His desire to change was in no small part driven by unresolved emotions he held about his painful split with the radio and TV presenter Maya Jama, whom he dated for four years before they broke up in 2019. “I think my break up with Maya was still really heavy on my heart. I’d never experienced a breakup and the feelings that come with a breakup. And I never wanted to ever be in a position again where I felt what I was feeling. Because it showed me that I was a boy. And I do not want to go any further as a boy. I’ve seen how that manifests in other people. And I don’t want to be like that. Joseph Vambe, Drew Chateau and Stormzy. Photograph: Karis Beaumont/The Guardian Stormzy and the students Academically brilliant students’: Joseph Vambe and Drew Chateau. Photograph: Karis Beaumont/The Guardian These last scenes of the day, in their own way, all say something about Stormzy. A man with ambition but also with intention, who is trying to keep it real. He’s sitting in a space of joy and faith, but is also concerned by the idea that he might come across as cringey or insincere. He’s not perfect, and he knows it, but he’s trying to be better and move with humility and kindness towards people around him, regardless of who they are. And that counts for a lot.

Stormzy is also part of a consortium of buyers, including Croydon-raised footballer Wilfried Zaha, who took on ninth tier football team AFC Croydon which, “without sounding cliche”, he hopes they’ll be able to build up naturally with the help of community engagement. “The automatic comparison is Wrexham, but for us it’s just very much like, this is our home town,” he adds. Stormzy grew up in Croydon and Norbury, and is unabashedly proud of his south London roots. I tell him that he once came down to support the south London football team I play for, the Lambeth Allstars. “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!” he says enthusiastically. “I know some of them boys.” Stormzy came to fame more abruptly. He attended a notoriously tough school in the London suburb of Croydon and worked briefly as a manager on an oil rig, watching grime videos during his lunch break. He’d always loved music and performed where he could. In 2014, he released an independent EP. Instantly, without even having a record deal, he began getting awards and bookings on national TV.

Stormzy and bars

The rapper will be heading to his hometown for a 2023 UK Exclusive show - his own curated ‘This Is What We Mean Day’ on Friday 18th August 2023 as part of Luno presents All Points East. His responses, in these moments, are less personal and pensive than collective and reflexive. “I’ll go on a march and then someone will write an elaborate think piece on why I’ve done this or that. But when it comes to my journey with my people and that side of things I just think, What are we on? What do we need to do? Do we need to grab the mic? What are we on? And of course it’s great to be someone who can use their platform and their voice so I never take that for granted because my involvement might get more coverage. But at the same time I’m just a musician and I’m not really in it.” Possibly this is due to the length and time at which he dropped it, which marks it as a standalone release. Today’s shoot is in part a celebration of the news that HSBC will be sponsoring an additional 30 scholarships at the university, and some of the past scholars’ achievements. Drew Chateau, who studied law and is now a trainee at a top firm , and Joseph Vambe, who studied human, social and political sciences, and is now a Labour councillor, were the first two students on the scholarship. Until today they have not been publicly named – Stormzy, and the university, wanted to protect them from any unnecessary pressure during their studies. You know, when you do something half positive, people are like, woah, you are Mother Teresa. And it’s like, yo, chill man What political consciousness he has quite simply relates to his faith in God. In a BBC interview with Louis Theroux last year, he took the documentarian to his church in Kennington, south London, where the pastors and congregants spoke openly and expansively about their faith and their emotions. Sometimes, when Stormzy speaks today, it’s with that same intonation. He’s moved deeper into his faith, he tells me, which is why he’s holding himself more accountable for his words and actions as he approaches his 30s.

This realisation, he says, was driven by self-accountability, not self-pity; he does not lament the childhood he had, but simply recognises its limitations.“I realised, especially growing up in South London in the environment I grew up in, there’s never going to be a time anyone encourages man to go deal with his feelings.” Stormzy says. “That’s a very adult thing to think, I’m gonna go deal with my life and my character with who I am and who I want to grow to be,” he says. “There is power in vulnerability.” DC So I was born … [ Everyone laughs] No, seriously, I grew up in a single-parent household. I honestly don’t know how my mum did it. It really got tough in secondary school, because we were made homeless. You’re dealing with studying for your GCSEs but also not knowing where you’re going to stay. My family made a lot of sacrifices for me. My mum was very protective and didn’t want me disturbed while I was studying. Then she got very ill, so I was barely at school. Things were just compounding, compounding. I also have dyslexia. I was trying to find ways to learn, but everything took me longer, and I had less time to study. It was all very stressful.Park Chinois, an absurdly over-the-top Chinese restaurant in Mayfair, London’s most chichi neighborhood, is exactly the kind of place you expect to find your average celebrities and wannabes. So it is very much not the kind of place true originals like grime superstar Stormzy, 24, and his girlfriend, Maya Jama, 23, a rising TV and radio presenter, usually hang out. Yeah, I don’t think we want to tell a simplistic story : you went through hardship , got out of the hood , and then …

To announce the tour, Stormzy said: “I was thinking what’s next, cos we’ve done 3 O2s, shut that down. I said to the team, we gotta do something bigger, something better, something different. For all the ways he may have grown during that time, his politics remain much as they were. He’s still a big fan of Jeremy Corbyn, even after Labour’s 2019 trouncing at the polls under its former leader. When I ask him how he felt about the election, a long sigh fades into short silence as he seeks to conjure the appropriate metaphor. “It’s like when you encourage children to make the right decision and they make the wrong one even after you’ve explained everything. And you think, A’ight, that’s your decision… you try have your cake and eat it then.” He shrugs and then lets out a big laugh. “Even the way things have panned out… I’m not gonna say I told you so, but…” Overall, he’s looking forward to his birthday, though. “In a beautiful way – because I mean, I thank God I’ve done a lot of growing these past four or five years. I’ve done the serious bit, so now it’s just enjoy,” he says.

Socials

DC One of the reasons I wanted to go into law is my family situation. When we were made homeless, we got legal advice, including how to get accommodation for the night. If we didn’t have that, we would have been on the street. That was my main driver, and financial stability. I’d love to be able to start a legal charity that also supports people in social housing. Even though landlords shouldn’t, they do reject a lot of people who are on benefits. I’m also a creative person and want to do theatre, acting and writing. In the van, recalling it, Stormzy gestures with his hands in front of his face, snatching at the air for words. The fast, thrusting, hostile-by-default register that characterises grime music is not to everybody's taste. Whatever you think about Stormzy's genre, though, this rapper is by any standards a first-rate lyricist. He's exact, economical, a master-hand at the necessary rapper's bluster and often very funny. ("I come to your club and I f*** shit up," raps this Manchester United fan in popular song Know Me From, "I'm David Moyes.") The Notes app on Stormzy's phone is crammed with fragments and couplets and chunks of verses - "bars" is the word Stormzy favours when discussing his lyrics. And his oral dexterity as a rapper extends to a general talent for chat. For now, though, as he contemplates the spring's unlikely commercial triumph, the words that tend to come to him so easily just won't. "I can't even. I can't even," Stormzy says. Out of The Ends

The growth in question was both metamorphic and cathartic. Stormzy says he left for Jamaica a boy and returned a man. “I know that physically, in my face and how I stand in the world, and even my age says I’m a man. But deep down I knew that I was a boy. And that used to scare me, that God might bring me to a position where I’m successful and my life is set up and I’ve climbed these ladders and been on this journey and I’m still a boy inside.” I always had difficulty taking a break, going on holiday, taking a vacation, anything like that… usually if I take a break, I always feel like the world is still moving. But this time everyone stopped. The world stopped.” Stormzy says he thinks of them as his younger siblings. Although he and his team have no say in who is chosen for the scholarship, Chateau and Vambe both happen to be from south London, and the trio share commonalities in life experience . “I’ve seen them at least once a year since the scholarship. We got together at Cambridge,” Stormzy says. “I just feel it was very spiritual. You know, I’m proud of them. I love them from afar.” No, not at all, man,” says Stormzy, known to his mother as Michael Ebenazer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr., surveying the restaurant’s purple, gold, and velvet decor when we meet in the downstairs bar. It is not, he says, their “kind of scene.” There’s Alec Boateng, known as Twin, co-president of 0207 Def Jam records, who has been collaborating with Stormzy for years. “I would not feel comfortable being on this musical journey without him,” says Stormzy, who was one of 0207’s first signings. “I know it sounds cringe, but if I’m a Jedi Knight, he’s Yoda. I’m great without Yoda; Yoda is great without me, but his guidance makes me better.”Jama, who grew up in Bristol, has steadily built a reputation as a front woman on TV and radio. At sixteen she moved to London, where she set up her own YouTube channel and was hired by MTV. She was recently a host for the popular Saturday-night TV game show Cannonball and is soon to appear on Sky One’s extreme-sports program Revolution.