Stormzy has revealed that while the creation of his new album was "really stressful", the opportunity to process his personal issues was "therapeutic".
The 29-year-old released his highly-anticipated third studio album This Is What I Mean on Friday, with many fans and critics praising the 12-track content. He appeared as a co-host on Jo Whiley's BBC Radio 2 show on Monday where he discussed his feelings behind making the album.
The Croydon-born rapper spoke about how much of the songs on the track where created during a specially curated music camp on Osea Island, in an estuary in Essex, alongside producers and fellow artists. He told Whiley: “It felt very refreshing and it felt therapeutic.
"A lot of artists say that it felt like therapy but it’s never really felt like that for me. I don’t know why but when I’ve heard artists talk about that I’m like ‘Ah that’s interesting’.
“For me, it’s just always been something I do and something I love but it’s never felt like going in and having therapy. And I think this time, it did feel like that, it felt like I had to be really still and be really self-reflective.”
He added: “In hindsight, there were times when it was really stressful. So my memory of the camp, it was really beautiful, we went away, we made the album, but when I get into the intricate details of it there was a really stressful time and a time when everything was weighing quite heavy.”
The rapper stressed that it is natural for any person who confronts and unpacks their personal emotions to find it a "tiresome task", but he also stressed that at the end of it he could breathe. He recalled how from 2019 to 2020, which saw the release of his second album Heavy Is The Head, he was so busy he didn't have time to deal with personal matters.
“I think, as soon as that was all over and I had to go make some music, I was like ‘damn’,” he said. "My relationship, my relationship with my dad, my relationship with God, my relationship with myself, loads of things just came out and it’s just here…
“For me, it was ‘I’ve got to talk about this’. That’s just my job and that’s what it means to be an artist and if I’m committed to being an artist, I can’t fabricate it.
“With any great artists, I’m sure like your Princes of the world and your Adeles and your Whitneys and all these amazing artists, sometimes they might feel things and then think ‘I would rather not go into this Pandora’s box, I’d rather not confront it’ but it’s our job and it’s also our superpower.
“To be vulnerable and to take feeling and to take what we’re going through and make music out of it. No matter how naked that makes you feel.”
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