Real Back In Style

Product Information

a b Pritchard, Will (12 May 2023). "Alison Goldfrapp goes solo, Potter Payper finds life after prison – the week's best albums". The Telegraph . Retrieved 14 May 2023. Following Stormzy’s shoutout, Potter Payper began writing rigorously from his cell. Telling stories about life confined within his four walls – and the occasional free time in the yard – Payper was telling real-life stories, tales riddled with trauma, anxiety, and hope that his life would be granted a second chance to put things right. Styling it … Potter Payper at the 2022 Wireless festival in Crystal Palace Park, south London. Photograph: Joseph Okpako/WireImage

This is different from every other project because I put myself in shoes that I had thought I took off a long time ago – the smelly, old ones.” Family breakdown overwhelmed him. “Cold nights sleeping on the ground floor / I don’t hate my father, I just wish he was around more,” he raps on one of his earliest and most celebrated songs, Purple Rain, later adding: “’99 they said my mummy went on holiday / I found out that my mummy was in Holloway.” I am told by his PR before we meet that he doesn’t want to share why he was arrested – it’s the only topic of conversation off the table. I gather that after years of being an open book in his lyrics, he’s preparing to batten down the hatches, avoiding media judgment until things have calmed down. Nonetheless, he hints at wrong-place-wrong-time circumstances. I understand I’ve been making mistakes all my life, and it’s been costing me all my life

musicMagpie Search

I’m all good brother. Happy to be finished with my album – happy with my album. Happy for my music to just be out, I haven’t been outside for some time, basically. I’m excited to start dropping again and excited about what’s to come. I don’t want to give away too much, but yeah, I’m not dropping an album and going quiet again – I’m not in jail anymore. He nods to his late nan who has been an ever-present mention in his music having grown up with her – touching on her “looking down proud” on ‘What They Ain’t’. He implores how he has turned his pain into something. It closed out with a snippet talking on quite simply taking life for what it is. Having been in the UK rap game for a decade now, do you see yourself as an older to some of your peers? Here are the best photos from the winners’ room at the Rolling Stone UK Awards in collaboration with Rémy Martin

One million percent. I would say I’m an older, but not the oldest. I had this conversation with Giggs, he called to congratulate me about Thanks For Waiting hitting number eight in the charts and I said that chart positioning wasn’t great – a lot of negativity. I said I had been doing it for ages and Giggs told me that he had been doing it for longer! As opposed to like literally any project I’ve ever done is like this is obviously coming from a different time and space in my life. But very, my music is always reflective of my life or my day-to-day life. This is different from every other project because I put myself in shoes that I had thought I took off a long time ago – the smelly, old ones. The message of it all, I would say, is who’s the biggest exports from our country musically? Yeah, are that in terms of rap music – they are not who they are off of that camera. They have manufactured images, maybe by themselves, or maybe with help from industry. But, either way, they are not themselves in any way, shape, or form. My whole journey has been that I’m unapologetically myself. And I stay true to my craft, the sound of who I am as a person at different points in times in my life. Sometimes I’m flush, sometimes I’m high, and sometimes I’m low and that reflects in my music heavily.I feel like nobody is rapping like that from start to finish, especially from our country and our generation, our time. That’s why I’ve put it out because the things that I’m saying, it’s undeniable and it has been for 10 years. This year is the 10-year anniversary of Training Day 1. That’s why this year, I’m in my bag so badly. I started this journey 10 years ago, I’m having this interview with you today talking about my debut album in the middle of Oslo and I’ve just been noticed by a young Somalian lad. My cameraman is here filming it all and I’ve got to say thank God, I’m very grateful that I’m here. a b Goggins, Joe (6 February 2023). "Potter Payper releases politically-charged new single, 'Blame Brexit' ". Rolling Stone . Retrieved 14 May 2023. There are a lot of rappers that are now achieving real success commercially, and I believe that they can only do that now because of me, and I can only do it now because of the people that came before me.”

I’m never looking for the next hit. It’s always just my expression, and I don’t like to waste it,” says Potter Payper, real name Jamel Bousbaa. We meet at a recording studio in Camden Town, north London, where he arrives with a younger sibling who has just received their GCSE results. He tells me proudly about how well they’ve done as we take our seats in the kitchen.

Connect With Us

In 2013, he released his debut mixtape, Training Day. Inspired by the DIY attitude of the late California rapper-entrepreneur Nipsey Hussle and the co-founder of Nike, Phil “Shoe Dog” Knight, he pressed up 1,500 CDs and drove around London selling them from the boot of his car. “At that time I thought I was going to the edge of the Earth, but it was probably just Knightsbridge,” he laughs. Working with other artists I have learned that the more times you work with them, the better the outcome is going to be. That project was the first time working with a lot of those guys. It was the first time I shared my process with people who weren’t around before the music. Now, I have learned that there is no such thing as me jumping on someone else’s song, it becomes a collaborative thing that we experience and work on together. We speak, catch a vibe, and we don’t compete, we just enjoy the process and enjoy the music.