Jordan Stephens’ new memoir feels encyclopedic in scope. Masculinity, psychedelics, body dysmorphia, infidelity, the #MeToo movement, cocaine, and an Afro-Brazilian religion called Candomblé all vie for space in the near 300 pages of Avoidance, Drugs, Heartbreak and Dogs. There are, though, two words which are conspicuous by their absence – the words many would deem to be the most defining of his life so far – “Rizzle” and “Kicks”.
“I didn't ever want it to be a memoir in the typical celebrity sense,” Stephens, 32, tells me when we meet at his publisher’s office in south London, a cup of tea in hand. “There are people who write a book and put their face on the cover, and it's like a tell-all or whatever.
And, listen, one day, wouldn't it be fun to write about the genesis of Rizzle Kicks and what we went through. I'm not against that, but I wanted my first piece of writing to be an investigation of emotion. I had a dream of writing a book that would live beyond me.”
When Stephens began writing his memoir six years ago, he wasn’t to know that, in the same month as its release, he would be reuniting with his former band member Harley Alexander-Sule for Rizzle Kicks’ first single since their hiatus almost a decade ago. Nor did he realise quite how monumental the reception to the announcement of the reunion would be. Unsurprisingly, then, our conversation ends up inevitably veering towards the band.
“We went to the studio and we're like, let's just see if the music we make is any good and it was,” Stephens says nonchalantly. “And, yeah, the reaction has been insane.”
Undoubtedly, the nostalgia factor is part of the appeal of Rizzle Kicks’ renaissance. The early 2010s, when the group were in their heyday with hit singles like Down with the Trumpets and Mama do the Hump, have become synonymous with a misty-eyed, Olympics-adjacent utopian vision of pre-Brexit Britain.
Alongside the return of Oasis and the Labour government, Rizzle Kicks are doing their bit for the Cool Britannia revival, and it is working: when the duo announced a live show at Camden’s Koko, it sold out within minutes. “Rizzle Kicks returning is the herald of something… a turning point in Britain… perhaps now we can begin to heal,” wrote one X/Twitter user.
“Nostalgia sells, and obviously 2012 was great,” Stephens says. “But we're actually really trying to avoid leading into the nostalgia too much because we really like this album. We really like the music we've been making.
“Obviously, I'm gassed that people want to see Trumpets and Mama Do The Hump live,” he continues. “We're not going to be wanky about it – that’s also going to be so much fun.”
But it is the impetus behind Rizzle Kicks’ hiatus, and the intervening years in Stephens’ life, that are the focus of his book. By 2012, the band had sold over a million singles and 600,000 albums in the UK. But their career as a pair came to a halt in 2015 – a result, Stephens explains, in part due to his struggles with substance abuse.
“It was partly because Harley was suffering from anxiety, but also, obviously I was an addict,” he says.
Much of the book is characterised by a similar disarming honesty from Stephens. Not least because its focal point is what Stephens describes as “the fuck up”, which turns out to be an intensely personal account of him cheating on his ex-girlfriend – fuelled by a dependence on alcohol and cocaine.
Divided into before and after the incident, Stephens charts the self-destructive behaviours in the lead up – his “medals of dishonour” – and the subsequent rebuilding of his life in the aftermath. “It’s still a big taboo in modern culture, discussing infidelity, even though it happens a lot,” he says.
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Stephens is excruciatingly honest about the depths of the depression he spiralled into during this period. The desperate attempts to get his girlfriend back, running away to Brazil. More than once, he discusses suicidal ideation.
The spectre over all of this, though, is addiction. Growing up in Brighton, he describes being surrounded by drugs from a young age – his father was a heroin addict when Stephens was born. The first time he smoked weed, he was just 12 years old. As he grew older, weed turned to harder substances — cocaine, alcohol, and self-medicating his ADHD by overdosing on focus drug Modafinil everyday for 18 months.
“I had a bad relationship with cocaine because that was like kind of medicating me [for my ADHD],” he continues. “But I didn't realise but the relationship was more self-destruction.”
Stephens hasn’t sworn off all drugs, though. Much of the book is dedicated to his exploration of psychedelics – specifically mushrooms and DMT – which he believes to be medicines which aided his convalescence.
“They're non-addictive, they just are very powerful, and, when taken in the right environment can be transformative,” he says. It is clearly a topic that animates him.
“I don’t want this to sound too wild, but, based on my experiences of psychedelics, I think it's insane that it's not the number one thing that everyone is discussing. Because like…I smoked the bark of a tree [DMT] and left my body. I created a world, and I felt an unbelievable sense of joy and unity, and then just floated around. Like, everyone should experience this!”
“I know I’m not an expert,” he continues. “But I think that drugs should be decriminalised because much of the issue is information and regulation.”
While Stephens still uses psychedelics, he has been his version of sober – without alcohol and cocaine – for six years.
“Alcohol and coke have f***ed me,” Stephens says. “Cocaine's sh*t, it's expensive, it's cut with so much bollocks that people aren't even really snorting real cocaine these days, it’s Speed and Benadryl, if they're lucky. And alcohol is the gateway drug to everything.”
“If we were to talk about the incidences where men are perpetrating violence, let's have a look at how many of those men were drunk.”
He hints at a topic that he also tackles head on in the book – the thorny issue of masculinity. The year that Stephens cheated on his ex-girlfriend, 2017, coincided with the birth of the #MeToo movement. A self-proclaimed feminist, Stephens was suddenly plunged into a personal reckoning with his relationships with women, at the same time as the world was pointing the finger at men.
As he blithely writes, “[It was] a great time to have been cheated on, to be honest, from a woman’s perspective.”
“Denial was completely unavoidable,” he says. “It just forced me to do even more analysis. And it wasn't just that relationship – I was looking back on how I'd been previously, and I was definitely neglectful emotionally, unaware of healthier choices I could have made.”
It prompted Stephens to write a viral article Guardian about toxic masculinity in the early #MeToo days, for which he was widely praised. His feelings now about the movement, though, are more complex.
“The initial aspect of #MeToo was really positive, because there was the really bad sh*t that was driving it,” Stephens says. “But then there was there was like a trickle-down effect…I wonder if the ‘trash men’ thing has gone a little bit too far now. It [#MeToo] might have slightly lost its aims.”
“It’s a tough one,” he continues. “I love masculinity, I love boys, I love men. It's really important, for the sake of everyone's sanity, that there's balance in that space. This idea that women are inherently good and men are inherently bad is f***ig wild to me.”
Since Stephens started writing his book six years ago, the online incel movement, led by figures like self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate, has ballooned. It is a topic that troubles him – he is cautious to strike a balance between encouraging men to take accountability, and risking alienating them.
“These red pill dudes…they’re just terrified of women,” he says. “The real issue with boys and men is disconnection – from themselves and from society. So they're gonna look for connection elsewhere.
“People are entitled to anger, men are at the forefront of damage done to society, of course,” he continues. “But it's a small proportion, and there are other variables I would argue might be more important in certain scenarios to look at.”
Part of Stephens’ recovery has been the solace he has found in his current relationship with former Little Mix star turned solo singer Jade Thirlwall. After meeting through a mutual friend, the pair began dating in 2020. How, then did, she respond to being presented with a book confessing her partner’s darkest relationship sins?
“Jade's been amazing about it, very supportive,” he says. “I wrote the whole book and didn't let her see any of it because I was worried that her reactions would affect what I was saying. Obviously, a lot of the stuff I'd obviously discussed with her already. And then I had the very terrifying experience of just giving her the manuscript and waiting.
“It took her about four or five days, maybe a week, to read. And then she just showed me all her favourite parts, and that was it. She's been supportive ever since.”
When talking about Thirlwall, Stephens’ face lights up.
“It’s great, I get really excited abut her doing well, and I love being a part of it,” he says. “In the past, she’s insinuated that it might have been slightly tougher for her to find a partner because some men feel intimidated by a successful woman, whereas I find it really hot and very relaxing.
“There'll be a room when I go into and everyone's more interested in Jade, and it's great,” he continues. “And then on the flip side, Jade will come and watch me do a talk about the book. We’re both self-sustaining.”
It is also this, he concludes, that allowed him to write with such soul-baring honesty.
“I definitely wouldn’t have been able to write the book if I didn't feel secure in my relationship,” he smiles. “So I’ve got her to thank for a lot of things.”
