Eight years is a long time to be out of the game for a rapper. That’s nearly 3,000 days away from the spotlight, out of the charts, out of sight and out of mind. Taking a break of that scale isn’t advisable for any artist, let alone a young rapper still on the rise. Yet this is exactly what Tinie Tempah did when, at 29 years old with seven No 1s and two Brit Awards to his name, he hit the brakes.
“I felt like a Lil Wayne or a Justin Bieber in the sense that I’ve been doing it a long time, so I always said to myself that when I got to 30, I’d take a break,” he says now, still only 36 but passing for late twenties in an oversized grey hoodie and sneakers. “My life had been so surreal and I wanted to do normal things: hang out with my friends, have kids, try other hobbies.” He has a purple belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
