A Storm Is Rising

Stormzy, the 23-year-old whose debut album ‘Gang Signs & Prayer’ is out this week, is the most exciting MC in the country right now. Jordan Bassett traces the pivotal moments in his ascent

- Jordan Bassett

JULY 26 .1993

A SMART – BUT NAUGHTY – KID 

Stormzy was born Michael Omari in 1993 into pretty average circumstances. Brought up in Thornton heath, south south London, by Abigail Uwuo, a single mum, he was a smart kid but often in bother at school – and was almost expelled. There’s no record of him telling a teacher to ‘shut up’, but we’re not quite ruling it out.

2011

DROPPING OUT OF SCHOOL TO PURSUE MUSIC 

That academic talent took him to Leamington spa, where he began studying for an engineering apprenticeship. He was shocked at the outrageous language his fellow “lads” used when speaking to each other, but came to realise it was all fairly harmless. This perhaps contributed to his persona as the funnyman of grime, the mc-next-door. “I was two different people,” he told pitchfork of his student days. “one good professional who did all his assignments – and then on the weekends I was back in London being Stormzy. Not even Stormzy the rapper, just Stormzy the hoodlum. But coming back just made me realise how distant I was becoming from my life [in London]. It didn’t make sense for me to be a criminal on the weekends.”

JULY 20 • 2014

HITTING IT BIG WITH HIS DEBUT EP 

Having put out the ‘168’ mixtape in 2013, the following year Stormzy released his debut EP ‘dreamers disease’, which topped the iTunes hip-hop/rap chart. In march 2015, he broke the UK top 50 with his first official single, ‘know me from’, the video for which featured him and his mum strutting through Thornton heath.

FEBRUARY 25 • 2015