In December 2022 – just as his music career was on the up – things came crashing down for the British-Gambian rapper Pa Salieu. Four years earlier, Salieu had been involved in a mass altercation between a group of men in Coventry, where he was raised. Two men were stabbed; one, a close friend of Salieu’s, Fidel Glasgow, died from his injuries. Salieu was convicted on charges of violent disorder and possessing a bottle as an offensive weapon. He was sentenced to 33 months in prison, of which he served 16 and a half.
This one-off documentary follows the now 28-year-old after his release, as he attempts to rebuild his once-flourishing career, which had seen him perform at Glastonbury, appear on Jimmy Fallon’s US talkshow, and win the BBC’s feted Sound Of tastemaker poll in 2021. The result is somewhere between a PR exercise for Salieu, a cautionary afterschool special for younger viewers and an indictment of the underfunded and overprivatised Probation Service.
For those unfamiliar with Salieu’s output, it does well to situate him within the wider UK rap canon, and to emphasise the adulation that surrounded his debut mixtape, Send Them to Coventry. Listeners were hypnotised by its patchwork of grime, Afrobeats, dancehall and more, or as music journalist Flashy Sillah puts it: “This felt like [fellow British rapper] J Hus but on steroids.” We learn, too, about the deprivation that characterised Salieu’s early life, and the small-time drug dealing he engaged in as a teen. “I was selling weed – people may try and glamorise it, but it’s just something people have got to do,” he says, matter-of-factly. He doesn’t romanticise street life here; when it comes to the incident that led to his stint in prison, Salieu says: “It started as self-defence, but it led to getting carried [away] in the moment … I take responsibility for punching, I take responsibility for drinking, because it didn’t help me with how I acted.”
For young people watching (BBC Three’s target demographic spans ages 16 to 34), you imagine some of what he says may be of great use – not least when he reads his prison diaries and recalls the horrors he encountered inside, as well as the grief and survivor’s guilt that persisted over Glasgow’s death: “If only I could’ve got stabbed instead.” He has an easy charisma, making it all the more shocking when he lurches into despondency. “I can’t relate to people no more, because of the loss,”, he adds.
When he was sentenced, the judge said that he wanted Salieu to “focus on getting your life back on track and make the most of your talents, which I trust you will be able to do”. Now, he hopes to leave the UK again to tour in Europe. As he is still on probation, however, he needs permission to do so. Except that he can’t get an answer from his probation officer. His management team have been told that their query has been forwarded to a more senior officer, but that was weeks ago and there’s been no update. In the end, Salieu doesn’t hear back, but decides to go anyway. Whether it’s the right decision to travel to Sweden and Norway – and risk being recalled to prison – is arguable. But the fact that he can’t get an answer either way speaks to a system in crisis. Nor were the programme makers able to get a response to their queries: “We reached out to the probation services for comment but did not receive a reply,” reads a pre-credits card. Perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising; the House of Commons’ public accounts committee recently described the service as “unsustainable”.
The Trials of Pa Salieu is lightweight in many ways; the interviews with Salieu are impactful but short, and there aren’t any voices from outside his inner circle – bar Sillah – to give more of a rounded profile of Salieu’s career prospects post-release. Even so, Salieu’s sense of remorse is palpable. He could’ve walked away from the brawl, he says, adding that “that one choice changed my life”. But it’s difficult to make a film that’s both a triumphant ode and a critique of the UK justice system, and there are a few questions it leaves unanswered. Among them: if it’s this difficult for a musician signed to a major record label to restart their career after prison, what hope is there for the other 99.9% of the population?
• The Trials of Pa Salieu aired on BBC Three and is on iPlayer now
