Rewind to 2015 for a minute, when grime was still patronised to as an art form – the less noteworthy foreign cousin to rap music – and Stormzy (at least at the 2015 Brit Awards) was nothing more than a “back-up dancer”, there as window-dressing for the main headliners, certainly not someone who could sell out headline shows or influence millions…
Now jump to March 29, 2017. A baying mob of teenagers of all backgrounds are lining the rows of the Olympia Theatre waiting to hear their idol speak. There’s older people in the crowd too (I’m one of them), but we can’t boast that tonight’s headliner has had the same kind of seismic impact on us as the younger generation can.
Whatever way you feel about him, Stormzy is music’s new superstar. Gang Signs and Prayer was the long-awaited debut that floored every critic and hater that the grime scene has ever had to deal with. Waxing about inner city struggles and brazenly tackling mental health issues head-on, the album is lyrically and rhythmically potent. More special than all of this is the fact that he built the whole thing while staying true to everything that he believed in.
What this means for the lucky ones amongst us who get to see him live, is that every vocal delivery comes loaded with that much more power, truth, wit, venom, whatever, because it comes from a place that’s real.
This being the first stop on Stormzy’s Gang Signs and Prayer tour, we’re amongst the first people getting to hear him perform songs from his debut album live. There’s an electricity in that fact. Before all the kinks are fully ironed out later in the tour, there’s an intimacy in being Gig No.1 – it means that even if there is the occasional fuck up on the night, everyone can joke about it. Stormzy himself notes early on that it’s almost a bad thing to start with Dublin so early in the tour because he’s not sure how other cities are going to top the Irish crowd. We blush at the compliment and are collectively encouraged to give stacks for the entire gig.
Highlights on the night include ‘100 Bags’ (grime’s answer to Tupac’s ‘Dear Mama’), ‘Standard’ (Stormzy on lyrical attack mode) and ‘Cigarettes and Cush’ (the smell of weed hangs in the air during this song – I half wonder if this is intentional, or maybe if I’m just imagining things…) Topping it all off is the impressive encore where, donned in an tricolour thrown by someone in the crowd, Stormzy rhymes off ‘Big For Your Boots’, ‘Shut Up’ and the absolutely sublime gospel/grime anthem ‘Blinded By Your Grace Pt. 2’.
The crowd know the lyrics, down to the most obscure South London reference. They’ve pored over these words and listened to the songs again and again. If that doesn’t speak volumes about just how incredibly influential Stormzy is, then I don’t know what does.
And this is just one show, from the first album of many. Here’s looking to the future.