Michael Ebenezer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr.
Wicked Skengman. The Problem. Stiff Chocolate. Big Mike.
Stormzy.
“Talk about me you better hashtag Merky” warns the polyonymous rapper at the start of his defiant early track, Know Me From. The word, popularised by Stormzy himself, has become more than slang, more than a hashtag. Merky is an idea, a movement, a philosophy. Merky is a talisman, a prayer for those of us who dare to envisage a brighter future; a bigger, better, blacker Britain.
After the release of Wicked Skengman 4 in 2014, the London born rapper rose to stratospheric success in a matter of months. Within four years, he was one of the most successful grime artists in the UK with Prayer – the first of his three number one albums – still on the rise, multiple award wins and a BRIT under his Dior belt. At this point, many artists might pause, take stock and dive back into the studio to recreate the elusive magic of that album.
Not Stormzy. In 2018, he launched the #Merky Foundation, promising £10 million over 10 years to organisations, movements, and charities to empower black people and fight for racial equality in the UK. In 2020, the Foundation donated £500,000 to the Black Heart Foundation’s ‘Each Day. Every Day’ campaign, launched in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, which supports young scholars from underrepresented and under resourced communities. Five years on and halfway through the Foundation’s initial mission, the impact is undeniable.
“It’s important for you to take that and say ‘Okay, how can I create a culture around this whole thing’, because culture moves the world,” Jay Z told Stormzy in the intro to the latter’s paradigm shifting headline set at Glastonbury in 2019. “The world is ready for it… that’s culture.”
And that is exactly what Stormzy has done. He has turned his own success into a culture. I was at the Pyramid stage that night in 2019. I watched as, before a predominantly white audience, headlining a festival with an overwhelmingly white line up, Stormzy made history as the first Black British solo artist to headline the festival. Clad in a Banksy-designed Union Jack stab-proof vest he sweated, spat, and swore fealty to his antecedents.
Wiley, Skepta, Giggs and Chip are but a few of the Black British rap giants upon whose shoulders Stormzy stands. But Big Mike is himself a giant and he has used his triumph to lift up those around him so that we can see further. Ceding the stage at various points to other rappers, a BMX crew, a black pas de deux and ten-year-old Princess K. I remember watching this tiny dancer in a red Adidas tracksuit centre herself on the stage. “I hadn’t realised how powerful words can be,” Stormzy spoke as the girl moved. When joined by the rapper and a crew of adult dancers, she stared blazingly up at them, her face joyful and defiant.
Stormzy’s legacy will be manifold, but in essence can be boiled down to what happened on that stage in 2019. Converting his own spectacular ascendency not into a story of Black exceptionalism, but into a belief and platform that allows Black British talent to rise. Faced with his majesty, people cannot help but believe in their own. This is The Stormzy Effect.
This effect was initially coined to explain the massive boom in Black British admissions to Cambridge following the creation of The Stormzy Scholarships. In 2017, the year before the launch of the #Merky Foundation, Cambridge admitted just 58 Black British students to undergraduate degree courses. By 2020 this had risen to 137 and has stayed at this level, representing roughly 6% of admissions. There were clearly multiple factors at play, but the Stormzy effect is undeniable. The scholarship programme has now been expanded and continues to break down barriers that keep Black kids out of elite institutions.
My own story, too, is inextricably linked to that of Big Mike. In 2018, Stormzy launched the #Merky Books imprint at Penguin Random House “with a clear ambition to publish books that will own – and change – the mainstream”. The imprint has flourished into a powerhouse, publishing the writing of people of colour in the UK and boasting huge names such as Malorie Blackman, Wretch 32, and Caster Semenya.
But #Merky Books’ true magic lies in its eye for new and emerging work. Last year they published Jade LB’s internet-breaking Black British cult classic Keisha The Sket and are actively seeking out stories from marginalised voices. I first heard about the #Merky Books New Writers’ Prize when a friend recommended me a book that turned out to be one of the inaugural winners, Hafsa Zayyan. The prize aims to discover work from underrepresented young talent.
In Autumn of 2022, I was invited along with nineteen other shortlisted writers to the #Merky Books Writers’ Camp. The atmosphere at the camp typifies the mood Stormzy has created; a group of hungry young writers gathered together, daring to believe that their dreams could become manifest. Earlier this year, my submission was awarded the 2022 Prize. My novel, hitherto hidden away in a secret folder on my laptop, will be published next year.
Stormzy dares us to dream. And in dreaming we create a new future. This is his legacy. This is The Stormzy Effect.
