to make an enemy of one of the biggest, most powerful media brands in the world. It’s safer to play the game and plot a PR route, but Stormzy has been digging out his own path; this isn’t his first foray into politics – he backed Jeremy Corbyn when it wasn’t popular, giving the cardigan-wearing Labour leader an instant injection of cultural relevance.
Stormzy is firmly on the map now, and with that comes huge opportunities. I’m hoping and praying that he pushes all the boundaries. I hope he speaks truth to power and offends all those who deserve to be offended. The so-called "snowflake" generation has been desperate for some real, heavyweight leaders.
Stormzy could be the beginning of something very special. And I, for one, am madly in love with the thought.
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