OI Stormzy, You've Let Us Down.
How Big Mike Broke Our Hearts
They blacked out the lights and the crowd starts buzzing.
There stands Stormzy.
It’s raining. Inside.
The man is drenched in water and bathed in a lone spotlight.
The camera zooms in as the rapper begins his verse. He’s firing words into the mic. He’s Angry. Defiant.
He asks ‘you think we just forgot about Grenfell?’
He calls out the prime minister by name.
He calls the government ’criminals’.
I was a Stormzy fan prior to his 2018 Brit Awards performance. I’m from Croydon, after all, but this iconic performance cemented him for me. This was a brave act of protest and it won him respect from many, even if they weren’t grime fans.
A year later big Mike headlined Glastonbury’s pyramid stage. The first black, British, solo artist to do so. He wore a stab proof vest, gifted to him by Banksy. It was daubed with a monochrome Union Jack.
This was important. The vest spoke to knife crime, gang violence, racial unrest and a ‘broken’ Britain. It highlighted the vulnerability of young black men in the UK. Stormzy led the crowd in ‘fuck Boris’ chants.
I was surprised yesterday to see a Stormzy collab with junk food conglomerate, McDonalds.
It felt incongruent because as far as I know, Stormzy has been working with nutrition expert James Collins since 2019. It’s all on Google if you’re interested, but the diet regime James has developed for Storms is pretty intense.
He also has a personal chef, Victoria Idowu, who mentioned in an interview that one of Stormzy’s favourite dishes is ‘grilled sea bass with salsa verde, parsnip and cauliflower puree’
Idk man, maybe he regularly sneaks out to the drive thru but I just don’t see it. And I’m pretty sure you don’t get abs like that if you’re eating Oreo McFlurries.
And the more I think about it, the more confused I am.
Stormzy has done great things for his community. He has collaborated with Adidas to create Merky FC, to create more opportunity in football.
According to their website ‘only 6.7% of leadership positions in football are held by those with Black Heritage’.
And it gets even bigger than that. Merky HQ is a space in Selhurst where kids can play on the full size football pitch, but they can also book out a gaming room or a music studio.
Kids desperately need creative spaces, I scream about this when I give keynotes and I believe in my soul that one day I will set up my own space. Merky FC is an inspiration.
Stormzy, these kids look up to you, man. You’re their hero. They trust you.
You’ve helped them. Encouraged them into sports and a healthy lifestyle. Now you’re telling them to ‘order like Stormzy’ and buy nuggies and a large sprite. You can’t have both.
I always advocate for creatives to take the money. I’ve done entire podcast episodes dedicated to the topic. Making money from art is hard. Your survival comes first.
Every creative has certain lines that they won’t cross.
I was approached to potentially paint something for ‘Beats’ a few years back. I would have loved some of that Apple money, but they wanted me to change my signature pink. It was painful, but I said no.
I famously went up against KFC, when some art, that looked quite similar to mine, appeared in Shoreditch. In my protest video, I said ‘I did not work for KFC. I would not work for KFC’ so when they emailed me to ‘chat about things’, I didn’t reply.
The term ‘sell out’ gets thrown around pretty freely. There are some people who, it seems, will only be happy if an artist spends their life dedicated to their craft with no remuneration.
I don’t cry when I see a well crafted brand collab and more often than not, I cheer for the creative. Get that money baby, I love to see it.
BUT if you sacrifice your core beliefs and the ideas that built your popularity, for financial gain, you are, in fact, a sell out.
I think Stormzy sold out. Or as one commenter on instagram put it;
Everyone loves Stormzy. Kids love him. Mums love him. He’s a man of the people.
Who better to sell to the people than a man of the people? Maccers knew he’d be perfect, if they could just get him to turn to the dark side.
So they got out the money trucks.
And it appears that they may have asked for more than just an endorsement.
Mysteriously, Stormzy’s Pro-Palestine post disappeared from the star’s social media the day his Maccy Dees ad dropped.
McDonalds has been facing a huge boycott over the last year, which started after McDonald’s in Israel gave out thousands of free meals to Israeli forces and citizens. They have claimed that they have not taken a side. CEO Chris Kempczinski has blamed the boycotts on ‘misinformation’.
Of course, most corporations want to appear to remain neutral. Best case scenario is selling burgers to both sides.
But Stormzy had taken a side. He wrote “Free Palestine” he performed at a Palestine and Sudan benefit concert. He said he would always fight injustice. You can’t then just be neutral.
I mentioned earlier, there are thousands of kids who trust Mike, whether he likes it or not, that carries responsibility. Never mind the junk he’s directly selling them - he’s also showing them; your morals are negotiable, you can believe in a cause but only when it suits you and everyone has a price.
I expected more.
You go too easy i think.
Take the advertising money, especially at Stormzy’s level, then you are off the artistic roll call forever. To continue Hick’s quote, everything he now says is suspect, and is like a turd falling out of his mouth into my drink. Especially as it’s Maccie Ds.
It’s become normalised, sadly. But i have zero time for it, unless one is a young, struggling artist, when i’ll give it a pass.
Otherwise, have some fucking integrity and don’t hawk shit for cash. Wind your expenses in first and keep your soul intact. And go with Gregory… and Stormzy is hardly likely to end up poor, is he?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=biiCeCRuieQ
Great read, as always, so much to write in response but not sure if i will articulate it well.
Basically, as you said it is a shame to see someone with so much reach and influence back or partner with a company who seems so unaligned, for potential cash flow.
It's tricky as we now live in a world where celebrities or famous people in whatever capacity do seem to have such influence and impact on people - which makes it harder to not take responsibility in partnerships and so forth.
At the end of the day its always up to the person making the partnerships but children especially are easily influenced.
Side note: It always seems bizarre to me how many Gen Z go traveling and you ask them what they ate, often they talk about how the McDonalds menu differs! (ahhhhh!)
Maybe you can get Big Mike to do an interview about the partnership? maybe he loves the product a lot!