#1009 - Bugzy Malone - Harsh Lessons in Unorthodox Strategy

You've got a line that says, Being a role model's taking its toll.

Yeah, how so?

How does being a role model take its toll?

What song is that from now?

That's a freestyle, it's from the Charlie Sloth original 10 years ago.

Oh, sorry, no, it's from the second one that you did, or the most recent one.

It's from number two or number three.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Being a role model is taking its toll.

I mean, look, so

as I was just telling you there off-camera, I've just not long come back from Miami and I've been

flirting with the idea of writing something, a bit of a book.

And

I get this message off a woman

and she's like,

you know, my eight-year-old autistic son wrote today in school that you're his superhero.

I'm flipping sat there in this little quirky hotel room that's got like a record player and like Bob Marley records and stuff.

And I decided to just,

you know get her contact and give her a ring.

They've actually came to like meet and greets before to meet me

and I just wanted to speak to her about it and just see what it is that these

kids and these you know people in general

you know see in me and where they're actually taking strength.

So I guess when you understand that things like that are going on you start to take your job description more seriously

because you know people are

some people are living by the things that you say you know, and I find it keeps me sharp.

Is there an additional type of pressure that comes along with that?

It's kind of one that you didn't ask for, right?

It's a byproduct of doing what you do.

It's a beautiful benefit, but it's a huge cost as well.

Yeah, I think so.

And actually, I think I appreciate the pressure because it's this weird like paradox, right?

Of like

you want to be the best version of you, you know, you want to grow into this individual that you see yourself being.

But without the pressure, it's too easy to just not do it.

You know, I'm running off not much sleep today.

I've been to the gym, I've been boxing, but the pressure of knowing I've got this and I've got the things I've got coming next means that I'll keep rolling.

Keeps you sharp.

Yeah.

If I didn't have them things, I'd have for sure laid in bed today.

There's a bodybuilder called Chris Bumstead, and he was sat in that seat yesterday, six-time Mr.

Olympia.

He's kind of the Arnold of our era.

Okay.

And a good friend.

And he had, for a very long time, I think for almost all his career, his caption was, pressure is a privilege.

It is, yeah.

Yeah.

I've honestly, bro, I've done things in my career that I had no idea I was capable of.

You know, no idea.

I

had a bike accident four or five years ago

on the hospital bed.

I get a message from Guy Richie.

Would you like to be in another film?

I'm like, yeah, but I need to learn to walk again first, you know.

But the pressure pushed me to being maybe the fittest I've ever been.

So it's definitely a privilege for sure.

Is it hard to stay hungry when you've achieved 10 times all of the goals that you ever thought that you would have done?

That's that's interesting to say, really, because

and it's a big conversation that's coming up at the minute

in my life in particular.

And

how I sort of planned it was, I sort of planned the bigger picture.

And

because I used to box, I see opponents dotted about.

So I'll try and sprint past them.

You know, I'll try and win certain battles.

So the bigger picture is not done yet.

And actually, the picture evolves the more that I learn more stuff.

You know, so I'm not actually quite there.

So some of the achievements that I get are a surprise for me some some some of the time you know

so I think in terms of actually staying hungry

as I was saying to you then off camera I've been listening to motivational videos and your voice keeps popping up but that's because when I was about 20 21 I experienced depression for about two years I couldn't even get out of my bedroom almost and

And that's when I started to learn about the law of attraction, listening to motivational videos and sort of creating healthy habits to shake off this like dark place I was in.

You know, so now I'm not in a dark place, but I could easily get comfortable.

So you've got to act with the same urgency, I find.

I've heard you say that depression occurs when you're lying dormant.

Yeah.

Like when you've not got anything better to do.

I think

an interesting challenge there is the difference between keeping yourself so busy that you don't wallow, that you don't slow up so much that dark things creep in,

but also not just over scheduling yourself out of being able to hear the important insights that your brain whispers to you.

Because when you're very, very busy and you're in chaos mode, you're not paying as much attention.

Is this really what I should be doing?

And how many

artists and business owners and career people have spent so long just in the chaos decades later they turn around and realize not only did they get to a place that they didn't want to get to, but one that they didn't even mean to be in.

I was just on this set of train tracks, I didn't realize it wasn't train tracks, it was a car, and I could have turned left or right at any time.

Yeah, I mean, look, I think there's a time and a place for the chaos, which is the come up.

I think on the come up, you, you, there's like a glass ceiling that you're going to have to break through, and by hook or crook, you've got to get through it.

So, the beginning,

10 years of my career was chaos.

I'm still putting things back together and in the correct place like now.

And then I actually put on my Instagram story the other day that balance is the answer to the majority of your questions.

And what I mean by that is,

like you say, you can go over into chaos where you're becoming like a workaholic to get away from the sort of the darkness or

or you can sort of wallow in the darkness.

You got to find a a middle ground with that, you know?

And what I've found with dark thoughts or, you know, things that haunt you is you got to lean into it.

But you can't lean into it all the time over the top because it gets heavy.

So, yeah.

It's

such a common talking point, I think.

I like the fact that you...

Call out the first 10 years of your career was chaos.

And now the the answer to you is balance.

But if you had told you during those first 10 years to have balance, it wouldn't have worked.

And I've come up with this insight with Chris, again, the guy that was sat there yesterday.

Model the rise, not the result.

Because if you try, if somebody at the beginning of their journey tries to do what you now as a veteran is doing,

that wasn't how you got to where you are.

That is how you are coping with your current position and how you're, it's a more advanced technique.

It's someone walks into a boxing gym.

Okay, let's let's learn to throw a jab.

Let's not try this really complex footwork pattern here.

You'll do that down the line.

So, if someone that's a world champion says, Well, a lot of what I'm doing at the moment, my competitive advantage is my amazing, complex footwork, okay, but that's not what got you there.

What got you there were the basics done really well.

And the basics for most people at the start is chaos and not sleeping much and working really, really hard, and no work-life balance.

There you go.

And look, let's face it: like

my come up was in in the rap game.

It's the youngest genre of music.

You know, only the Americans have pushed it over to a place where you've got Jay-Z and 50 Cent.

And, you know, you start getting over here.

It's an embryo.

Right?

So you're looking at a situation that really lacks structure and

demonstrations.

So a lot of it you're having to figure out as you go along.

And then when you talk about rap music, it is

well, essentially, we're looking at a guy when he's come up, right?

We look at a rapper we're interested in.

You know, you're looking at a guy that's come from a difficult beginning.

I can be quite articulate about that bit.

And he talks about it.

And then we relate.

We think, I like this guy.

I relate to what he's saying.

And then some label signs him or his career starts taking off.

And then he goes on the come up.

Then he starts talking about what he's spending his money on.

This country's not really got past that stage yet we're still evolving from that sort of stage so the first for me the first 10 years was um

establishing you know coming from outside of where the industry was sort of based it was establishing like a foothold in the game as an independent you know and um it was chaos because there was no

roadmap, you know, you're walking in undriven snow.

Yeah.

How therapeutic was that process?

Before we started, you were talking about the fact that you worked through a lot with your music.

Yeah.

Do you ever think about the like therapeutic usefulness?

People, this might not be where most people go with the rap game, right?

Oh, yeah, I went there to

alchemize the first two decades of my life into something that made sense to me and construct a timeline.

Yeah.

But

it kind of seems like that happened.

So the first

this is interesting, by the way, because I was on Instagram the other day and there's a Manchester guy and he's

incarcerated as we speak and he's doing lyrics to camera.

He's looking for his come up.

He's looking to get into the rap game and get a start in his life going to the next sort of level.

And

what he's done is he's took sort of the structure of my lyrics from a song called Beauty and a Beast, Beast where I say

tell her that I'm coming home and he takes that and he takes the sort of structure and does his own thing and tells his own story now when I first started music five five there was five years

that nobody cared right

and in that five years I can say this now and sort of

to look back in retrospect, I was using it to transcend depression.

And me sort of vocalizing the way I was feeling was the quickest way for me to get an understanding of actually that's not my fault and I shouldn't be embarrassed about that.

And but in the mix, I sort of turned them into songs, right?

And it's funny now because them songs have just become a part of the business.

We've published them on iTunes and whatever.

Before there was just this like underground archive of music that was just doing numbers and I'm like,

how does anyone even know them songs?

Then my career takes off.

This is where a lot of people get me twisted.

Because then I have a big rap battle with a big famous rapper.

And a lot of people think, ah, this is the point that, like, you know,

this is it.

But there was a full sort of lead up to that point that meant when the spotlight was on me, I was five or six years in with five or six projects.

under my belt and I'd been working diligently in the shadows.

So when I got my opportunity, I was more than than ready.

I was starving, you know.

So,

what I'm getting at with the rapper there that's using the structure of my lyrics is when I first sort of got exposure and my first fire in the booth or whatever, and I'm telling my story, it's foreign to everyone.

No one's really doing it.

And actually, I'm talking about men's mental health, which now is a really popular category, but it wasn't then.

And not as a rapper, I thought he was a tough kid.

What do you mean he was depressed?

You know, know?

But for me,

I,

the nature of me being interested in rapping is that, like,

originally, I was introduced to artwork, painting, art history, and all that.

So,

and I'm a bit bone idle.

So, I find it like taxing to draw and paint, but I'm decent.

However,

I figured I can paint pictures with words in people's minds, and I find that more fluid.

It just comes to me fast.

Right?

And

yeah, I just feel like art is vulnerability.

It's truth.

Truth resonates.

That's essentially what you're trying to do as an artist is speak your truth regardless of where society is at and what people think is cool or right or and I've done it and for years I was I was shunned for it.

Why?

Just because,

like I say, men's mental health is

a big topic now.

I was talking about it years before it was interesting to anybody.

Is it a big topic in the rap world yet?

Still not.

You've not noticed.

You know, but that's what

I think the reason that you're getting an eight-year-old, young, autistic guy looking at me and being like, he said, what did he say in his description?

He said, I'm his safe space.

He says, I understand him.

You know?

And we've only had little conversations at meet and greets.

But in him saying that I understand him, it's because I'm speaking in the frequency of truth.

And sometimes truth resonates on levels that you can't even verbalize.

You know, it turns out the young boy's dad is in jail.

And so that young man's going through things.

But with his condition, he's experiencing them differently to other people.

So in me just being open about my struggle, I'm offering another human being a place to

understood.

Which

I think is quite important, you know.

Hearing somebody say something

and it resonating in the back of your mind and telling you the lesson,

fuck, it's not just me,

is one of the best.

I don't know whether we have an emotion for that.

It's like recognition, sort of resonance,

sense of being seen um

or is it or is it a sense of feeling human

maybe being at least for me it's less broken i think okay we spent for me i spend so much time have spent so much time in my head i'm an only child okay uh grew up in the northeast of the uk i don't sound like i come from there i went to state bought state primary state secondary state sixth form college like

didn't do the things that the people in my school were doing and that meant I was always on the outside.

Plus being an only child, you spend a lot of time in your head.

Oh, really?

And that means

you can get yourself into a situation where you feel like any challenges that you're facing are a personal curse.

That's just you.

Like, only I feel this thing.

Only I have this thought.

Only I criticize myself in this way, have this shortcoming.

And

when you hear someone that has the same fear or uncertainty that you do, you go,

it's not just me.

Thank fuck, it's not just me.

I'm not cursed by the gods.

This isn't some unique

designer

disease that I have, this weird pathology of one.

It's not that.

It's

maybe I'm not quite as strange and broken as I thought I was.

However,

I'll throw a component on the table here.

The more that I've sort of grown into my success, the more I understand that, like, as a spirit,

I have a purpose.

This something that I'm here to do.

And we all feel it in us that there's a purpose, there's a bigger meaning, there's a, you know, and I've been really trying to

get to grips with that.

And I think when you

have real potential to do something

special

in terms of like contributing back to the planet.

I think you get individual challenges, and I think that you know

my life was quite hard pretty early on, and I could see lots of people that didn't have that particular challenge at that particular time, but that was my individual journey.

So, you know, although you're saying, yeah, it's not like this personal attack from the gods,

they are your set of challenges for you as an individual that give you the opportunity to become your higher self.

And the reason I say that is because

if I didn't have the bike accident that I had, for an example, that for me was a huge challenge,

you know.

And then I was coming back from that and thinking, yeah, I'm bouncing back.

The rap game's young, this will be like a comeback, the biggest UK comeback in history.

And then I was hit with a blood clot.

And then there's a bigger challenge than the bike crash and then you realize like no no no this is for you to sit down and reflect and you know really

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Can you tell me the story of the bike crash and what happened after that?

For sure, for sure.

I am

I

was in a relationship at the time

and the relationship

wasn't right for a long time, but the girl was a really nice girl and it was love for sure.

However, we were sort of just slowly but surely growing apart bit by bit.

And I sort of didn't know it until like I

the night I'm sat in the hospital and I know that I've got this blood clot

and it's in my leg and blood clots

you know famously travel I knew I was potentially in trouble that night and I had this moment where I'm like

I have to there's some difficult decisions I need to make in life there's some friends that you know this isn't it's not a true friendship the relationship although it sort of ran well and and it was a great girl it wasn't necessarily right you know so there was just big decisions um that needed to be made in terms of the actual crash

i was just flying up the road and flipping what was it what's the vehicle it was a three-wheeler

probably inspired by batman and um

a canon so it's fast off the off the line it's fast

And I was,

yeah, I'm going through like a sort of a junction and a car just sort of pulls out on me, but like slow.

So you know you're crashing for about 10 seconds, 15 seconds.

And you're like, ah, smash.

Unconscious.

Woke up on the floor.

People's feet around my head.

You're all right, mate.

You're all right, mate.

And like noise comes back slowly, like muffled.

And then,

and it's a really strange situation to be laying on your back in public.

Right?

Like, if you've not chosen to lie on the floor,

if you've not chosen to lie on the floor in public, you wake up on the floor in public, it's weird.

And I was like, I was like, lay there and

I've tried to get up and dropped.

And I'm like, oh, I'm in some kind of trouble.

So it turns out I snapped my patella, kneecap,

and I'd fractured my skull in three places.

So I had bleeding on the brain.

But my head's open.

So there's a puddle of blood next to me that's just growing.

And that was a a weird process because,

and head blood is different to other blood, I think, because it was thick, it was a deep red, and it's coming.

You can see it's coming from my head, and I'm sort of laid there, and then people are talking to me, and then and people are filming me.

And in this weird moment of a guy being like that with his phone,

I realized, like, oh, like, this is one of the first times in my life as an adult, I felt helpless because I can't even ask that guy to stop filming.

So you're just being filmed, you know, and

people are like, who should we contact?

I'm like,

let my girlfriend know I've wrapped up.

She comes, she sees my face, she panics like horror, starts to cry.

And I was like, don't cry.

Because of the nature of my background.

I always said to her, if anything really bad happens to me and it's a bit bloody and a bit gory,

you know, don't panic and just get yourself somewhere safe.

And

so, there we were in the situation.

So, I said, Don't cry.

And you seen a snap out of it and realize, like, let me, you know, usher people out of the way.

And that was that.

And then her dad turned up.

So she got there before the ambulance.

She got there before the ambulance.

Yeah.

And

then her dad turned up.

You see me burst out crying.

That's another weird one.

Because people are seeing you.

And then you see their reaction, right

and when someone looks at you and they burst out crying you know you're in some trouble you know so this this blood keeps growing the patch next to me

the puddle next to me

and then when the ambulance guy got there

he was like all right mate we're gonna get you onto the stretcher and then as my ex-girlfriend and and people like step back I've gone, am I dying?

Like, do I die here?

You know?

And he was like, don't worry, mate, we're going to get you on it.

I think legally they're not allowed to tell you.

Yeah.

So, and I don't know whether you can be sued by somebody who you say isn't dying, but then dies.

Yeah, I think they're not allowed to, because that's

so, and that was that.

And then you're in the back of an ambulance.

That's a new experience.

Blue lights, lots of bumping around.

And then you get your head sort of flipping, boarded to the

stretcher.

And then you sort of rushed into hospital.

I was in Salford Royal.

so that's like an old sort of stomping ground so the nurses was really kind and like endearing it was spiritual so they was doing Reiki over me while I was while I was um relaxing you know so I was just in there having

having good fun

but also like morphinged up you know and doing a lot of sleeping

so

yeah I mean it was a it was a profound experience in that it needed to happen

for me to dig into why it needed to happen, it's a funny one because when I was coming onto this podcast, the reason I said to you over there, I'm a bit nervous, is because I respect your work, right?

And I respect it because it's sophisticated.

You can go on to many levels with many different types of people, which I'm capable of doing also.

But I heard a thing the other day because I'm trying to study some literature.

I think the fans want me to write a book.

All right.

And I was looking into JK Rowling.

And the interviewer said,

do you think you're one of the people in the world that's got the

like one of the largest understandings of the class system?

Because you

was in a situation where you was just before being homeless.

You were so poor, you was just before being homeless.

And now you've climbed up to being a billionaire.

And she was like, I mean, yeah, you could say that.

And to some extent, you know, she's within her rights to say that.

However, that made me think, think, what must I understand?

Because I'm from the place beneath what people deem as to be the bottom.

There's also the minus,

you know, so the bike accident had to happen

because

things were potentially getting dark, you know, and sometimes there is sort of divine intervention.

It was better that I hurt myself than, you know, I end up in a crazy situation.

What would have happened if you hadn't gone through that bike accident what could you envision

i mean

good question right but what i just what i know is

you know people in in music will refer to me as the king of the north the the first one from the north of england to get into the music industry and and make sort of leeway in the rap space

that comes with ramifications you know if you're going to be turning up in a new car every couple of weeks and a new watch and flipping you know, and your family infrastructure fell fell to bits and you ended up in sort of gang culture and a gang becomes your family and

you're as good as them

and you're the one that's winning, you know, it just

it gets small.

It gets intense.

And I'm easily provoked.

So it was just a recipe for disaster.

So it was just chaos, a part of the chaos.

And you have to just lean into it.

I've heard you say, I put a lot of my identity into being a guy that could look after myself.

So when I was smashed to bits, I didn't know how to react.

So you've got this very classic,

came from the bottom, self-sufficient

handsy, had to be able to defend yourself and defend, not only defend yourself physically, but philosophically.

What is it that I stand up for?

What does my virtue look like?

And if somebody crosses a line and

maybe the line can be a little bit further away from you, people can cross it more easily than they might do with other people.

To then

I have the eyes of the world on me now, which is more pressure.

And I'm back to square one.

I'm now dependent again, something that I spent most of my childhood and all of my adult life trying to escape from.

Dependence, needing anybody.

I've got agency.

I've got independence now.

Fuck.

I'm back there.

Was that

humbling is going to be too basic of a word?

What was that to you?

Like,

scary is a bit of a more

appropriate word.

I remember in

my Manchester house.

It was sort of on the outskirts towards the countryside, right?

And

I'd had these guys try and break in.

I had a big fight with them.

That's to do.

That's to do with exposure.

And then all of a sudden, you sort of sat there as a sitting duck,

flipping.

And I had this little like outhouse that I called the Bat Cave.

Right.

And I'm sat there watching a film.

And the film was called Bleed for This.

I'll never forget this night.

And I'm sat there, my legs sort of up on the chair, broken kneecap.

I get dizzy if I go like that.

Because my brain's been bleeding.

So you'll just start to fall.

How long is this after the crash, do you think?

This is maybe a month afterwards, but for three months after the crash, I'm dizzy if I raise my head.

So I'm

sat there watching this film about a boxer.

It's a boxing film.

I love boxing.

I want to get back like fit and strong and I'm going to make this big comeback, right?

And then partway through the film, smash, he just has the craziest car crash.

And

my ex-girlfriend at the time, she'd jumped up awake.

And at that point, I'm having like this mad sort of PTSD from the car crash.

Because you do experience that in the beginning.

When I first got in cars and cars would go over 40 miles an hour, you started getting a bit nervous.

It's weird.

I had to surpass that.

So there was little simple sort of challenges that

I think some people,

it sort of stays with them and they stay nervous forever.

But you've got to get back on the horse, so to speak.

Anyway, in being like in my adrenaline going, in that moment, I sort of thought about all of the crazy situations I've been in in my life, and that every one of those individuals that there's been problems with or altercations or are jealous of me or

I've not been completely polite with

you know, if there was ever a moment where they could get me, it's no.

And it just like freaked me out.

And then I, yeah, I realized I was probably too heavily reliant on

physicality.

But look, that's that world.

You know, if you're gonna drop beneath, you know, into the minus and you're going to exist in that world, then it's a huge currency being able to, you know, look after yourself.

What did recovery look like to get yourself back to fully functional?

It looked like a message off guy Richard.

Do you fancy being in a film again?

And me saying, yeah, that's right.

I'll get it done.

Was that more important than some of the rehab in some ways?

Probably, because I remember pulling up outside rehab one day and I had a Scottish friend who was a boxer and

he'd committed suicide.

You know, so I was outside dealing with my own.

I'm writing an album, by the way, so I'm writing like the resurrection through these stages of recovery.

And I have up days because of the sort of life that I come from, I learn to laugh through traumatic situations.

So, I'll have up days where I'm just laughing my head off, and then I have days where it catches up with me and I feel quite low, and then it's topped off with, you know, such and such has hung himself.

I just remember being like sat outside of physiotherapy, and um,

a little tear rolled down my cheek, and I literally just had to suck it up and get in there and get it done because you're going through pain like every session, it's crazy pain, you know.

But in my head, I could see Jason Stapham because I knew he was going to be in the film.

So, this is the second one, this is the second film, yeah.

I'd done the gentleman, and I'd been offered this like action sort of Bigger role.

Bigger role.

Jason Stafford, notoriously known for his ability in sort of combat sports and his physique.

So I've got to try and keep up with him.

He's a man's man.

And yeah, I just felt like

I'm not turning up there to be like the tag-along.

I'm going to try and on screen fit the bill.

I think the comparison between

your first role, which was

not simple, but at least you were playing an analogous character to yourself in a gentleman, right?

Not too dissimilar to

you're not, for all that you've got talents, you're not a weapons expert, right?

Like with sniper rifles and bullshit like that.

So you're okay, I'm being really, really ripped out of the world that I know.

And

I think at least what I take away from

that is that somebody who's got a lot of self-motivation and discipline

and is powered by what they want to achieve, still needs a goal to be moving toward in order to drag them through a very difficult time.

Because, had you have not had this

new challenge, this new outcome, this new peak that you're aiming toward,

how much harder is it going to be for you to go through?

Where is the motivation?

It's purely self-generated, right?

As opposed to every single training session, every single single rehab session, Jason Statham's there, just yeah, like having a goal for sure changes it.

If there was no goal, it would have just been a more thorough process of healing

because I'd have got it done just off the back of discipline.

And some of the motivational videos that I said I've been listening to, and your voice is popping up, like that's some of the points it's making is that, like, motivation's not always there, but like, I'm going to get the job done regardless.

Yeah, like I'm getting it done regardless, you know.

My favorite lesson from Jocko Willink, Navy SEAL guy.

Yeah.

People think

that discipline is when you want to do a thing or feel like you're going to do a thing, but doing the thing in spite of not wanting to do the thing is discipline.

That is what discipline is.

Yeah.

If you want to do the thing, it doesn't take any discipline to do it.

Did it take discipline to eat the cheesecake?

No.

It took discipline to not eat the cheesecake because you have to force yourself to do the thing that you do not want to do.

That is what discipline is.

He's got the same thing around bravery.

It says doing the thing in spite of not wanting to do the thing, in spite of being scared, is what bravery is.

If you're not scared, there's no such thing as bravery.

There you go.

And by the way, you've said that before, right?

In another, I'm sure that's the line that keeps coming up in this motivational video.

You got a lot of foundation.

Yeah, I'm having deja view, but no, it's no, it's true, it's true.

Like, and, and they're some of the things that were sort of resonating with me in times where, like you say, you get to a place in your career that you're successful, you know

sleep starts to feel a bit more comfortable you know the cheesecake starts to look a bit more interesting and you really got to start to

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To velve a a prison in that way.

I'm interested in

if you've got a lot of pain that you're working through at the start of your career, writing inspiration, motivation to go and achieve things.

Is it a different skill to keep working hard without the pain to push you forward?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's transferring.

I mean, there's always some pain in life, right?

These little bits of pain and these big bits of pain.

So it's sort of

yeah, it's sort of making um it's a transferable skill, I think, that just feels uncomfortable at first.

You know, because if you're

if at first you're motivated by pain and

stress, and in in my early career, I was motivated by sort of of competition

with

you know, not very legitimate characters.

And it was just the world

I understood.

And

the sort of fear of there being a potential problem made me think, I'm not living like this forever, I'm not getting trapped in this.

Like, I need to, I need to refine my approach to going to where I'm going.

Because right now, it's a million miles away, you know.

And

it's interesting actually because I I remember

I remember before being in a gentleman film

and being sort of parked outside the boxing gym and

ending up in a physical altercation with a guy that had just got out of jail for he killed his cousin killed his own cousin this is this is me bringing you into manchester all right there's no rappers

there's these rappers but they're not earning a living from music, you know, substantially.

And there's some talented guys, but they're not making inroads into the game, right?

And I'm sat there, I'm a couple of years into being a bit famous and making some music, and there's this whole sort of inspirational thing building up.

And this guy that's just flipping, he killed his cousin nine years ago.

He does nine years in jail.

So he bugs him alone, sat in a car, he's banging on the door.

Long story short, me and him end up in a fight.

I'm outside the boxing gym.

I'm going to the boxing gym to do some sparring because

that's the way I stay on the straight and narrow.

You know, because I'm not signed to a major label or like I go into being in a really sort of famous situation to just having free will.

And that's where a lot of rappers or famous people fall to bits.

Because they don't fill that middle bit with anything productive.

They go to the clubs, they see different women.

You know, there's no structure to it, so they fall to bits so boxing has played sort of a role in just sort of keeping me focused until sort of the next assignment anyway i get into this flipping big fuffle with this guy

and then

i come out of the situation and because of the way that the situation went he wanted retribution or whatever you'd call it and it was

it was

i took motivation from that The fact that this guy says, when I see you, I'm going to do whatever.

I would take motivation from situations like that.

You sort of climb in your career and them situations subside

and

you're right.

And you're just dealing with

your own ambition, your own sort of goals.

And you're no longer fueled by fear or,

you know, anxiety or whatever it is.

Chip on your shoulder.

Yeah.

And I did, I found that difficult.

I

and that's where the whole sort of be inspired motto sort of came from.

Because

if I see people that have done well for themselves,

I want to study the history.

How did he do well for himself?

Why did he do well for himself?

Where did it go wrong?

Did it go wrong?

And in studying different people, the Roman Empire, emperors, kings,

I sort of seen the people that failed and the patterns as to why they failed and the people that sustained and

remained impressive throughout their life, what are some of those patterns that you've noticed?

Vices,

vices, and that's why I say, because

what I sort of seen is that some of them people didn't come from the streets or the minors, they had good parents and nice life, but life still presents bits of pain, right?

And I think that undertone, Gabo Mate is quite good around this topic.

I think the sort of undertone

to any vice is like

a sort of low-level pain.

It's like having a headache all the time.

You want to suppress the headache, so you want parasitism, all right?

But then people do it by way of vices: gambling,

drinking, drugs, smoking, all of the vices.

And I feel like them vices grab people.

The seven deadly sins, lust gets people, greed gets people.

And I think you're attacked by them things i think the higher you're sort of climbing towards doing something positive for the world and sort of instilling love back into a world that's always like battling and battling each other i think the more you're attacked by these um you know lust greed oh that's interesting that's interesting that it is a counterweight as you put things into the world that you think are good you're attempted by ever more seductive and ever more advanced let's give it biblical framework right which is

since we've got these these um

stained glass windows you know if you if you look at it from a position of

if you're if you believe you're a soldier of god you're doing god's work on the planet and that's just being a good person you know helping contributing you might be a teacher you might do charity work you might do a podcast and inspire people music whatever it is and your intention is to be as helpful to the planet as you possibly can and we're using this biblical framework and seeing it like it's a film then you know it's as if it's as if demons are now triggered by you and the light that you carry and they're like how can we stop him seeing his highest potential because if he sees it he's going to create more light And the shadow, a shadow can't exist in the light, you know?

So you're a threat.

So you get attacked from all different angles, you know.

And if we're talking quite spiritually, there in the sort of physical world that comes by way of lots more girls approaching now, but it's not girls with good intentions.

Lots more friends want to be around you now, but they ain't got good intentions either.

You know, like I say, the cheesecake looks a bit nicer, the nightclub seems a bit more interesting, you know.

And without saying any names, we've all seen people that have fell.

That's throughout history.

And if you look at it, it's the same thing that over and over again that grabs them and pulls them.

So on the flip side of that coin, we're talking about the people resilient enough

to

transcend

the urge to give into

vices.

And in the process of that, you got to lean into the pain, whether it's old situations you went through or family situations, whatever pain it is you feel, you got to face it.

And that's what anybody that's been interested in my music has sort of witnessed has been the process of me looking my traumas in the face and becoming comfortable with them.

Yeah, and understanding that I'm strong enough

now

to withstand the pressure that that makes me feel or the sadness it makes me feel and understanding that it's okay to feel sad about a trauma traumatic event that happened.

That's how you should feel because you're human.

So they're the people, they're the people I'm impressed by.

So when you're talking about Matthew McConaughey at Denzel Washington, these people have just sort of figured out a job description and

become really good at it and then and then just kept climbing and building and refining themselves.

And I think I've seen McConaughey's talking about how he used to drink a lot.

Or, you know, he's human and he's been through his stages.

So then for him to get to where he's landed, he's double impressive today.

That's the

unique challenge, I think, of being somebody who's started to achieve some success and then has a pullback.

Because at the very beginning, there's

nobility.

There's

every single underdog movie in history is some guy.

coming from nothing

and

working hard to win the girl, free his family from poverty,

fix whatever the problem is.

When you have something that involves there's a guy who's got it, lost it, okay, now what are you going to do?

Because that feels very different.

Glory kind of only exists in retrospect.

It doesn't happen in the moment.

And if you are somebody that is currently on a pullback, well, I thought you said that you'd stop drinking or you're drinking again or you're back there.

By pullback, you mean like a relapse type state?

Yeah, or a crash where you start to self-doubt.

I thought I'd overcome my self-doubt.

Well, you've been thrown a heavier challenge.

You've been given something

that you in the past would not have been able to get over.

But luck's from the outside, like kind of a similar situation.

Okay, we're back to something close to zero.

How are we going to deal with this?

Well, if I don't come back from this, this is the footnote.

This is how it ends.

This is the final chapter of the story.

If I don't overcome this, and that's the difference between being the person who did continue and did stay resilient or the one who

gets added to the much bigger pile of people who were caught by their vices and fear is certainly one of those big vices.

Yeah.

Yeah, I totally agree, by the way.

And like, so I've been doing some writing at the moment and I'm sort of doing

I don't know if I should be saying this because it's very early on in the process, right?

But it's like a sort of a biography, but it's sort of self-help in that what I'm basically saying is that life is a set of battles.

It's a set of fights.

And all you can really do is be prepared for them fights when they turn up.

So a lot of people will see me boxing to quite a high level.

And they're like, why is he boxing so much?

Is he going to fight?

But for me, the framework of boxing, when I'm performing well in boxing, I know I'm physically and psychologically and spiritually ready for whatever lands on my desk, you know, and that's just that's just the way that I feel life is structured.

I feel like no matter who you are and how you're living,

what world you come from,

like life is going to challenge you.

And I think it's the ability to be able to overcome each one of them challenges with a bespoke strategy each time.

which separates the champions from the, like you say, the people that

fail, essentially.

I think my favorite idea I've learned from you since doing my research is it's easy to be inspirational when everything's going well.

Yeah.

You can

talk about

how important discipline is and that motivation is fleeting.

It comes and goes.

Discipline is always there, doing the hard thing in spite of not wanting to do the hard thing.

It's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

That's like being generous when you're rich.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

When things are going badly and you're suffering, how tough is it to put your motivation where your mouth was?

To put your discipline where your mouth was?

Oh, you said that this was important.

You said that overcoming hard things was important.

Okay.

Game time.

Let's see how well you can do.

Yeah.

And that's been my experience of

the success journey because one, at some point, it's, you know, the boat's floating and it's fine.

And then the next thing there's a storm.

Bailing water.

Right.

You know, and like in that sort of happening,

it's game time at that point.

Are you who you say you are?

Or did you lose it?

You know, have you gone soft?

Have you got the silk pajamas on that?

You know, and

you find out about yourself.

So the bike accident taught me about myself.

I used to judge myself on

these sort of small situations that I'd overcome in the streets.

And then you have a blood clot pass through your heart and you survive that because your arteries are clean, because you've eat well and you've continued training for many years, and you've got the resilience to survive the two or three-hour process that it takes to sort of go through your heart.

You understand you've got

a different kind of strength, you know, and you sort of respect yourself more because it's not a bravado.

It's nothing to do with anything like that.

It's just a resilience and

passion to live.

And I didn't know that about myself.

And actually, I think to go on a deeper level with you, I think the bike accident happened to me.

It was if I was being asked,

do you want to live or not?

I think the sort of past that I've come from makes you so self-destructive that in moments of madness, you're like, I don't care what happens.

And actually, when I fell off my bike and I was laying on the floor, and this little puddle puddle of blood keeps growing,

there was a part of me that was like, this might be easier, you know, if that's just going to keep leaking until I'm fading out and then I'm gone.

It could be easier than the complications of family situations I've had to go through and pains I've had to live through.

And, you know, that was my attitude.

And that's why I'm sort of just lay on the floor accepting it because I'm like, we'll see what happens.

And then when you get to the blood clock going through your heart and it's lodged, it's like there's a question being asked: Do you want to live or not?

Before I bless you with all of these great things that you've imagined happening in your mind, you're going to do all these great things and contribute back to the world.

At first, you have to commit to loving yourself.

And that's what I think I'd lost the ability to do through all the abuse that I went through growing up or whatever.

Abuse is like

the between the lines says that you're not lovable do you get me and i'd sort of embraced that thinking so it was all bravado my self-esteem was it was bravado but like deep down you know i was like i sort of don't care what happens to me

and and the crash brought that to a head it's like now we're gonna have to have this conversation because you have nothing to be to to base your bravado on how are you going to flex if you can't move your head without feeling yeah yeah yeah.

It's game set and match.

And what do you want?

Because you're talking big, like you want to be this

motivation to the world.

You want to

earn yourself some money,

you want to have a functional family, a functional wife, and functional kids, and a beautiful house, that's a creative space, and all these mad ideas and plans, but you've not yet figured out how to love yourself.

But if you can't love yourself, who can you love?

And that's sort of what I learned about like trauma.

Trauma sort of chips away at the ability to love yourself.

And in losing the ability to love yourself, you lose the ability to love anybody else or the world or creatures in the world.

You know, you see people being cruel to dogs.

It's all coming from inside.

They can't love themselves.

So that's what happened when that the night of that blood clot.

What was this?

Was the blood clot due to the crash?

Something really?

Like, so I'm in Salford Royal Hospital, right?

And the nurses are a great laugh.

We're sat in there.

I'm like, nurse, she's like, what?

I'm like, I I want to watch a film.

She's like, click on the film.

Then I'm like, it costs money.

I've had a crash.

You've been a diva.

I've got no dough.

She's like, do you want me to lend you some dough?

I'm like, let me some dough.

So we're laughing our heads off all day.

And I'm on morphine.

Turns out I'm a great laugh on morphine.

I've never took it before, so I didn't know.

So I'm just laughing my head off, right?

And then it's COVID.

So

loved ones aren't allowed into

the hospital, right?

And

when I was getting discharged, they said, you should put weight on your foot because I've got this broken kneecap and I'm in a cast,

like a brace.

And

I forgot because morphine is one hell of a drug.

You know, so I'm not, I wasn't better.

I just thought it hurts.

I'm not going to put weight on it.

I've got crutches.

I'm not going to put weight on it.

Didn't put weight on it.

And then the, and then I changed my diet a little bit.

I started eating things I wouldn't normally eat, right?

I was the guy training and eating salmon and eggs for breakfast and all that.

All of a sudden, I'm I'm having like scones, clotted cream, jam, cup of teas in the morning.

Like, I'm going mad, and like, it's thickened my blood, you know, and it's resulted in a clot.

And once a clot's there, it does one or two things, you know, it either lies dormant and sort of

dissipates, if you like, dilutes or whatever, or it travels.

And with me, because I had bleeding on the brain, they couldn't give me the full dose of blood thinners.

So there were two weeks.

There were two weeks that I knew I had a blood clot in my leg.

My girlfriend at the time, her uncle died from a blood clot in the leg because it went through his heart and killed him.

So I know what I'm up against.

I've got two weeks of that, where they put me on half the dosage of blood thinners I should be on because my brain's bleeding.

And if my blood goes too thin, I am in all sorts of trouble.

You know?

And

through that stage,

it was Guy Richie that sort of leaned in closer to me.

And

he said, me and you'll speak every day

until you come through this.

And he just used to chat to me at some point in the dad having a dinner.

And flipping the guy chat to me, what are you up to?

And we just have a little chit-chat.

And

it was just a strange period of my life.

And the weirdest thing is, it was bliss.

The only way I can describe that to you is, it's out of your hands.

It's like it's imminent death or not.

You can't manipulate it.

You can't run from it.

It's not like someone's going to turn up and beat you up, and you can run out the back door.

It's like this, you're condemned.

And in feeling condemned, I just felt bliss.

It's hard to explain.

I was happy.

I was like, I was free.

Because all of a sudden, it didn't matter whether I failed.

Do you know what I'm saying?

Surely you understand the sort of climb of like building a thing

and the pressure that you put yourself under to achieve the things you believe you're capable of achieving.

All of a sudden, that was just out of the window.

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What have you learned from your time with Guy Ritchie?

I I mean, look, I've done a film, I spent some time with him offset.

And

I guess what you sort of witnessing is just his excellence.

He's just somebody that I could relate to, and somebody that I

somebody that makes you sort of understand that success in what we deem as success.

We look at his brand, right, and we see success.

It's the result of years of sort of

work and refinement.

And when you understand that, it breaks it down because it's such a big brand that if you're not careful, you just see a giant.

And then when you speak to the human being behind it, you're like, oh, or like you've really worked your ass off for years.

You know, so I learned that.

And there's lots of other little sort of details that I sort of learned, but like, that was

the sort of main

thing that I understood.

Especially given that Guy makes very British films, that feels like a very British philosophy, very British sort of takeaway.

Yeah, I guess so.

The

not getting too big for your boots, sort of keeping your feet on the ground.

And that's difficult.

You know,

it's a double-edged sword with British culture that

we like to take to piss.

There is a little bit of tall poppy syndrome, and that's good for keeping people humble and for making some people driven, but it's also

disincentivizing for people that want to take a risk because they're worried, well, what are people going to say?

You know, in America, it's got a lot of problems, but they're very supportive of people being exploratory, adventurous, trying new things, aiming for the stars.

We don't quite have that same

positive sum influence in the UK, maybe because it's a smaller country.

We're waterlocked, the weather's not as good.

That's just the culture.

I'm not sure.

But to think that you've got

like

England's Christopher Nolan

and he is still focusing on the basics and still turning up every day and doing the hard thing.

Yeah.

That's inspiring.

Yeah, it just changes your thinking because you think you've gone to a different level.

And at this point, you can like kick back, chill a little bit.

And, you know, but you sort of see someone that's

probably outworking the common man that turns up and you know goes to work or whatever somebody that's putting in like hours into the craft you understand that it's time to just sort of

um double down and go again also reminds you that there's problems that money and fame can't fix there's challenges that money and fame doesn't overcome for sure

given that you're in an alternate universe like literally a different universe from the one that you started in.

Yeah.

Were there things that you thought

the right amount of wealth and the right amount of attention would have just, oh, you know, that's not going to be, that's going to be not going to be an issue for me anymore.

I'm going to be

that is a byproduct of my situation, not of myself.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, you, you,

you know, it's a blur, right?

You grow up in a household that's chaos and it's falling to bits, and the finances are low, and the morale is low, and you know, it's chaotic and violent and stressful, and

the blinds are closed because the bailiffs knock on every day.

Like,

it clouds what the answers are because the answers are actually quite sophisticated.

But for me,

it's interesting.

I've got a song called The Ten Graft Commandments,

you know, and I say stage one is make it, maintain it.

And what I'm talking about is,

you know, in society, if you've got no money,

you're just going to come unstuck

just because it's the way that it's the way that things are sort of built up.

You're just not going to get much free time.

You're not going to get time to think.

You're not going to get time to be yourself.

You've got no social mobility.

You can't go to the places you want to go.

And, you know, some people need to heal, man.

And that's why I've tried to make songs that touch on certain topics because

people sort of are out there desperately needing to heal.

But

without the freedom that money can bring, you don't get the time to address

certain situations, you know.

So,

yeah, in my calculations, which I'm quite accurate, by the way, a lot of the time, I feel like even when I'm wrong, I was right.

And in my calculations, I thought, first of all, I need some dough

point blank, and I'll get more sophisticated when I get there, you know.

So, when I got to a place where the dust had sold and I wasn't like new money anymore, and I didn't feel like I was going to go tumbling back to level one, which it probably felt like that for 10 years, I

started to study on a sort of deeper, deeper level because these

facets.

Well, rule two is protect your energy, right?

It's interesting when...

You're right.

It wasn't everything, but it was the first thing.

It's the launch velocity that gets you off the launch pad, right?

That initial start.

And without that,

there's multiple costs that you pay.

And you can't do much without it.

But I think assuming that that was good and got me here means that that is all I'll ever need and is what will fix the remainder of the problems in my life is where people get stuck.

Oh, yeah, because you

and but like, look, by the way, that's why I say sort of be inspired because

if somebody comes from a two-parent household where the parents done well and the kid was able to go to university and whatever, like it don't make that person any less of a person, right?

They're still gonna have their challenges.

And you gotta sort of respect the parents for building a platform.

But that child has still got his own challenges moving forward.

He can still fall to complete pieces.

You know, so it applies no matter where anybody sort of starts.

But if you've got no

financial intelligence, if there's no one to teach you about money,

then you just think that money changes everything.

You just think that it's the answer to everything.

And it's not until you achieve them sort of financial goals, a certain car, certain house size, or whatever, that you're like,

because you can see the trophy, right?

It's there.

And then you pick it up and it's completely hollow.

And you're like, oh, no.

Because

I thought inside that trophy was going to be the answers to all my trauma, all my pain, all my

fractured and damaged relationships with family members that are dysfunctional and haven't transcended it.

And I thought it was going to really, and it's like, no, no, no.

What this does is gives you the freedom to do the work

And you're like you're telling me that this money is the entry ticket Yeah, into the assault course, which I now have to go and do you go invest in yourself Self-investment all the way through and and that's what that's what had to happen.

I I remember I remember I remember buying a Lamborghini off the showroom, right?

I'm

say it's five six seven years ago.

I'm much younger and I'm brash I need rappers in London to know i'm serious you guys think you're serious like we're not playing so i'm big and boisterous about it i'm filming myself on instagram i was one of the early adopters of like doing dumb on instagram to like have people take notice so i'm in the bank like yeah i need to um put 200 000 down please so i buy this car and then i get it all blacked out so everybody knows like it's paid for you know my name on the wheels and stuff i remember like as i go to drive off the showroom

I don't know what I thought was going to happen.

I probably thought I was going to take off and fly to Mars and like the rest was history.

I come off the showroom and I was like, oh,

oh, like nothing's changed.

Not only has nothing changed, now I actually understand

that financial gain isn't going to change certain things.

Like I'm still stressed out about that thing I was stressed out about this morning.

I'm excited because I'm driving a Lamborghini,

but like that's going to fade.

The novelty will wear off in 10 minutes and we're back to square one.

And at that point, by the way, I've only really ever spent in the come up of my career, I only really spent money on investments.

That was an investment in the brand to show people that, like, you know, I'm not, I'm not just saying it.

I think a lot of successful people are just sort of saying it.

And they're telling you how to, you know, I've been around

people where, or these like females that will have a BBL, but they'll sell a workout plan.

It's not the real thing.

So, I was trying to put my money where my mouth was and just be like, look, man, I'm saying I'm big and boisterous, and I can back it up.

So, there was all self-investment.

However, then I had to invest time,

energy, and finances into sort of healing

and understanding what the other great people that have existed on the planet understood.

You know, people say, I'd rather be sad in a Lambo than sad in a fiesta.

Yeah, they're not thinking straight.

I think that that's completely backward because

if you're sad in the fiesta, you still have the pipe dream that the Lambo might fix it.

So in Will Smith's memoir, he says, when I was poor and miserable, I had hope.

When I was rich and miserable, I was despondent.

The point being that when you think the thing that was going to fix your problems is in your possession and your problems are still there, you ask yourself much deeper, much more difficult questions.

And that sucks.

So it's interesting, right?

Because one night,

I end up sat with Jordan Peterson.

He's around a table that I'm sat at.

And I was able to tell him, like, I'm hundreds of hours into your work.

You know, because

I'm hundreds and hundreds of hours into psychology.

Because, you know, a lot of people will go go to a therapist and perhaps that works for them.

But then a lot of people

are trying to find somebody or something to depend on to give them the answers.

And I think that's going to null and void any process.

Me, I just started doing the work and getting an understanding.

I needed to break it down into sort of basic framework where I could get to the essence of what I was trying to figure out because the money didn't make it go away.

And then the sort of key word that I figured was functionality

you know functionality what's that mean to you yeah you know it's what it's what we're looking for right so when you're saying that what Will Smith

is you know rich and sad well it's because you've not focused on functionality it should become sort of

the main focus in your in your journey once you've got some finances like some people want a billion pounds then they're not sure what they want a billion pounds for and then they get there and they get sad.

And some of these people commit suicide, it's bad marriages, divorces, it's just a mess.

And that's because what you've got to do is you've got to get some dough,

park up for a minute, and

start your march

towards functionality.

Because if you've come from a bit of a broken background, you're going to be dysfunctional.

The people that brought you up are going to have been dysfunctional.

The people you was brought up around dysfunctional.

So you've got traits and habits habits and neurological pathways that need reversing and breaking and snapping in half.

And at that point, it's for you to understand this is a bigger job than getting some dough.

Because actually, you shouldn't be greedy.

You should earn enough to be financially free.

Right.

And once you've got to that stage, you've got freedom.

So what you do with it is up to you.

So if you want to build a business that sort of runs itself and keeps some money coming in, good for you because you're clever.

But if you're going to invest your full time, energy, and everything into being more rich,

then, you know,

it's the tortoise and the hare.

Like, the tortoise walks past you in the end.

Was there something that you learned from Jordan in person that you hadn't picked up online?

Was there anything you took away from your time with him?

I'm like an obsessed person, right?

So

when I'm researching,

I'm going all the way.

I'm reading the books.

I'm listening to the the podcasts i'm i'm looking for the things that aren't there to be easily found you know

so there was there wasn't really

the conversation didn't go down that route because it's like me meeting you outside of sort of your work for me to pull you into a conversation about your work can just put a dampener on the conversation because that's i'm object i'm objectifying you as that guy that does that podcast instead of seeing you as a human being right so i was able to have um

just conversation with Jordan

with the understanding of a lot of his sort of philosophy.

And,

you know, and he's sort of one of many people that I've studied, you know.

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I love the idea of objectification.

I've been thinking about this a lot.

I was sat next to Tucker Max.

You know who he is?

No.

So he wrote a book called I Hope This of Beer in Hell.

It was called Fratia.

So it was

10, 15 years ago.

He was a young guy drinking and partying and fucking women and writing about his exploits.

It was like

American Pie, the book.

right like kind of like that and it was like semi-memoiry stuff and he was really fantastic.

Then he went away, did a ton, like five years of daily psychotherapy, uh, and came back a changed person, much more aligned, uh, still very confident, but much more aligned.

And I sat next to him at dinner in Austin, where I live now.

And

we were talking about objectification.

And he was saying, to become successful as a man is to agree to allow the world to see you as a resource to be extracted from

or a human to be objectified.

So, women have it in a different way.

Women get objectified because of

what they are, how they present,

how people see them in the world.

Yeah,

men get objectified because of who they are and what they can offer you, and people see you as a resource to be extracted from.

And

just that idea, whenever I think about male objectification, because we think about McConaughey or Brad Piard, or, you know,

but I don't think that that's most objectification that happens toward men.

I think it's somebody that has fame and you want to be in the blast radius of that.

You want to be in the containment zone,

trickle-down effect

of somebody that has wealth and you want the opportunities, or they get first access to investment deals, or maybe they can give me some advice.

And it's not reciprocal and it's transactional and transient and disposable.

And

I like

the idea of sitting with somebody and not even necessarily having to talk about their work, not having to talk about the thing, but just seeing how they operate.

And you can learn just as much from that as you can.

Matthew McConaughey, I mentioned before we started, he's coming back on soon.

I learned as much from watching the way that he talked about his tennis shoes.

He wouldn't fucking shut up about these tennis shoes.

These are the fastest tennis shoes on the market.

I go straight from here to the tennis court.

But just passion, commitment, charisma, kindness, open to the room.

So he wasn't bothered about sitting straight.

He decided to come in and he put his chair right out to the side.

He sat like this.

He's like, these tennis shoes, fastest tennis shoes on the market.

And he's just talking to everybody that was sat there.

And I just thought,

so fucking cool.

Nothing about how you do a movie.

Nothing about how you act.

And he's there and he's got nothing in his mouth.

He's like,

the way he does, like does this.

So cool.

But yeah.

To become,

to be successful as a man is to agree to be a resource to be extracted from or

a human to be objectified.

Yeah.

And it's a that's a difficult position to

to exist in,

especially if you're street smart.

You know, they say the terminology, you can't kid a kidder.

And people are trying to warm you up.

And, you know,

they've got a goal in mind of what they're going to extract from you.

And what you're supposed to be is you're supposed to be

blind to the fact that that's what they're doing.

And if you're not, and if you do come from a situation where you're

street smart or sharp, you see it coming every single time.

And it's problematic because it changes your relationship to to people.

We're much more skeptical.

Yeah, well, just, I mean, you don't have to be, you can withdraw a little bit, right?

And yeah, actually, much more skeptical because

exposure means that everybody can

people can sort of see

people can see you more, you're more little,

but actually, you can see them more, and that's what they don't take into consideration.

They're forgetting the fact that you're experiencing, if they're not creative, six people just used your same approach today

right and you're supposed to you're supposed to act like you can't see what they're doing okay we're going through this again that must be you know to uh fly the flag for the other side i imagine that's what it's like to be a really attractive woman

that i always thought this uh

Hot girls on the internet complain that they struggle to get guys to treat them well, treat them normally.

And I think that's because there's this weird reality distortion field.

I'm going to try your drink.

Get this in.

Come on.

If you're lagging, let me see what's happening.

No, I'm not lagging.

I don't know.

I don't think you're lagging.

Don't normally do caffeine.

Okay.

Well, just a little, just a little.

I'm very interested to see what it takes.

All right, okay.

First sip review.

I mean, yeah, it's nice.

Good.

That'll do.

And I'm not just saying it because you sat across the table.

Thank you.

Yeah, well, look, you've

and that fuel your focus, so I'm going to get more focus now.

A little bit.

Could I potentially change here?

As the.

Yeah.

Well, if we start seeing you levitate, we'll know you've had too much.

Oh, is that what happened?

That is what happened.

Yeah, yeah.

Your vocabulary could increase and things like that.

Well, if you start rapping, we'll know that it's working.

But yeah, that must be what it's like to be a

to be an attractive woman.

Your value to the world is immediately available for everybody to see.

And you have...

How are you able to discern whether or not this person who's talking to you and seems nice and seems like they've got your best interests at heart?

What do they really want?

What do they really want from you?

So, I guess, on the same

vein as that,

have you found that fame has brought more freedom or more cages in that way?

Do you know what?

I don't take it too seriously

because I'm independent.

You know, I so the actual term fame, I just don't take it too too serious.

I'm just I'm just who I am and I'm exposed.

Sometimes I lean into it and do a bit more.

And sometimes I take a step back and relax.

And

I guess

I've been sort of magnetic since I was a kid.

I've always attracted a lot of attention.

For no particular reason, it's like my spirit or something just people gravitate towards me.

And it's been like that since I was young.

So it's always been the same process.

So, getting famous was just the accelerated version of that.

Like, I'm not used to it.

Do you know what I mean?

So, interesting, yeah, yeah, that's just the way it's sort of been.

And I think when I see people that take fame too seriously, you know, I just know that they're gonna come unstuck.

It's like you're gonna come unstuck because

you're taking a thing serious that doesn't take you serious.

Fame doesn't take anyone serious, man.

It's just not, it's just not gonna like because there's time and there's changes in trends and there's you know so one minute you're famous and you're popping and you've done that last thing

and now people are treating you like this

and then

the thing you've just done everybody hates and now people are treating you like that you know that's gonna it's just gonna run run right with your mindset if that's something that you identify with being a famous person.

So I always sort of say I'm not a celebrity but that's because that's how I'm framing it to myself.

I think if I sort of walked around thinking I'm a celebrity and X, Y, and Z, if I walk in a room and nobody has a clue who I am, which happens a lot because you're in different places in the world and whatever, then you're going to be like,

you know,

yeah, like your identity has been messed with, you know, but if you can, if you can derive a sense of identity from

who you actually are, you've got to get in tune with your spirit, you know, and when you start to sort of get in tune with your spirit, then no matter what changes around you the environment the surroundings you

you know what you are you know where you stand you know so me

coming to do this podcast today i told you before i'm nervous but it's because i

i know that it's different you know it's a it's a different situation however I also understand that I deserve to be here as much as a guy that might be 54 and has way way more experience than me,

has way more accolades than me.

You know, you,

there comes a point where you start to understand that like

you're, you're enough.

And it's like a shame because society doesn't encourage that thinking.

You know, so when I bump into a fan and he's like, bro, like, you're my idol or I'm trying to be like you.

He's like, no, no, you're trying to be like you.

And that's what you should be trying to do.

Be the best version of you.

Because for all you know, the best version of you is better than me.

The best that you can hope for if you're trying to be somebody else is being the second best in the world at something.

No one's going to beat you at being you.

Exactly.

Exactly.

The best you can hope for is to be the second best Bugsy Malone.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No one can beat you at your personal set of skills.

So before when you were saying, you know, you're a single child and you start to talk about the components that sort of make you as a

whole whole in terms of psychologically and physiologically.

These are all of your

specialities, man.

And that's how I sort of feel.

I feel like you bolt on discipline to all of your quirks.

I'm sure I'm on some end of the spectrum.

I'm sure I've got ADHD.

I'm sure I've got a load of these labels.

Right.

But if you if you bolt on discipline to that and you get the mind under control, then all of a sudden the hyper focus in ADHD just becomes a superpower you know and so so that's that's my thinking and I think that like when I see people that become like they feel helpless because I think society encourages that helplessness because then you're dependent on a drug or a

certain chocolate bar or whatever it is they can sell you

you know I think you're in trouble when you become dependent and you don't understand that like actually

like

I'm enough I'm enough I can be whoever I want I looked at this really interesting study about bariatric surgery and gastric bands okay so less popular now that azempic exists because we've got a pharmacological replacement yeah but when people who are overweight and want to stop eating so much they get a gastric band fitted now there is an increased suicide risk after people have the surgery why it's a very serious surgery a lot of the time there can be complications it's a big open

wound that can get infected.

There can be general complications.

People can struggle with just the pain and the recovery.

But the big underlying psychological reason, typically, is

in the past, people had an issue that they were coping with through food.

They now no longer have the ability to eat the food and the issue persists.

So the coping mechanism has been taken taken away from them

and the problem that they were coping with has not.

So their ability to sedate themselves with food, to hide from whatever that challenge was, has gone away

and the problem's still there.

So again, functionality, that's a dysfunction.

And you really got to be ironing them out.

And by the way, I'm saying this from a position of being the most...

dysfunctional man on the planet.

You know what I'm saying?

Like

these times in my life where I'm sure it was psychosis, there's times where it's been depression for the pain.

Like, I've gone through in my songs, you hear me talk about borderline personality disorder, and that's because I'm googling away and I'm looking at all of the you know, explanations.

Got that, got that, yeah,

that I'm experiencing that, I'm experiencing, you know.

And if you're not careful and you start taking them labels seriously, you

you know,

we've all got everything

to some different extent.

But what are you going to do?

Are you going to

accept

the fact, you know,

there's a point where you just have to stop accepting

the fact that you lose control of your emotions.

Get it under control.

Build discipline, like these ways, you know, and that's what I sort of had to study and figure out.

And actually, when you actually break it down, it's all quite, it's all the basics.

It's doing the fundamentals well.

And you start doing the fundamentals well,

things just sort of drop into play.

You just have to do that on repeat.

Really?

What are the fundamentals to you?

I think diet's a big one.

Gut health, again, you hear people talking about it.

Problem is with people talking about things like that is then people turn up to capitalize on it being a popular category and people want to sell crap.

I was going to make, not to deviate, I'll get back to it in a second, my fundamentals, but like I was going to make a protein brand

with a guy.

And

what I sort of figured out is he wanted to make

a prime type drink.

What I was interested in is making something

more beneficial in terms of people's health.

Just because

when you've got a job that involves exposure, when you say to someone, buy this thing, they're trusting that you've done the research and this is going to help their life.

Right.

So at that point, I feel

guilty if I'm selling somebody something that's not helpful.

So, I had to pull out on the business venture.

Anyway, so one of them is

a big deal.

Training,

it's not, it's more the mind,

exercising the mind, you know,

and the body.

I just think that, like, as we all know,

it's one of the biggest deals.

Expanding your understanding.

I think if you're naive to history and like what's gone on in the world before you were here,

and you're just existing in this day and age blind and not knowing the like the patterns of history,

the cycles, sorry, you know, things reoccur.

So yeah, in that respect, study.

You really got to study.

And

when I say protect your energy,

again,

I don't think everybody's got the best intention for you.

You should probably understand that.

You should probably, probably

try and pick

people with the correct sort of morals and integrity.

And sometimes it's that people don't have control of themselves.

Do you know what I mean?

They give in to their impulses.

It's a challenge as well.

Successful Successful guy, attractive woman.

Successful woman, attractive guy.

You warp reality around you and it makes it harder for people to treat you normally, even if they're trying.

I see this with Joe Rogan in Austin.

He has this comedy club, super popular.

And

sometimes after the show, they'll kick everybody out.

And then all of the comedians and their friends will go to the bar downstairs, Mitzis.

And

there is,

it's almost like

someone flicks a switch and a frequency comes on that changes the whole room's behavior.

I get you.

If he walks in or if he leaves, because it's this

very

specific niche

where somebody just changes the dynamic.

And the people that know him well and are his friends typically don't change that much.

This frequency only affects the people who don't yet know him.

And they're like, I'm trying to be normal.

It's like a really, any guy trying to talk to an unbelievably hot girl.

Like,

like, she's so hot, just stop thinking that she's so hot.

Why can't you just say something like you're in your own head about it?

And it's kind of the same in that regard.

And that was my point, I think, around fame bringing more freedom or being more of a cage, that

it makes you an object to be looked at, it gives people

difficulty in treating you in the way that they might even want to.

And then you've got to work out: is this person

honest and awkward or contrived and conniving?

Are they trying to get something and extract something from me?

These, and the,

you mentioned before about shame.

I think the shame of dealing with a problem which only comes as a byproduct of now privilege is a real challenge.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because who's going to give you sympathy for that?

Oh, I'm so sorry that your fame is causing the amount of attention where you need to discern between people who are simply nervous, conniving, and actually good friends.

Like, what a what a challenge.

I'm so sorry that you need to deal with that.

And that causes you shame because you think I shouldn't feel discomfort at this problem because there are much bigger problems.

And I have had much bigger problems in the past.

What would previous me think of me thinking of this as a problem?

You go, well,

as you move up through the grades of whatever art you're trying to do, the challenges become more refined.

And this is a more refined challenge.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's nuanced.

It's not simple no more.

And that's why

you've got to learn to rely on your,

you've got to learn to rely on yourself, man.

And really, you know, I'm somebody that believes in God.

And I've recently understood that it's not my own strength that I'm relying on, you know, it's the strength of, of, and whether you call people, some people understand God as the universe, but it's source,

that source of like love, right?

And

I've found myself relying on that as opposed to my own, I thought I was this cool guy, thought I was strong,

but depending on where your belief systems are, you sort of understand

there's something more going on here.

And I found that I've been taking strength from

the source, if that makes sense.

And when you were just talking, then I was thinking, I'm making a fragrance, right?

I'm doing my second fragrance.

I've got it on.

I've got the first one.

Have you got the first one?

Fortitude.

Fortitude means strength.

And with the second one, I've called it intention.

I love that one.

So

when you're talking about before the way people change around Joe Rogan, or, you know,

you're talking to a hot girl, you know, i remember i remember when you know your my career exposes me to types of people i've not been exposed to before not the type of people that are walking around the estates i was walking around and

it's your intention

that

defines the way you're going to treat them people Because if you're talking to a hot woman and your intention is to try and get her in bed by the end of the night, obviously you're going to be stuttering your words.

You're trying to negotiate a pretty serious deal.

Who's to say you're enough, or she's interesting, or she's interested, or you know, if your intention is just the same as having a conversation with the next person at the bar, you know, then

all of a sudden it's a more natural interaction because at the end of the day, she's going to like you or not.

And you're, you know, you're saying she's a hot woman, you're going to like her or not.

But I think if you, if you become a man in a certain position and and you don't feel like you're

you you you don't have options so to speak then you're going to look into who she actually is because a lot of hot women aren't what they look like it looks like a great pretty on the outside yeah it looks like a great person with with that can bring great things into a person's life um

and I think some of them may neglect um their other attributes you know and And it's dangerous.

It's dangerous for anybody who has an outsized capacity anywhere because

it Paul Graham's got this wonderful quote where he says, a lot of people look at those who are successful jerks and assume the reason they're successful is because they're a jerk, but that's not true.

The reason they're a jerk the reason that they are a jerk is because their success allows them to get away with it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's the same as not being a very nice person or somebody that's rich and an asshole or a a girl whose heart has

no loyalty or isn't very kind.

Their richness or their hotness is what permits them to get away with it.

That's not why they have achieved the things they've achieved.

Well, it's like being a boxer that's got a big punch, right?

Very powerful.

And he leans on that attribute.

And he wins the area title.

And if he's lucky, he gets the European title.

But to be a world champion and to compete at world level, like you need to have rounded off your skill set.

It's as simple as that.

So, you know, I meet a really pretty girl and she's relied on that up until this point that I'm speaking to her.

It's just so uninteresting because it smells of that.

That's what it is, you know, where, and like you say, you become successful, you get some money or fame or whatever it is.

If you've sort of leaned on that and just...

you're identified with that and that's who you are now and you've not gone and studied and you've not tried to heal and you've not tried to It just becomes a very unimpressive interaction, you know.

I'm not interesting, I'm not regulated, I'm not kind, I'm not self-aware,

I'm not giving.

Uh,

you mentioned that story of the guys who tried to rob your house.

Oh, yeah,

we talk about that if you like.

I do want to, yes.

What happened?

I mean, look,

there was

there were some

like teenagers.

I've just moved into this house.

I've made a big thing online.

I'm getting a new house.

Because this is the game, right?

This is the rap game.

You're going to get to a place where you're doing well.

And people want to know if it's true or not.

Have you really transcended the bottom?

Is that really possible?

Because it's like in the Batman film, right?

And there's that prison.

And to get out of the prison, you've got to escape and jump out of the hole at the top.

And that's crabs in a bucket.

We're all looking at the top of the bucket, thinking, can we get out of there?

And once you're in the process, it's interesting, really, because you've got to fake it till you make it, right?

So you're sort of demonstrating that, like, here's where I'm at.

You know, some people are less honest about it.

I was trying to be sort of accurate.

So, like, it's like I've bought this house.

And I've not really built up the walls on the outside, or there's no blinds up at the time.

And there's like a group of like teenagers up on the wall, and they're shouting,

booksy, booksy, booksy, and I'm flipping,

thinking, whatever.

And then my

girlfriend at the time gets out of the shower and he's walking through the house naked.

And they're looking in through the window.

She's like,

The kids outside have seen me naked, right?

And I'm like, yeah, just give them time to go because I'm thinking, I've not moved here to then start like going out and just even chatting to the kids.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, I'm going to try not to get too involved where I live, right?

So, time goes by, and time goes by, and then eventually, there just come a situation where I'd sort of left the house, thought the coast was clear, left the house.

On this particular day, I was trying to get my little sister to make friends with my mum.

And so, we're doing a bit of domestic healing or whatever you call it and I go and collect my little sister I've not seen her in a long time

and I'm gonna take her to town first on the way to town

and

at this point now the kids are trying to like terrorize the house so my ex-girlfriend phones me to up on the wall again and

and it's all going on so then I drive back to the park and the house and the the park I pull up and I see the kids and they see the car and they just want to see it's me I i get the situation i get i'm a famous guy i live in the area so then um

as i like pull up um

they start to

jog off through the park looking and whoever they must have been in the area their brothers and family were

tough guys

and they've come back and

broke into the house, broke onto the land, smashed the windows.

Tell him when he gets back, he's dead.

So that was the that was the situation.

I'm with my little sister in the car,

and we had to, we had to fly home.

I drove home nervous because you, you don't like you're just in a situation where

you're not sure.

And by the way, there was a few little things happening around the house of like

it was a big house, and you don't understand the ramifications of living in a big house, but it attracts a lot of attention, you know, and that, to be honest, has put me off like

them kinds of luxuries because people see you as something different.

So now I'm like doing a lot of traveling and opening my mind and being in places with just a backpack, you know, to go back to basics.

Anyway, so the, yeah, so the, they, um, I went back, I was nervous.

You're driving back to deal with this issue.

Yeah, I'm flying back, flying back.

My mum's on the phone to the police in the background when my ex-girlfriend's screaming on the phone,

and my heart's just beating.

I'm just like, oh, my days!

Because you don't, I'm saying to my ex-girlfriend, did he have balaclavas on?

Did he have gloves on?

Did he have weapons?

She's like, I don't know.

And he went

and breaking in.

Right?

And

yeah,

I sort of pull up and you're straight into the chaos of the situation.

And I think luckily at that point,

again, I've just kept up boxing for so long that as I was getting into these interactions with these guys, I was able to gauge distance enough to make one move and then threaten nullified

what's happening next.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

And that was that.

I mean, these deeper detail, I don't know how much I should go into, but they sort of barricaded the road off.

It's like a country road that takes you to the house.

And me and my sister are in the car.

It's been the first altercation.

we get into the car

we're driving down this country road it's barricaded off with big boulders like that so i know there's an ambush coming

so i look in the bush and there's a big guy with a brick so i put my sister's head down like that and

really what he should have done is he should have just thrown that brick straight through the car created panic and attacked me but what he'd done is he tried to play Mr.

Intimidating and tried to

have me a fight with this brick.

But what he doesn't understand is what I understood is you have to jab me with that brick.

Because if you start swinging it at me, it's going to end up knocked out of your hand.

It's the nature of a heavy, you know, weapon of whatever description.

So he stood there and I put my hands up in the air.

And psychology says that if I say to you, what t-shirt's that again?

Exactly.

Your brain starts to answer the question.

Like your nervous system starts to answer the question before you get a chance to think.

So I jump out of the car and I've gone, no way is it you?

It's that blue t-shirt.

Fuck off you.

And I'm asking him these questions and you can see his brain doing, but I'm closing the distance and I'm sparring every day.

And I know how close I need to get.

And he won't think I can touch him, but I can.

And I'm getting closer and closer.

And he's not getting the time to get his feet in place to swing the brick properly.

And when by the time he realizing I'm close enough and he tries to do something with the brick, I've managed to hit him and it just, it just skimmed him and he spun around and dropped the brick so then

it all goes to court obviously he doesn't try and press charges because me and him had a decent fight

you know to be fair to him we had a decent fight but I won the fight and

and then I get in the car I move the bricks

boulders I get back to my house and that's the video that surfaces online of me flying down the drive I've

taken your top off the well the reason I'm taking my top off is because a van then comes screeching onto the path of their backup.

So now there's a van full of guys to come and back them guys up.

So I'm taking my top off because I'm going now to get back involved again.

And honestly, like when I when I turned up for the second time, like I just turned up and was just shouting my head off like a lunatic, frothing at the mouth.

And I was just like, what I was explaining to them is like,

you're at my family home.

My mum's in there.

You know, you guys have turned up to beat me up.

I've turned up here to die for my family.

This is two different situations, you know.

And you think I'm like a celebrity.

I really come from the dark.

You know, and you look like a bit of a plumber.

You look like you go to the pub on a weekend.

It's like you don't like that.

You're at my family home.

I ain't got nowhere to run.

And it wasn't as articulate as that, by the way.

But, you know, that was just...

I was shouting my head off, yeah, because, you know, I didn't want to hurt anybody else.

And it was getting out of hand, you know, because boxing allowed me to be able to deal with it clean cut.

But if I didn't have boxing, then I'd have got into a fight with the first guy, thrown onto the floor, and maybe beaten up outside my own house, you know.

So boxing was able to get me through the situation.

That was that.

There was a...

After the situation, then they tried to phone the police,

you know, and there was, so there was a court case, and

there was this moment in court at this point.

The court case was a couple of years later, and at this point, I broke up with my ex-girlfriend, and she had to come and give evidence, which was this mad situation for me.

And there was just this point where

I had to speak to the jurors, you know, that are going to judge, or this like a panel of people that are going to judge.

And do you know what I'd done?

I just

told them who I was because

I understand that people at

a guy that looks like a tough street guy and he's a rapper and all these sort of stereotypes go with these.

People look at things in categories, right?

Because sometimes people are too lazy to

understand that everyone's just an individual.

So I

just spoke to him on a really human level and explained who I am.

and what my intention was going into that situation.

And that was simply to protect my family.

And I could have lost my temper and I could have taught that over the top.

But I feel like I dealt with every situation perfectly.

There's many a man that would have pulled out a weapon, and it would have been a different story in the news, you know.

But I risked it.

I risked having a fair fight.

And luckily, by the skin of my teeth,

well, maybe not the skin of my teeth, but I come out on top, you know, and I feel as if I was blessed because

I was put, my back was up against the wall, you know,

so I got not guilty.

Do you know what's you know, I've never really spoke about with this, yeah?

I'm sat in the room with my

lawyers and that,

and they're like, right, today's the verdict, you either gonna get guilty, bro.

If I get guilty, as a kid, I was a persistent young offender, yeah, I was in lots of trouble all the time.

That was something I had to overcome and get out of the habit of being.

So, I'm thinking, it like for the criminal record I had when I was young, like if I get a guilty here, this is looking like jail.

Did it feel like you were back there?

Oh man, what did it feel like?

Because it's all over social media and the paparazzi are coming to my hotel.

I'm not signed to a record label.

I'm independent.

You know, so for the newspapers to be turning up, when I fell off my bike, it's in the newspapers.

When I got engaged, it's in the newspapers.

It's sort of unheard of.

I'm independent.

I'm not a record label's cash cow.

right?

So you're going in past paparazzi every day.

It was just a bizarre experience.

And on the day when he's like, today you get the not guilty or the guilty or not guilty, my heart's beating, shitting my pants a little bit.

And

he's like, we've got a prepared statement for if you get not guilty.

I said, that's the one I'm interested in.

Because now I'm doing the law of attraction in my head.

I'm like, there's no way.

I'm getting a guilty today, right?

He reads it to me.

I said, okay, it's COVID.

We're just coming out of, we're sort of in COVID.

I'm doing a tour.

Tour tickets aren't selling because people aren't sure whether to put the money into concerts because they might get pulled.

Yeah, do you remember that stage?

So I'm putting a concert on in the most controversial stage, right?

I said, at the bottom of that statement, just right, that Bugsy is going to go away now and concentrate on

the ticket sales of his UK tour.

You used your statement as an ad read for the tour.

Listen, it's turning a negative into a positive.

Right.

And in my heart, I believed I was righteous.

What the judge was going to believe on the day is, you know, who knows sort of thing.

But they did.

They judged me fairly.

And I got this not guilty.

And then, and then I was on the stairs, stood there in this pinstripe suit that I got made after John got his

suit when he got off his court cases.

I quite liked it.

It was tailored well.

I'm like, stood there and I remembered, oh, yeah, we've got all the news in front of us.

And he goes, and Bugsy is going to go away now to concentrate on the sales of his UK tour.

And bro, the tickets just sold out.

So I'd fell off my bike.

I'd come back from the bike accident.

I had this big court case from these guys that smashed my house up.

And

I ended up selling out the tour, you know.

So it was a triumphant.

It was a triumphant moment.

It was a negative into a positive, yeah.

The number of guys who hear stories like that, some dudes break into the grounds of my house, and I would have had the top off, and I would have had it, and that would have been me.

I think it says an awful lot about what someone does when their back's up against the wall like that.

Because we were talking before about velvet prison,

silk pajamas.

I have a

friend who went through a rough time a few years ago, and he was explaining to to me.

He said,

all my life I thought I was a coward.

So

I spend my time around hard men.

I like fighting.

I like

being around operators, special forces people.

But

all my life, I was worried that I was a coward, that I'd never fully tested myself.

I'd been tested.

I'd done hard things.

I'd chased after stuff.

It was always kind of on my terms.

Yeah.

It was always

I was electing to step into into whatever the challenge was.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And

I wondered, he used this line, it's so fucking brilliant.

He said, I wondered when my better self was going to stop clearing his throat in the room next door.

So he could just hear him coughing next door, like his better self, his best self.

And then he went through a really, really rough situation.

He's like, okay, I'm going to work out whether or not he's going to stop clearing his throat or he's going to kick the door down and come in.

And sure enough, he kicked the door down and he was there.

I just love that idea.

And I wonder how many people

never get the blessing of being tested.

Folly.

No, here's the thing.

I think we do get the blessing of being tested, but I think the tests start small.

And I think if you fail on the small tests, you don't even get to the big tests.

If the small tests make you depressed, make you think, oh, it's not working and make you give up on your dreams and you sort of become a victim, it's harder for me, it's easy for them, and you just end up sort of stagnant, then you don't get to the bigger tests.

I think the bigger test came for me in life because the little tests, I was plowing through them, you know, so it's like a boxer in his career or a jujitsu practitioner.

You know, he's building up, building up, he gets his blue belt and then he gets to the brown, he gets to a black belt.

It's that.

You get to the black belt of challenges.

And that's the interesting challenge because

they're the they're the ones that are like make or break, you know.

And that's when the opponents get harder, oh, that's when the opponents are also world-level,

you know, because you do like once you've once you've overcome certain challenges, you start to think, I'm getting pretty good at this.

Like,

I don't think life can beat me up, you know.

And then bike accident, court case, pandemic, no ticket sales, you know, selling albums, yeah, like real, real,

you know, you wake up on the floor with a in a puddle of blood, it's like there's the moment, but there's the like, there's the transcending the moment, there's the fight, you've got a 12-round fight ahead of you, and the people don't talk about the details of that, they just see someone like me on a screen, they'll be like, oh, he's bounced back well.

It's like, no, that was every single day for months and months and months on end.

And do you want to know what the main fight?

What I find is, is the ability to believe in yourself and the bigger picture every single day.

You can't take your eye off it.

I think the moment you've sort of took your eye off it,

it's like the momentum slows.

If

you're in a car crash and you break your legs or whatever it is, and you think, oh, I'll never be that person I said I was going to be now.

It's like

the momentum starts slowing and slowing and slowing.

And before you know it, it's at a standstill.

And you've got to start all over again.

So the seven years you've just been climbing for to get to that level of momentum can go so when i'd fell off my bike that's what i was fighting against it's like every day when i woke up i used to crack a joke every day when i woke up i was like oh i'm 80 breaking i make a big laugh first thing in the morning because i thought it's not changing my morale it's not putting me in a bad mood you know and i just kept so that's the first trick that i use is laughter i'll make a joke out of whatever's bad is going on and it has to be a funny joke by the way can't be a shit joke because it won't work and then once you've and once you've done that, then it's having in your mind who you are and where it's all going to go.

And

again, the new fragrance, intention.

These are all the things I'm talking about with intention.

You have to have the intention of becoming your higher self, or I don't think it will happen.

When it comes to finding inspiration for your art form, for rapping.

I've heard you say, for me me to find inspiration, I have to live some life and almost forget about writing lyrics.

One of my favorite lines around this is: in order for art to imitate life, you have to live a life.

That comedians that spend a lot of time on the road, all of their jokes are about airports, hotels, and dinner, because that's all.

Okay, okay, okay.

I'm interested when it comes to creativity and the well that you're able to draw from

how you

still

try and give yourself enough silence and enough slowness in a very chaotic life with lots of opportunities and the fragrance and the clothing and the shoes and the tour and the shows and attention.

How do you continue to create something that is honest and resonates when

there are so many distractions and potential avenues that you could go down?

I mean, it's a good question.

And I think it's a case of

the pursuit of excellence.

There comes a point where you have to forget about money and financial gain.

There comes a point where you have to forget about accolades and fans and, you know, screaming supporters.

And

you have to really figure out what you're doing it for.

And if you're an artist, you better be in it to make the best work that you can make.

Because essentially, this is what I'm going to be judged by

when it's all said and done.

If my life is a book,

when

it might have been Kevin Hart that I heard say that your life's like a book, what's your book going to be like?

I used to say, if my life's like a book,

in the end of it,

how's it actually going to look?

And if I've not dug deep to do my best work, then

I don't know how happy I'd be with myself.

And in terms of the world that you talk about,

I've just figured that you have to absorb in order to radiate.

So for me to

create on the next level,

I have to go away and absorb.

I have to watch lots of films.

I have to study whatever it is I'm interested in studying at that time, live lots of life.

You know, I have to

just absorb and forget about being creative.

And then all of a sudden, a switch will just flick one day and you go back into creative mode.

And you've got all of these sort of

like inspirations and, you know, influences that have been filtered through your outlook on the world.

You know, and then you're able to,

you know, I'm a storyteller.

And that's what's mad because I'm not.

I'm not a rapper.

I'm an artist.

Rap music has been my way up.

It's one medium.

it's one medium and at this point in my career i'm interested in a more credible job description one that uses my full array of skills so people look at my the brand that i've built and my business and

i can tell that they can't really wrap their mind around what they're looking at because

yeah what is this yeah I'm a very diverse person.

That's just the way it's become.

I've been through lots of different things.

I've been through lots of hardship, lots of trauma, lots of abuse.

You know, I've witnessed areas of life that you only read about in the newspaper.

And that's been my reality.

And then on the flip side of the coin, I've had the discipline to

be a legitimate person, to run a business, to, you know, so

you become a really sort of diverse package in one.

And it's hard for

not even just people, but for you to understand like what category is it that I sort of sit in here and you're that makes people nervous.

Not being able to easily categorize someone makes a lot of people nervous.

Yeah.

It's the reason that we have archetypes when there's movies, right?

The hero has big shoulders and the villain wears black and the maiden has big eyes and the nerd wears glasses because, oh, that's a shortcut.

I can work out who this is.

I don't need to do as much thinking and I can box that up.

And you don't need to do as much exposition.

I don't need to ask myself.

It's not as effortful, cognitive shortcut.

And

we,

in many ways, love people who have depth and

are interesting and unique.

But on the flip side, it's very effortful.

It's a very effortful thing to...

Okay, so

it's

rap, but it's

art, but it's got this sort of self-reflective thing and it's growth, but then it's film and then it's like this process.

Oh, impossible, I don't know.

Impossible to understand at this stage in the trajectory.

Impossible.

You know, it's one of them things that consolidates as time goes by.

But actually,

I think

it's new.

I think what I am is new.

I think people that come from the place where I've come from

don't necessarily survive the initial stages of being famous, coming into lots of money.

I think it plateaus,

you know, and a lot of rappers they get shot.

They don't even get through the stage of being a rapper.

They don't even get to diversifying and because they're too busy with having them same vices that they had in their old life, that worked in their old life.

It's like you can't come into the light and have bad vices.

It's going to cause you problems.

You need to do the work before you get that.

You've got to do the work.

You know, look at this.

Is something

when doing the research, which involved listening to a lot of freestyle from you,

which is good.

That first fire in the boot that you did with Charlie Sloth over 10 years ago now.

Yeah, yeah.

Just, uh,

did you realize at the time, oh, this is a moment, this is a real,

the door has just been opened a little crack, and I can wedge myself in?

Was that did you sort of feel the gravity of the potential opportunity on the other side of that?

I mean, look, so, so I've been writing this book, like I say, and I talk about this sort of moment.

And it was a stage where I'd been making music for five years, but in making the music, I was trying to make something that was palatable

for a record label to sell.

So I was trying to make something that I deemed as

good, generic, and universal commercially.

So I was softening my stories, right?

And then there just come a point where I'm like, I'm exposing myself,

like with no reward.

You know, I've just done five mixtapes and I've invested in them all and no one's listening.

I put it on YouTube and a tumbleweed goes by.

And I'm just like, there just come a point where I thought I have to throw caution to the wind.

And I remember in the book, what I talk about is the turning point.

And the turning point was my

mum had been evicted from Berry New Road that I talk about in the fire in a booth.

She was living in a little

flat, a one-bedroom flat with her ex-partner.

It was going wrong, and she was stick thin.

My mum was about five-stone

and on the verge of death.

And I was having these reoccurring nightmares that either my mum or her boyfriend hit one another with an ashtray.

I just have this nightmare.

And sometimes my mum would get hit, and sometimes she'd hit him, and someone would die because the arguments between them was getting that bad.

And I'm driving around in this blue Audi A3 that I loved and I'm a bit of a street guy.

I'm in the mix.

And I'm making music and I've got this dream in my head.

I'm going to be a millionaire.

I'm going to be a multi-millionaire.

Because that'll fix everything.

I'll be able to pay for my mum's problems to go away.

And I remember seeing my mum and I was sat in a house and it was a bit like this.

It was derelict.

There was no carpet on the floors.

This was my mum's like reality.

And I remember taking her out for a little bit of food.

And

her boyfriend had let himself back into the house and locked her out.

And when we came back, she was locked out.

And he'd rang the police.

And when I understood that the police was coming, I've gone and sat back into the Audi because I was a bit of a street guy at the time.

Don't judge me.

And as I'm sat there,

the police come.

They pick my mum up and slam her into the floor.

And as I sat and watched that,

it was

I've never felt so helpless

because

what am I going to do now?

I'm going to jump out and start beating up policemen.

You just sort of sat there.

She's on the floor getting wrestled, and her arms twisted up her back like she's a football hooligan.

And then I had a little pit bull at the time, Kruger, he was called.

He jumps over the fence and he runs over.

Yeah, and he's capable you know because he he grew up with me through my troublesome days he's very capable however his relationship with my mum was different to his his with me i was like one of the boys my mum was like an authority figure with him so he like licks her face and she's like it's okay

At this point, I've got my hand on the door ready to open the door because if that dog starts attacking police, it's going to be a mess and I'm going to be the only one that can fix it.

And the police were able to usher him.

I brought him up well.

The police was able to usher him back into the garden.

My mum gets wrestled into the back of the police van.

I go home from that situation, yeah, shaking.

And I'm.

And then that's when I wrote

a freestyle on a platform called JDZ.

JDZ Media, Spitfire.

And it was the first time that I just threw caution to the wind.

And I was like, do you know what?

Like, yo, fuck these songs that, like,

I'm trying to be a nice guy.

I'm seeing like Ed Sheeram on the television, and I'm like, How do I act?

Like, I'm employable, like him, but it's like, I'm not.

You know, when I'm flipping

nine, ten, eleven years old, I know of when

a man was murdered in my uncle's house.

I used to stay over it.

My uncle was holding his head together until the ambulance got there, shot in his face.

These are my realities,

you know, and it's hard to sort of get your mind around.

You understand what I'm saying?

So

I was attempting to try and be something that I wasn't.

And in this liberating moment of,

fuck it.

Because

I even need to start taking making money more seriously.

Because my mum's going to die in this mess.

I can tell.

That's what's going to happen.

I used to wake up in these cold sweats.

My mum would die in these mad nightmares.

And my ex-girlfriend was like, what's up?

And I'd be sweating.

I never used to, I didn't have the courage to tell her, my mum's died in my dream again.

You know, because I knew the violence was getting worse.

I've seen my mum got her nose broken,

a big gash in her arm.

She needed stitches down her arm because he'd threw her for a table.

You know,

things like that are hard to wrap your mind around without going and overreacting.

That's another thing I'm proud of myself for, because my stepdad actually died about a year ago.

And they've called, the lawyers have called me to give me some money that his mum

has tried to leave for me.

And I was like,

I feel like I can't accept it because I didn't see her in the later stages of my life.

I didn't make the effort as a teenager that thought he was a bad boy to go and see her.

I sort of forgot the fact that she shown me so much love or whatever.

Anyway, so, you know, he died and I was just proud of myself that like, I didn't take it over the top.

I was a boxer.

I had a reputation on the streets.

And he was, he broke my mum's nose.

And I didn't, I didn't try and take retribution.

My strategy was to succeed.

I'm going to succeed and I'm going to change this situation.

You know, so I drove home that night.

I'd done that JDZ media and I just exposed the truth.

I'm like, here's the way I am actually.

And actually, I can't be bothered smiling because my head's fucked.

You know, and I just sort of let it fly.

And that was the first video anyone give a shit about.

Is that your Audi A3 behind with the door open?

Exactly.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

I know it.

So that's that.

And then off the back of that, that started to do numbers.

And then a manager from London messaged me.

I think he used to manage Ed Sheeran in the early days.

He's like, come over to London.

I went over to London.

He's like, by the way, we'd have to change your accent.

Like, you can't let people know you're from Manchester.

Right?

So I'm like,

bamboozled, you know, and

he had this really sort of snobby thing going on where he's like, mate, you're just some guy from Manchester.

You want to get in the music industry.

It's kind of not going to happen.

And he was treating me in that way.

And I'm not used to authority.

I'm in jail when I'm a 16-year-old year old kid so he's like the way he's treating me is not going to work so when the freestyle I remember posting the the freestyle and I was like tell that guy that used to manage me it's been boisterous um that I'm from Manchester and I'm coming to put money on the map and that that's where it sort of came from was the attitude in London towards someone that's from Manchester and I knew that attitude wasn't personal to me as an individual.

It was like, you're from out of town.

And I thought, I'm going to break that door down.

So that at that point sort of became my challenge.

So, then in the freestyle, after that, I'm like, tell, you know, because Stormzy was signed to a label and he was doing good things and X, Y, and Z.

And I'm like, tell, tell Charlie Sloth, it's not just Stormzy that can get a reload.

It's not just, and I'm just like letting them know, like, I'm like a silverback gorilla, just like crawling towards the fucking booth.

Like, let me in if I can get that opportunity.

And actually, that was the nature of the

clash between me and Chipmunk.

was he he'd done the fire in the booth before me or a couple before me

and i was so passionate about this um platform and the opportunity that that was to me that in his one he was at a different stage in his career to me he'd made it he was like a star right i was growing up watching him quite liked his music right

and

but he'd sort of got to a stage where he must have been a bit like at a lost stage in his career so he was like doing he had points to put across so he's doing a lot of talking in the fire in the booth which I've seen as boring.

You understand?

Like, if he would have gone in and just spat his lyrics, he's a talented lyricist.

I would have just liked it.

But in him talking and all that, I thought, you've lost that thing.

You forgot that it's still an opportunity, fire in the booth.

I'd kill for that opportunity.

I can't even get it.

So by the time I got the opportunity, I was saying, you know, fuck chipmunk in his A's and B's.

I didn't think I'm going to have a clash with him.

That's just me thinking when I was in a position to get my A's and B's and I went to school with people that got A's and B's.

I was sat in jail.

You know, my family are addicts.

You know, I don't know what's going to happen to my mum in the end.

And, you know, I'm sat in solitary confinement as a 16-year-old kid.

And

so there was probably a resentment to people that got the GCSEs because I didn't get to, there was no way it was going to happen for me.

Yeah, there was just no way I could have made it happen.

I couldn't make it happen, you know.

So I was, I was just, it was a, it was an observation that, that, that, like, fucking got out of control, right?

But I knew going into that fire in the booth that like this has to be the turning point for me.

If I don't kick this door off now, then

I have to take

my other life more seriously.

And it just wasn't going to end well.

You know, so that, you know, that was that.

I went in there and I let my soul bleed out into the microphone, man.

The frequency of authenticity.

And And I was nervous in life.

I was worried.

I was scared.

I was angry.

I was, I was pissed off.

I was six years into making music that no one cared about.

Like, you know, I was starving.

And I'd looked at the guys that had done their

best firing above.

And it's weird because this was the moment that the law of attraction really kicked in.

Because you think you're doing the law of attraction, right?

But it's not until necessity kicks in that you'll pull it off and you will

you sort of vibration comes up.

So because it was a real big moment, when I'm looking at you know, rappers like Nines, rappers like Flipping, Katie Coke, and these sort of pioneers in London that have got big numbers on the fire in the booth.

I was telling myself, I'm gonna outdo these guys.

In fact, I'm gonna have the most viewed fire in the booth of all time.

It's just little dreams that you've got in your own head, but

that's what that's what happened because of how much I needed it

and how how much I wanted it, you know?

So that was that.

That gave me a start.

And yeah, here we are.

35 million views on just that one video later.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, so look, if we're looking at British rap music, it's young.

But I think things like my career take things forward.

I think there's a whole generation of kids that see, can see a documented journey of me going from the minors to having things in life and being able to pay my mum's bills.

And, you know, I don't have a relationship with my family, but I'm able to look after certain people regardless.

You know, is there a verse or a lyric of yours that still gives you goosebumps when you say it live?

Yeah, there's lots of those.

I think when I'd done the tour in Manchester, I sold out the arena it had not been done before in the rap space.

And

i i think i made friends with my mum at the time and and and brought her over to the to the situation

the the tour sorry and um

yeah in mm freewhere i'm saying that there's

i told the nurse that there's no way i'm dying on this bed

fuck that

and it was a moment where when when the when the blood clotted started going through my heart i went to get the nurse on my crutches she was very blase about the whole thing because it's just their job, right?

Like, people are dying all the time.

And I'm like, no, no, no, nurse.

Like, I'm,

you know what I mean?

And she was just looking at me as if to say, like, this is, this is what it's like.

Like, and I'm like, no, like, I need the doctor.

I'm going to need, like,

you know.

And, and, yeah, that moment happened.

So, on tour,

yeah, there was a few gooseful moments.

There's a few little gooseful moments.

Yeah,

is rap beef genuine?

How much of it is just marketing in disguise?

Yeah, I think what was happening at the time is that

I was coming from being a street guy into an industry that I don't understand.

And I'm just trying to bulldoze my way through.

It's like, I need some dog.

I need some dog.

Paying attention.

I need, yeah, because I need my career to take off.

I need these songs.

I feel like my story's worth listening to.

I feel like the music I'm making is interesting, especially compared to what's going on.

And so I was trying to just bulldoze my way through.

And

in in doing so,

I was just being clumsy and not caring.

It was what it was, right?

And so then when, I remember when Chipmunk dissed me back, I was like,

I was happy about it.

And in a sense, I was like,

I remember being at my mum's house, actually.

And I was like, mum, Chipmunks made a diss track.

And she's like, She's listening to it.

She's like, who does he think he's talking to?

But I'm like, mum, you don't understand.

I'm a hustler, you can't give me numbers.

You can't give me numbers because I just know what to do with them.

So, I just from that, what I think people don't understand is,

you know, when you watch a boxing match and one fighter, say Mayweather,

he just wins the first seven rounds,

and then the other fighter is desperately trying to come back, and he wins a round.

And Mayweather's sort of backing off and moving and slipping and being neat because he knows he's won.

Like,

I was never never interested in the back and forth of calling names.

I sort of respected Chipmunk as a lyricist.

It was like the last thing I wanted to happen.

I couldn't be bothered with someone calling me names because I wasn't a rapper.

I wasn't a music guy.

It's like I take it personal if people say things about me.

So I wasn't playing that game really.

I was strategically making my way up because I had a goal.

And with all due respect, I couldn't give a fuck about Chipmunk or any or the industry.

It's like, my mum can't die in this stage that she's going through.

and i don't give a fuck i don't care what i have to do to get up you understand and that was the nature of me turning up to tottenham and you know i was doing things that my whole heart was on the line you know when we was out people say oh he went to tottenh for half an hour it's like no we wasn't we was there all night

um and it was it was a serious situation tottenham's not a joke place

you know but you know we went there and anything could happen it was it was it was dangerous you were turning those things around really quickly as well i seem to remember you timestamping yeah when different

when uh things were posted things were responded to yeah it's like i'm using boxing analogies because that's it's a thing i understand right but it's like

fighting a dangerous fighter with a big punch sometimes sometimes you've got to try and get him out of there early so i was just firing back quick that was my strategy for the situation was just bam bam and knock him off putting pressure on him to do yeah just i was applying pressure because it was like, if I can, if I can put this to bed early doors, Conor McGregor, Aldo, if the fight would have gone on more than 13 seconds, more than

two minutes, would it have been the same fight when fatigue starts to kick in and everyone's sweating and the punches are less impactful, you know?

But Connor got in there and got it done early doors.

And that's what goes down in history.

You know, so I was going in to try and take the win early doors.

So then the end bit of the situation that was like like all a little bit confusing, I was just sort of playing chess then because at the end of the day, it's like I've got a career, like I've got numbers enough to build like a future

at that point.

I'm not interested in calling names.

I like Chipmunk, I think he's a nice guy.

Who cares?

Doesn't work in a diss track, though.

Like, who like who cares?

Yeah, like you call me names and we're gonna do it, like, whatever, but who cares?

I don't care.

There's real shit going on.

You understand what I'm saying?

I had to focus on the real shit.

I was doing three or four festivals a week and I was just banking the cash.

And that's why by the time it came to getting the Lambo, I was just focused on building the brand.

You understand?

And unfortunately, this day and age is Instagram and exposure.

I don't necessarily like it.

But when it's a part of your job description, you better get it done.

How much was the solutions that you came up with?

How much of them were emergent?

I just trust my taste.

I trust my ability to make decisions now and to follow principles.

And how much of this was a plan?

How much of this was I have goal?

I've reverse engineered the direction.

Does that make sense?

How much you sort of making decisions as you go and how much of it is prescriptive and prescribed in advance to help you get through things?

In terms of sort of that particular situation, all of that.

It seems

in retrospect, life makes a lot of sense.

You can string a narrative together.

I knew that I needed to do this.

The bike crash helped me to get over.

But at least in the beginning, these first opportunities, you understood that, okay, this feels serious.

This feels like it's worth putting my entire heart on the line for.

I have nothing else to lose here.

I need to do this, or I'm going to go in this

darker, more difficult direction, because that's the only other one that's available to me.

Yeah.

How much of that were you aware of while it was happening?

So this book that I'm writing is on unorthodox strategy

because that's what it's been all the way through.

Because you come from an unorthodox situation.

You've got a plan.

I believe strategy is at the foundation of all victory.

No matter what game you're in.

And I think if you're just walking into something blind and like hoping it goes well,

it's like it's unsustainable and unrealistic because at some point you will come unstuck and it's snakes and labbers.

And once you've gone down one of the snakes, you've gone backwards.

So for me, I boxed for four years pretty seriously.

And what I realized during boxing is at the time I was emotionally unstable because of what I had going on at home, which would mean some days I'd go in and be the sort of biggest amateur prospect in the gym.

And some days I'd go in, have a quick cry in the changing room, and just get my head punched off all day.

So,

I could understand that, like, I've got a journey to go on in terms of like healing and dealing with this sort of family situation that I've got going on.

So, then I decided to step into music

because I felt like I had a skill set.

Essentially, I'm a storyteller and I felt like I'm good with language, descriptive language or whatever.

But I always just had the bigger picture in mind of where I'm going.

So therefore, when opportunities to propel me towards my bigger picture turn up, I take them.

without hesitation.

And that's where I'm faster than a lot of people because a lot of people don't have their intention set clear in the mind.

And then when an opportunity does arise,

yeah, they're too busy like laughing with the mates about it, or they've not even prepared, they've not even tried to become the person that is ready to receive

the situation.

Does that make sense?

It's the old adage of

you don't have to get ready if you stay ready.

You've got to be him before it happens.

So, by the time I had limelight, and you know, I'm a rapper that's doing the most numbers, I set the record and this and the recording, I was, I was, I was him walking into that because, in my mind, I was already living it every day.

I was looking at, like, you know, I've, I, I had nothing to say nice about any of any of the rappers because I come from boxing.

I just seen them all as my opponents.

So, I'd watch what he was doing.

I think, I'd think he ain't like me.

You can't do it like I have done it.

And, you know, he makes a gangster song.

I think he's not lived the way I've lived.

When it comes to that self-belief,

how do you have like what is the evidence if you don't already have proof?

If that makes sense, like you are believing that you can do a thing that you haven't yet done and don't have any reliable evidence you can do yet, other than

I think I got this.

Yeah.

Again, it's the small things.

So when before when we spoke about the small challenges lead to the big challenges not coming if you don't overcome them,

it's overcoming the small challenges that sort of give you the confidence to know that you can, do it.

So, I just started small, like a driving license.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, I'm going to get my driving license and I'm going to get a car and I'm going to be driving on the roads.

Simple thing, right?

But what people don't take into consideration is if you're in jail when you're 16, you didn't get your GCSEs.

When you go out into the world, into like you know, official situations,

you, you, you feel like you're a

jungle creature in the zoo,

right?

You're a wild animal.

So, you know, studying for a driving test every night before bed is foreign.

Like, it's not your remit.

So, I just started with simple things and believing I can study for six weeks straight, turn upon my test, ace the test, and get myself a car.

I just started with little things like that.

And then I take the confidence from that.

I'd put it under my belt and then you start dreaming bigger and bigger.

And then eventually, I just had the minerals to

design the bigger picture in my head.

I thought if all these little things are working here, it means that I can sort of design my own future.

So I just started to picture it.

And these big ones like your house, where you're going to live,

I explain it as a description box that you got to fill.

Right.

And if you don't

fill in a box on the description box,

you leave it to random chance.

Do you know what I mean?

So if you if you you leave the house box unthingy, then

whatever house you're gonna live in, you've just left that to random selection.

That's intention, intention, and but it has to be you need to be pinpoint accurate.

I was walking past a guy in London the other day, he's like, you know, the up-and-coming guys now they respect me because I've done good or whatever.

And he's like, He's like, bro, I'm trying to do well.

And I'm like, Where are you going to be in five years?

And he just couldn't answer the question.

It was a bad answer they gave me.

I said, It's a bad answer.

So, you need to know,

you need to really know.

It needs to be be in detail.

And that's who I was.

I knew in detail how I was going to live, you know, what car I was going to drive, you know,

what life I was going to live, how that I'd be functional.

I would be my higher self.

You know, and it's all just things that like I've just spent time designing.

So when it does drop into play, I'm like,

yeah.

I always believed that that's what was going to happen, you know.

Speaking of opportunities, you don't do that many collabs.

No,

why TD

TD

is this guy that was sat in his mum's house in his bedroom at his computer desk at the exact same stage where I was when I had five mixtapes that no one gave a shit about, right?

And that's not to say that, like, nobody gave a shit about what he was doing at that time, but I related to his situation.

You know what I mean?

He's, he's, he's about to transcend and he's from Sheffield, Sheffield, it's the north, and people saying up to me, king of the north, or whatever, like

it's that journey of

there was a snobbery in London for anybody outside of London coming into the industry and breaking bread, and someone had to kick that door off because that's not fair, right?

And so, for me, TD was a direct representative of the guys that of the people I was representing, you know, and I seen, um, and by the way, like he'd done the work, do you know what I mean?

And he, he'd, he'd made a beat, um,

and he'd like called me out.

And enough people used to get

his fans to tag

the person he wanted to do lyrics over an existing beat in the car.

He was like, tag bugs, Malone, in the comments or whatever.

So I just respected that work because, you know, by the time I got on firing a booth with Charlie Sloth, I'd done the work to be there.

I was five mixtapes in, five years in, and however many freestyles.

So I deserved my opportunity, you know.

So

by the time TD had done the work

and I heard the B, I was like, oh,

right.

And I seen his energy.

I just leaned into it because I thought, you're the exact type of an individual that like.

I relate to.

You've been sat at that desk in your mum's house, in your bedroom for years.

You fall out for blue chair, the office chair thing.

And you've been doing the work and you've you've had them moments where no one believes in you and you're starting to struggle to believe in yourself so i just relate you know so i leaned into it um

and then i'd done the track and then i went to the mum's house

you know what i'm saying and just like went and had a chat to him and and and looked him in his eyes and and

you know just had that moment that that allows him to feel that flipping it, actually, I'm enough.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

Isn't it funny that it comes back to that?

You know,

we're giving ourselves, I think everybody is trying to find a good enough reason externally to believe that they are enough internally.

It's like, I just want to know that I'm enough.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All of us, that's like the human condition, in it.

I think that's the thing that we all struggle with.

I definitely like

did and do at some points.

I think when I get into new territory, I um,

yeah, I still suffer with doubting myself.

Yeah.

And I think that's the challenge of

climbing to the next level.

I think it's interesting with authenticity and what it means to remain authentic when that treadmill of fame switches on.

Authenticity is an interesting challenge when you're living in a different universe to where you started, keeping perspective about what that was, keeping your eye on the ball, not getting distracted from what the main thing is.

and then also not

not trying to continue climbing a mountain that you're already at the top of i've already done this thing i don't need to do that thing again yeah

yeah and it's um

it's evolution

i always talk about like um

crocodiles and

they're from the dinosaur days man they're like the

only creature to have evolved all the way through to like modern day

you know that level of adapting to the terrain is unheard of the t-rex is gone they're all gone and that's how i look at any game in rap music i'm the one that just kept evolving evolving adapting evolving to the new terrain it's snowing now or whatever it is um

and and diversifying i just think it i think it's a big deal i think if you're not if you don't have the ability to evolve then it's game over at some point i think it's it's that simple

dude i really appreciate you i think you are

a really fantastic role model for the north and a fucking fascinating human i'm so so glad that you came through today oh thank you i appreciate you um having me on i feel like um

yeah this is a moment in my career that i'm I'm happy about, you know, because I'm on the other side of the camera

in a situation that i've been sort of watching and respecting yourself and respecting the types of guests that you get on so for you to sit

hopefully i've i've shared something of value you know

hopefully i've i've shared something of value you absolutely have bugs in along ladies and gentlemen thank you

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