Kanye West, whom the younger half of the internet may think recently thrust Paul McCartney to stardom, has become the kingmaker of the 2010s. After bagging a Mobo for best grime act and becoming the first unsigned rapper to play Later… with Jools Holland, south London’s Stormzy was Kanye’s real discovery of 2015, appearing on stage with the other flame-throwing MCs who backed West at the Brits.
It’s no wonder Stormzy stands out from that formidable crowd. Greeted by a forest of iPhones, he adopts a boxer’s gait and fires his liquid, accessible flow over DJ Tiny’s cinematic hypno-hop backing tracks built largely, it seems, on synths made of mist. He namedrops his grime idol Skepta and “my big brother” Wiley religiously, but evolves the form by merging their propulsive diatribes with gospel R&B and loverman soul reminiscent of Frank Ocean and Lauryn Hill. At his most lascivious, on his mildly BDSM rewrite of Justin Bieber’s All That Matters, he comes across like a motormouth R Kelly, but on the likes of Gold Thoughts and The Only One he advances the grime tropes of rough sex, expensive cars and shank-in-the-back gangsterisms to hint at a more complex and mature emotional range. Or as much as he can while rhyming “Photoshop” with “Coco Pops”.
Once the crowd has chanted the hooklines of last year’s dense and edgy Not That Deep back at him like an angry Pentecostal cult on the verge of a riot, Stormzy declares “special guest season” open. He’s joined by a succession of crews – the street spivs and lanky sidekicks of Section Boyz, Sneakbo, Yungen, Krept and Konan – until the stage is crammed full of bouncing bruvs, a UK rap Polyphonic Spree. By the fourth and final run-through of Stormzy’s latest single, Know Me From, they spill into the audience, melding with the moshpit until they’re probably phone-filming themselves. The best of grime times.
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