There's a growing sense that 2017 is to be Stormzy's year. Following the release of debut album Gang Signs & Prayer, the 23-year-old grime MC has been gaining musical plaudits from high streets to broadsheets, and diversifying his public offerings into the bargain; whether in the adorable baby-adorned photo-op, or the recent Channel 4 News appearance covering his battles with mental health.
Impressive too was his impassioned, full-throated condemnation of the NME for tackily using his face and words for a cover story on depression, without soliciting the artist's permission. At a time when few musicians turn away free headlines, Stormzy's demand for tact when dealing with such a sensitive issue shows a wealth of class. Moreover, his assertion of his rights to his own image shows a rare willingness to bite back at an industry long grown too comfortable with co-opting young artists' talents to their own ends.
Not content with making the music press blink, Stormzy may have earned the love of music fans everywhere in his impassioned rants against secondary ticketing services, which he took to Twitter to upbraid sites such as Seatwave for ripping off his fans, admonishing them with a colourful selection of anglo-saxon verbiage. Rather than just venting, he also teamed up with Twickets to ensure a market for face price tickets to his shows.
Standing at 6ft 5in, typically clad in black, and possessing the kind of gigawatt smile that could redirect wayward planes, Stormzy has the old-money swagger of a much more established star. This charisma is everywhere present on Gang Signs, an album that took the firecracker energy of his grit-hewn, car-park freestyles, before adding several layers of polished nuance, culminating in punchy anthems such as Big For Your Boots or First Things First as well as smoother, more contemplative cuts such as Lay Me Bare or the blissed-out crush jam Velvet.
However, the big draws for a live Stormzy show are the call-and-response classics such as Shut Up and Mr Skeng, tracks so anthemic they were surely brewed-up in an underground lab by a dangerously rude coterie of grime boffins, and either of which are expected to reduce the whole into a sweating mass of grimacing acolytes.
Although Wednesday’s show at Dublin’s Olympia sold out long ago, Stormzy is also set to play Longitude this summer, so Irish fans will have a second, welcome chance to witness the further ascent of grime’sbiggest star.
