As the first recipients of the Stormzy Scholarship to Cambridge in 2018, Drew Chateau and Joseph Vambe didn’t know what to expect. They had already been accepted, to do law, and human, social and political sciences respectively; this was the flake in the 99.

Joseph Vambe, Drew Chateau and Stormzy. Photograph: Karis Beaumont/The Guardian Stormzy and the students I feel like there was a period when music was about the industry. People worried about whether a radio station would play them,” he says in his basso profundo voice, referring to a fear among artists of speaking out politically. “Now people are just walking their truth.” DC One of the reasons I wanted to go into law is my family situation. When we were made homeless, we got legal advice, including how to get accommodation for the night. If we didn’t have that, we would have been on the street. That was my main driver, and financial stability. I’d love to be able to start a legal charity that also supports people in social housing. Even though landlords shouldn’t, they do reject a lot of people who are on benefits. I’m also a creative person and want to do theatre, acting and writing. The rapper will be heading to his hometown for a 2023 UK Exclusive show - his own curated ‘This Is What We Mean Day’ on Friday 18th August 2023 as part of Luno presents All Points East. For all the ways he may have grown during that time, his politics remain much as they were. He’s still a big fan of Jeremy Corbyn, even after Labour’s 2019 trouncing at the polls under its former leader. When I ask him how he felt about the election, a long sigh fades into short silence as he seeks to conjure the appropriate metaphor. “It’s like when you encourage children to make the right decision and they make the wrong one even after you’ve explained everything. And you think, A’ight, that’s your decision… you try have your cake and eat it then.” He shrugs and then lets out a big laugh. “Even the way things have panned out… I’m not gonna say I told you so, but…”

Today’s shoot is in part a celebration of the news that HSBC will be sponsoring an additional 30 scholarships at the university, and some of the past scholars’ achievements. Drew Chateau, who studied law and is now a trainee at a top firm , and Joseph Vambe, who studied human, social and political sciences, and is now a Labour councillor, were the first two students on the scholarship. Until today they have not been publicly named – Stormzy, and the university, wanted to protect them from any unnecessary pressure during their studies. You know, when you do something half positive, people are like, woah, you are Mother Teresa. And it’s like, yo, chill man Overall, he’s looking forward to his birthday, though. “In a beautiful way – because I mean, I thank God I’ve done a lot of growing these past four or five years. I’ve done the serious bit, so now it’s just enjoy,” he says. These last scenes of the day, in their own way, all say something about Stormzy. A man with ambition but also with intention, who is trying to keep it real. He’s sitting in a space of joy and faith, but is also concerned by the idea that he might come across as cringey or insincere. He’s not perfect, and he knows it, but he’s trying to be better and move with humility and kindness towards people around him, regardless of who they are. And that counts for a lot. DC So I was born … [ Everyone laughs] No, seriously, I grew up in a single-parent household. I honestly don’t know how my mum did it. It really got tough in secondary school, because we were made homeless. You’re dealing with studying for your GCSEs but also not knowing where you’re going to stay. My family made a lot of sacrifices for me. My mum was very protective and didn’t want me disturbed while I was studying. Then she got very ill, so I was barely at school. Things were just compounding, compounding. I also have dyslexia. I was trying to find ways to learn, but everything took me longer, and I had less time to study. It was all very stressful. Stormzy came to fame more abruptly. He attended a notoriously tough school in the London suburb of Croydon and worked briefly as a manager on an oil rig, watching grime videos during his lunch break. He’d always loved music and performed where he could. In 2014, he released an independent EP. Instantly, without even having a record deal, he began getting awards and bookings on national TV.

Stormzy is also part of a consortium of buyers, including Croydon-raised footballer Wilfried Zaha, who took on ninth tier football team AFC Croydon which, “without sounding cliche”, he hopes they’ll be able to build up naturally with the help of community engagement. “The automatic comparison is Wrexham, but for us it’s just very much like, this is our home town,” he adds. Stormzy grew up in Croydon and Norbury, and is unabashedly proud of his south London roots. I tell him that he once came down to support the south London football team I play for, the Lambeth Allstars. “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!” he says enthusiastically. “I know some of them boys.” No, not at all, man,” says Stormzy, known to his mother as Michael Ebenazer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr., surveying the restaurant’s purple, gold, and velvet decor when we meet in the downstairs bar. It is not, he says, their “kind of scene.” He and Jama have worked together several times: Jama interviewed him on her drive-time radio show, and she appears in the video for his single “Big for Your Boots,” in which the two of them are hanging out—where else?—in a takeaway fast-food joint. He dedicated his song “Birthday Girl” to her. When he returned to a cold and overcast London, he got some of his male friends together and left again, for what he describes as “a spiritual and health retreat” in Dubai. There was a 7am roll call each morning with jovial hazing for those who slept in, followed by gym and a run after breakfast and plenty of talking. “It was like therapy. We didn’t call it that; we were just talking. But that’s what it was. I guess that’s been the biggest headline for me over these last few years with my friendship groups and my brothers: growth. How are we growing?”This realisation, he says, was driven by self-accountability, not self-pity; he does not lament the childhood he had, but simply recognises its limitations.“I realised, especially growing up in South London in the environment I grew up in, there’s never going to be a time anyone encourages man to go deal with his feelings.” Stormzy says. “That’s a very adult thing to think, I’m gonna go deal with my life and my character with who I am and who I want to grow to be,” he says. “There is power in vulnerability.” I last interviewed Stormzy in November 2019, shortly before the release of his last album, Heavy Is the Head. He was still on a high from headlining Glastonbury that summer, which seemed to have put something to bed. For all the accomplishments he had achieved by that time – the MOBO, Brit and BET awards, the number one albums – none had brought him tranquillity or comfort until then. Afterwards, he finally felt he could relax. In the van, recalling it, Stormzy gestures with his hands in front of his face, snatching at the air for words. The fast, thrusting, hostile-by-default register that characterises grime music is not to everybody's taste. Whatever you think about Stormzy's genre, though, this rapper is by any standards a first-rate lyricist. He's exact, economical, a master-hand at the necessary rapper's bluster and often very funny. ("I come to your club and I f*** shit up," raps this Manchester United fan in popular song Know Me From, "I'm David Moyes.") The Notes app on Stormzy's phone is crammed with fragments and couplets and chunks of verses - "bars" is the word Stormzy favours when discussing his lyrics. And his oral dexterity as a rapper extends to a general talent for chat. For now, though, as he contemplates the spring's unlikely commercial triumph, the words that tend to come to him so easily just won't. "I can't even. I can't even," Stormzy says. Out of The Ends To announce the tour, Stormzy said: “I was thinking what’s next, cos we’ve done 3 O2s, shut that down. I said to the team, we gotta do something bigger, something better, something different.