When Stormzy launched into the opening bars of Shut Up at the O2 last Sunday — a thrilling flashpoint in the first of three incendiary homecoming gigs at London’s biggest arena — the 20,000-strong crowd roared along with such ferocity that it almost felt as if they could be heard in the spot seven-and-a-half miles away where the then-21-year-old MC first recorded the game-changing freestyle.
That was back in 2015, beside South Norwood Lake in south London, and the man we know today as a genre-leading, Glastonbury-headlining, chart-topping, book-publishing, university-granting titan of British culture was on the cusp of stardom.
