Stormzy has described getting "super depressed" while recording his debut album. Speaking on the first episode of Louis Theroux Interviews, the 29-year-old said it had been “difficult to handle” balancing his personal and professional life while 2017's Gang Signs And Prayer was being produced.
“I came into music when I was 19 or 20 and I’m becoming a man, I’m growing,” he said. "I’m going on my journey as a man and I’m also trying to figure out how to be the greatest artist.
“(I’m) also in a relationship…and I’m also being a family man, a son, a provider and I’m also trying to provide and lead in my community, my people. It was very overwhelming and difficult to handle all of those things while I was making an album.
“I would often just crash out, or get super depressed or super withdrawn or super reclusive and disappear. I would just stay at home and smoke a lot of weed.
"It was just a feeling, overwhelmingly, of ‘I actually can’t handle this’ which was also a new feeling to me because I was always a very capable child. I would break down, it was super heavy.”
In a wide-ranging chat with Theroux, which aired last night (October 25), Stormzy also discussed his childhood, his strained relationship with his father and his dating life - including his split with newly announced Love Island host Maya Jama. He said he had made “mistakes” during their relationship, describing break-ups as the “biggest catalyst for growth” as well as “the biggest loss a man can have”.
Stormzy revealed that, growing up, he had been stabbed twice and admitted he had not fully considered the ramifications of losing multiple friends to violence at a young age. “(These) things are easy to discuss from the suburbs, from my sofa…but it’s still people’s lives and realities,” he told Theroux.
He also discussed the anger he had felt towards his father, who had left his mother and started a new family before approaching him to ask for favours following his success, but said he now took a more forgiving perspective. “I know he’s sorry. I’m going to speak to him,” he said.
The rapper’s new album, This Is What I Mean, is due on November 25, three years after his most recent release Heavy Is The Head. Last month he released hit single Mel Made Me Do, along with an accompanying 10-minute, cameo-packed music video which featured Theroux, among other famous faces.
