Tinie Tempah: Artist & Entrepreneur – Faith, Creativity & The Balance Between Scarcity and Abundance

0:28Well, Tiny, Tiny Temphe. We welcome you back to the Stad Guy podcast, sharing stories of excellence with those in the know for those who just know. How did you next initially connect, actually? That's a good question. So I have a sort of like mentee. Okay. And his name is Jeremiah Emmanuel. Oh, he was there with us. There you go, yeah. But I've known Jeremiah since he was like 14. So I met him. It's actually like through the BBC. So BBC did this teen award. and we went to his school in Kenetan and basically gave him an award young Nigerian kid who was act um he was an activist against like knife crime and I could just see this 14 year old with all this potential and so I was like beyond just giving the award which was kind of an orchestrated thing I actually want to put my time and energy um into like yeah just being around this guy giving him advice and incubating him a little bit he's such a lovely guy yeah and then like 10 11 years on like we're still like the best of friends i think he's in dubai now but um he was the one that basically i think he went on a trip with naxon somehow i think with richard branson or something with richard branson yeah all right little name job i was trying to avoid it but you did it um i'm richard branson and then he was like oh there's there's this guy naxon you have to meet him honestly you guys would get on like a house of fire and usually i'm like i'm kind of a little bit like in my own world and in my own space like so i was just like oh whatever like cool but he just kept on going on about it honestly you and naxon would get on like a house of fire and we met and we did then i i had the pleasure of meeting you yeah we ended up going to manchester together yeah a little voice trip with the ksi and uh logan paul and logan paul there we go yeah that was fun and it's great to finally have you here yeah today yeah how's your day going it's going good we just were um over at the buddha box which is a little gym that a few of our friends that do jiu-jitsu um teach at so we just went there had some nice lunch downstairs it's been a very uh starred guy type of day i thought it was only right you know just i love him here in the rolls royce do you get i mean i love that yeah that's great it's been proper i see the purple jiu-jitsu belt sticking out of the bag yes yes how's how did that come about uh five years of hard work six maybe six years well um uh so basically um a friend of ours who used to be my road manager he's like black belt at jiu-jitsu under like roger gracie and a guy called leo nagal and he'd been telling me about jiu-jitsu for years and years and years and when every time i would watch it i'd never understand it because it was just like to me it just looked like guys rolling around on the floor yeah so again i was like whatever whatever whatever whatever and then um I I'm on the Prince's Trust I'm an ambassador for the Prince's Trust as is Tom Hardy so one time we were somewhere I can't remember where we were and we're like a similar frame so I think he was kind of sizing up and he was like have you ever done jiu-jitsu before so obviously I knew what it was but I hadn't tried and then he invited me down and you know what life is like you know like almost like your parents can tell you something but then when someone you find that when there's someone that you think is cool that tells you something it immediately just feels different so when he said to me oh you need to come down and do jiu-jitsu i was like yeah hell yeah so um coincidentally it was kind of near me in richmond and i went down to the gym loved it all the people there were cool and yeah i've just been going ever since all the people that are in my extended circle that i know that do jiu-jitsu or mixed martial arts in general are such mellow kind and like generally focused people yeah yeah but growing up whenever i'd hear martial arts i think of like like an aggressive fighter yeah cool which is so far from the reality of the people i know who actually practice yeah i think it even calms you down a little bit more actually because yeah you're basically giving you're either surviving someone trying to choke you out or like break your limb for like five or ten minutes on the mat or you're doing the same thing to them that like after that all your like frustration all your all your energy is depleted you're you're literally like good for the day so I would kind of advise any anyone because one of my teachers actually gave me a great analogy where they were saying like every animal knows how to instinctively defend itself and it has this attacking methods defensive methods so us as humans need to know the same and I haven't done I think I tried taekwondo a little bit when i was younger but outside of that i haven't done many other martial arts but i will say brazilian jiu-jitsu all around it feels like something that every human should just know yeah well so now you are a a father yeah a music producer yeah a entertainer as well you're on tv show and many things in between content creator yeah personality investor yeah a modern generalist as I like to call it.

5:27Yeah, there we go. I call on this, we talk about this a lot on the podcast, the idea of being this modern polyhyphenate that can do many things at once thanks to the tools we have. Yeah, multi-passeted, individual, yeah. Exactly. And I feel like I wouldn't exist in a different time because without the tools I have available to me, there's no way I'd be able to frown and turn that into a business and start on the run. Incredible, isn't it? You know, it's such an amazing thing I'm grateful for and I find that to be true for you as well. In many ways, all the tools we have today allow you to do these 10 things at once that you wouldn't be able to otherwise do but i know that you initially started your career as a specialist with a focus on music i'd love to go back to those days and hear all about your introduction to the world of music and the amazing pop-off you had in your career cool and i wouldn't say you just made a career out of frowning you did way more than that bro so yeah don't don't have to be too humble it's way more than that it's amazing you're you're giving us um a slice of luxury especially for like in my opinion even though i'm a millennial to the gen z generation i feel like you're really educating them on the etiquette and a certain level of i hate the word but class it's it's way more than a frown i appreciate that uh thank you so much thank you but yeah so for me um i would say because we're obviously slightly different in age i'm 36 now i'm born in 88 so you're right because I've kind of transitioned through so many different eras and seen so much change this is one of the greatest times to be alive and in the sense that just on your one device you can communicate to the world in real time um and you know build an incredible career business for yourself etc etc um but I guess where I started it was a little bit more of like at analog time so we were listening to things like pirate radio we were still buying cds did you ever buy a cd actually maybe i don't think i personally i don't think when cds were a thing i could spend money at that point like i used cds yeah because they were my parents but you didn't buy them i never bought a cd myself fair enough i think they i think we switched to mp3 when i was 12 or something look at that so when i was 12 because this is where my journey started um so there was a group called the so solid crew and they were basically shutting down like stuff in the uk like the biggest thing especially as a young black kid from a council estate the biggest thing i'd ever seen that like almost was a reflection of myself um i'd seen it a lot in like american culture but never in the uk so that coupled with like pirate radio stations which were kind of everywhere rinse fm on top fm deja vu i could you know mission fm i could carry on listening them that was basically what my 12 year old self was like completely immersed in so for me it was like a phenomena wow like i'd seen the likes of 50 cent and buster rhymes but now it's happening in the uk and if it's happening in the uk then that means i have a shot right so I remember at 12 years old we were getting on a flight to Nigeria and I ran into Virgin Megastores which obviously doesn't exist anymore and with some money from my parents I bought the So Solid Crew album They Don't Know and when we got to Nigeria we were in the village so we got to Lagos but then we went to a place called Asaba which is like rural rural village in the southeast like part of Nigeria in a state called Delta State and I had nothing to do so all I did for the two or three weeks we were there was like listen to this album and back then you had your like inlays so you could pull out the sleeve and you could look at the artwork look at the lyrics and then there was a couple of other little bits in there and I just immersed myself in this sort of world and I wanted to be them you know like at that age you're kind of drawing logos that you like and all that So I'd kind of like memorize their logo, draw it over and over again.

9:24And then I guess by the time I got back from Nigeria, I was like, this is what I want to do. And so I had a couple of friends in school at the time who used to record pirate radio stations because where I'd moved to, it was hard for me to get the signal. So he would come in and bring in all the tapes. And so I was listening to the likes of the Dizzy Rascals, the Kano's, the Tinchy Striders, all who were from East London. I was from South London, where So Solicru was from. So again, it was like another like realization, epiphany. Wow, this is bigger than I thought. And these guys, they're not even at the stage where they're releasing music videos yet.

9:59So all I could go off was their voice and their energy and the lyrics, what they were saying. And I was just sold. I was like, this is exactly what I want to do. So from that age onwards. This was about 2005? This was about 2004, I would say. Yeah, 2004. Yeah, 2003, 2004. And so, yeah, I just started writing my own lyrics, going into like the playground at school. I had like a folder, like a proper old man, like a binding sort of folder where I had all my lyrics. And I just remember at playtime, I would gather people around and just read my lyrics off. And then I started to get a reputation in my school as being, you know, the MC guy.

10:42So then as I start, as I got to year 11, I was like, OK, cool. I want to shoot a music video. I've finally got the song I got the beat from a producer called Flukes and I was like yeah this is I've recorded loads of other things before but I was like this for me is like my first solo record I want to put make a video to this and put it out there was a tv channel at the time called Channel You which was basically a low barrier to entry so you could literally submit your video and pay a bit of money this is Pirate Radio was similar as well so you could access Pirate Radio by just not by just i guess they had to rate you or respect you as an artist or your crew and then you just pay like a they used to call it sub like subscriptions and you just kind of like pay every week that you go on there so anyway i submitted in this video wifey came on air well not really on air but just on channel you and literally it was the biggest thing on there for like about five months so it was just like number one consistently like nothing could top it did you already have the name back then tiny temper yeah so so i had already come up with the name tiny temper at 14 so two years after coming back from nigeria 14 yeah i was prior to that i had all these other different sort of nicknames street names but then i decided my artist name was going to be tiny temper at 14 and i decided it at school like during like a class i was gonna ask why where did it come from um i have i have like a really convoluted and like superfluous explanation which it doesn't land very well like to be honest with you but it was something to do with like uh the juxtaposition between the two like two personalities do you know i mean one is kind of tiny timid calm yeah and then once i get on the stage that's when the temper comes out so almost like a yin and yang i see that about you yeah there you go so it's almost like two different people so had the name from 14 by 16 i put out wifey and like i said it just went crazy so then i started doing little gigs as a 16 year old mainly in london and the outskirts of london so like hertfordshire berkshire etc and then i guess i was officially like an mc from there obviously way more stuff happened after but that was kind of the beginning amazing yeah so age 14 tiny tempos born technically you make that first hit song wifey what happens from that point so from that point like i said wifey's going crazy this is the point where people have their sony ericsson's and their nokias and you're hearing it on the i'm taking bus a lot so you're hearing it on the buses people playing it yeah people just playing it out loud so you're thinking wow this is actually happening so almost became like a local face local celebrity if you want to call it okay cool this guy's gone and done something it's resonated outside of our area that's quite cool do you get I mean so I was riding off that for a little while getting my couple of hundred pounds a show I was 16 I was very very happy got into college I went to a college called SFX went in there as a hero because they were most most people already knew my music etc etc so did like two years of that and then I decided that um in the interim period I'd released a couple of other songs I released a song called Hood Economics I released a song called Tears that has Cleo Soul on it and clear of salt at the moment she's like killing it um with soul and obviously as a solo artist but um yeah so then I got to the point where I'd finished college and I was like okay cool I think this music thing could really work like I need to fully concentrate on it obviously the parents are saying you need to go to university very strict African parents education is everything and I'm the eldest so lots of responsibility loads of siblings behind me looking at me and watching my every move so i took the brave step and i was like you know what i'm not gonna go to uni let me just have what we what they call a gap here mom and dad and they didn't understand that at all um and i remember for that first year i was kind of like a creature of very bad habits i was like waking up at like 12 in the afternoon you know just like a lazy teenage classic classic yeah everyone can relate to that yeah and i remember i was just getting uh like berated in my house like so much from my parents I almost felt a bit like a like an embarrassment because at the time there was music still wasn't that viable like especially rap music or underground music there was a lot of like very successful pop music at the time these were the eras of like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera's and Rihanna's just poking her head through and all of that so it was kind of like wait you want to be there but how are you going to do it like just focus on your books become a doctor and come and look after your family basically um so one year goes past then the second year goes past so it's like you still haven't gone to university um and then at that point i've kind of like assembled my team so i have a good team around me i'm still doing the shows the shows are ticking over maybe getting 500 pounds now do you know i mean um where i remember I went to Amsterdam around that time to do like my first kind of a broad show so yeah so that was great I think PlayStation had sponsored it or something like that so that was a huge deal but again I'm not bringing back home much money so it's all a bit like a pipe dream so I've assembled my team and then basically we started so because I'd already had like a lot of touring experience that then led into festivals and I remember I did a wireless festival like at the very beginning I did it on like a smaller stage and there were some like record label execs in the crowd so I think what happened was there was an artist that they had signed and the artist was on I think either before me or after me I can't remember which order but anyway there the state the crowd was basically like non-existent for that act and then when I came on then everyone rushed into the tent and so i think the exec saw that and was like who is this guy at the time i'd made an uh a mixtape called hood economics yeah which was basically my whole theory of how to like make it out the hood basically um and like it was very eclectic so i'd sampled like lily allen i'd sampled calvin harris girls so as a rapper from south london it was kind of like unique if that makes sense um the genre of your music's always been incredibly yeah very eclectic very experimental very crossover um yeah so anyway long story short they were like we want to have a meeting with this guy we had a meeting not too far from then we signed a record deal so I've ready I've got my record deal now they even gave me like one of those big checks you know like when you win the lottery so I'm happy take this to my parents 150 grand record deal amazing good now I can do music yeah now I can do music um so they were really happy about that I think they probably even still have that check somewhere um so then uh I'd made a couple of records one of the records that I was using on on the tour on was a song called biker babes that they had bought into and they were like we like this song but before this we think you kind of need like an underground warm-up sort of record just something that's just gonna you know break the eyes get people to familiarize themselves with you so I went in the studio of a guy called labyrinth and I made pass out and it was literally the first song outside of biker babes that i've made in this record deal situation so they're listening to pass out and they're like yeah okay cool let's just put this out soft release one extra all of this kind of stuff and we're going to just see what happens like don't expect it to go into the charts it's not anything like that we just want to warm people up before we come with biker babes and it was the anthem of the uk for 10 years yeah for 10 years there you go so we put this song out and it just changes everything changes the whole trajectory of everything and then yeah i've arrived it's amazing yeah i love that story yeah it's really amazing that when pass up came out i remember it was it was the song for everyone yeah it's crazy i think like especially at that time for me i'd never seen a song come from where i'd come from which i would say is the sort of like marginalized london you know council estates etc i hadn't i'd seen songs come out of there and do well but i hadn't seen a song come out of there and like you say just capture the whole nation just as like you know everyone was like rocking with that record um and so yeah i'd arrived and then from there the record was so big that it ended up kind of spilling into the us spilling into europe we ended up getting snoop dog on the remix and then i think the following year snoop dog um did glastonbury so then he brought me out on his performance and then we performed pass out together again another seminal moment in my career and then that took things to an even crazier level and so from like 21 i'm like riding high i'm like top of my game everything i'm doing is working what a time to be alive what would you call the genre of pass up the music i would say it i would say that it was um experimental kind of electronic music that's what i would call it but still with the the the the lyrics of a rap song yeah time exactly but i was having this conversation with someone like literally yesterday like the way rappers evolved now you know you have your playboy carties and he's a rapper but what he does is so different to like a drake or like do you get me so i think rap has evolved to a point where you're still technically a rapper but you're sonic the way you approach the records the way you deliver your lyrics can be kind of whatever yeah playboy cardi and opium is nearly like rock and roll exactly like emo rap rock and rock exactly yeah and you then started your own fashion brand right was that around the pass out time so no it wasn't around the pass out time um that was that was 2015 that i started the brand so the past so pass out came out 2010 so i've by then i've released a record called frisky that's gone to number two in the charts i've released a record called written in the stars that's gone to number one in the charts and that has gone to number 11 in the billboard charts as well in america i've released miami to ibiza with the swedish house mafia i forgot where that went to in the charts in the uk but that's the number one no i wasn't it wasn't but I think it was a top five record and I'll tell you a funny story at that point I hadn't even gone to it was one of the places like I hadn't gone to it was either Ibiza or Miami I can't remember now because I've been there so many times since but at that point when I read that record I hadn't even been to either Miami or Ibiza I love that it's like me with Stud they oh yeah I had never been there you'd never been there exactly so for me it was like me just imagining all the things that like someone in that environment would do and the lifestyle that comes with it and so obviously that we recorded it in chiswick yeah then the swedish house mafia they took it back to sweden worked on it and then yeah it became a colossal record that ended up at number one in the billboard the billboard dance charts well in the states so again everything has gone crazy it basically is global like global success um and then i become an ambassador for the british fashion council so big up caroline uh and all of the um uh bfc members big up dylan jones as well at the time showing me a lot of love over at gq um so basically yeah i've become an ambassador for the british fashion council after getting gq's best dressed man like best dressed man i remember like going through like 100 all the way down to one and then at number one i was there thinking what the f*** is going on like I've never seen this happen before and it's happening to me like this is ridiculous so off the back of being an ambassador for the British Fashion Council getting invited to all the fashion shows I think they're really trying to push um like London Fashion Week men's in particular at that time so um you know yeah all the top models like a David Gandhi and you know Naomi Campbell all these people are in the mix and so I'm mixing in this fashion world and everyone's kind of complimenting me on like what I'm wearing and I don't know if that was enough but for me I just felt like instead of me wearing everyone else's brands why don't I just create a brand of my own and so we set up a brand called What We Wear and I think when we started off it went incredibly well like I put a lot of my own like cash into it bootstrapped it we already had all the network that we needed so we decided to kind of bypass streetwear and try and go into a high-end sort of space um and i'll get to that i'll come back to that later because you generally dress pretty high-end i would say it's a combination of the two but like i have an appreciation for like you know you know high-end fashion the the materials fabrics the way the stuff is made silhouettes so i was like let's try and go a little bit high high end so we did that we did a couple of like runway shows we were like we were in a couple of incredible stores um all globally as well um and then i think where i was kind of trying to juggle music and and running this fashion business which obviously in fashion i had no experience so i'm kind of learning on the fly and I'm trying to make this happen I got to a point where I just realized I couldn't do the two um and actually a funny story I remember it was a it was around the time some friends of mine set up a brand called Daily Paper but there was three of them and that was their full-time like thing um and so I just remember watching them and it's like every day they're talking about fabrics they're talking about you know shapes they're talking about you know getting the shipment in from Portugal and I'm like split between the two do you get I mean one minute I'm in Australia are doing a tour then i'm coming back trying to make the clothing work so it got to a point where i was like one of these is gonna suffer um and i don't want it to be music so i'm gonna have to just park what we wear for now but i'm officially saying it on this podcast it will be back at some point i love that yeah that's great i remember when i was about i think 16 years old i did a treasure hunt of some kind yeah for my trainers for your trainers with nike right yeah with nike yeah yeah did you get some i think i never found them oh damn i think my friend daniel shout out daniel mahmoud yeah he was one of my my good friends in high school and he he ended up you got some yeah i think he wore them to crepe city oh amazing there you go yeah so even that experience was incredible just to be able to go over to portland to the nike hq i was wearing blazers at the time so that's all i used to wear night blazers and they obviously clocked onto that so they were like you can design your own one and then yeah we did a fun treasure hunt we put them all in the Aston Martin drove around London they had like Harry Styles and all these guys come over to Shoreditch House and we had a little party it was great I'm sorry you didn't get one man if I had more I would yeah I would give you something thank you I mean those are all I think the dreams of a young person in general but I assume a young artist as well yeah of course a number one song your own sneaker deal which is crazy starting your own brand collaborating with some of the greats sharing a stage with some of the greats yeah it's all just incredible things to happen especially when you're as young as you work of course what was that like at a personal level and emotional level on a personal level it was it was kind of kind of a strange feeling because there was 10 000 hours that went into it prior but it's just because i started really early so like i said from 14 years old i'd already been putting out like mixtapes and all these different things to kind of garner attention and build my career and like I would say that when you're a musician probably anywhere in the world is probably quite unforgiving because you've kind of like left yourself vulnerable and open to the public so anyone can kind of have an opinion on you and that's kind of a lot to deal with you have to be thick-skinned or become quite thick-skinned to deal with that so I would say by the time I'd got to that stage where all my childhood dreams are coming true I'd already gone through so many trials and tribulations that I was kind of like iron I was like made of iron I was like bulletproof and I was able to like internalize things and process things and enjoy it as well but because as an artist I'd have gone through so many hardships and you know we're not feeling this music we're not going to sign you because I'd gone through all of that like by the time I got to that place I felt like I I had earned it and I deserved it as well so it was a great feeling but I was just like I think I also had this fear of like being a one-hit wonder as well because it happened to a lot of people that had come from where I come from like I said they had one song that ended up doing really well but then nothing after that so um yeah so I think the fear of failure kept just continued to propel me forward it kind of motivated me to just keep going okay what's the next thing what's the next thing so as much as I'd internalized it and enjoyed it I was always thinking about like okay what am I going to do next yeah yeah do you think you're always behind your curve in the sense that things would happen when you wouldn't expect them or ahead of it in the sense that you're always pulling the successes behind you and you were like okay it's about time this happened yeah I would say ahead of the curve.

28:32I'd say even till this day, there's a load of things that I can look back on in my career that I'm like, that was like pioneering. There's still, you know, there's still people are still yet to tread the same footpaths that, you know, we did up until this point. So yeah, I would say always ahead of the curve. I love that. I remember you stepped into TV as well and you had your own TV show on channel four more recently. Yeah. how did how did that come about so we were in the pandemic um actually i'll give you the full context full full context so when i was 24 luckily so i was living in like a flat in canary wharf and when i was 24 um i was like okay it's time to buy my own house so i'm looking at all play all the different areas and at at that time i wanted to live in like islington like islington for me was as good as like being here like in Knightsbridge so I was like okay cool Islington great so I found this lovely house terraced kind of like a Victorian house and I was like I want to live there and then one and then I'd gone to see another house which was actually Alexander McQueen's house and that was in Hackney but I remember at the time just growing up how I grew up I was a bit apprehensive of like moving to an area that I like I didn't originate from for loads of different reasons so I remember I saw that house and I loved it and then I remember we were like in Carluccio's and me and a few of my friends were discussing because you know I've always lent on like slightly older people to like advise me and guide me and kind of help me with my decisions so I was like what do you think like between the two like I love that house but I'm not sure about the area but this one I love the area and I love the house and then one of my friends again the same one that was telling me about jujitsu was like bro you need to get that house so anyway i listened to him so now i'm 24 i'm living in alexander mcqueen's house and i think i've done some um over the years i've done some like uh what's the word editorials so like people have come in because i i kept his interior exactly the same so all his like custom-made sofas it's custom-made like light bulbs which were made of like animal tasks and all this like crazy stuff um I just kept it and I just refurbed it so it was like perfect um and so obviously I started doing loads of editorial so I think there was common knowledge that I was into like my property and interiors so anyway during the pandemic um a production company that worked with channel four reached out and they were we basically want to do uh this show called extraordinary extensions it wasn't even called extraordinary extensions at the time but they were like we we think you'd be perfect to front it we know about your property portfolio we know you like your stuff and you know your stuff do you want to do it at that point again a little bit more further context like i'm one of those people that loves to put myself into uncomfortable situations and challenge myself and see if i can overcome it so I'd done a bit of tv stuff before but just as a guest like nothing like that front facing so I was like you know what this is something that I could actually do that like is just on the side right we're living in a time of content it's fantastic content it's evergreen content as well it just gets better as time goes on we're in the pandemic the music industry is virtually closed down completely there's no festivals all of the venues for any sort of gigging which is when artists will earn the majority of their income is completely obsolete for like two years so I'm like you know what like I don't have anything else to do let me just let me just do this and see how it goes so yeah I started filming in the heart of the pandemic remember that first year as well when um we'd clap every night yeah we'd clap every night for the NHS and then for some reason the weather was just beautiful like I think just all the planes like yeah lack of planes in the sky lack of cars on the road something happened and then we just had like the best summer ever it's true so that summer was the first year that i was filming extraordinary extensions and it just was a great experience amazing just continued from there and now we're in the process of filming um season three congrats yeah i love that this podcast is brought to you by pubelle by the stand guy allowing you to express all the things you love and all the things you may question on interchangeable charm jewelry that can be combined to create bracelets, necklaces, handbag, accessoires, and much more.

33:06From iced matcha and reformer pilates to sauna buckets and a pair of skis. All the things you love and even the things you question can be expressed through poubelle. so you have a lot of things going on a lot of things that you're very passionate about naturally yeah but where would you say that your biggest driver of that passion lies and is it still where everything started in the music yeah my biggest passion is definitely music like a hundred percent that's been the thing that um that's the thing that i could i feel like i can do with my eyes closed because i've put so much time into perfecting my craft it's the thing that's kind of brought all the incredible things that I wished of as a child into my life I've made incredible friends incredible connections through music we've built an incredible studio as well which is over in northwest London which is like five studios and a big kind of green screen spit I need to show it to you actually but yeah so music has always been my dream and I said to myself like by the time I got to 30 I wanted to have like a certain level of autonomy within music because I think when we started things are very different now but when we started it's like the dream was to get a record deal and to be with a record label whereas now you can literally launch your music off your phone like we were saying earlier and you know go direct to your consumer which is far better for you and so I'd always said to myself in that similar vein I wanted to be able to like get to an age where I could just walk into a studio that was mine take my shoes off have loads of other rooms facilitating in loads of other different artists and that's basically my day-to-day life now so I go to my studio so many incredible artists using all the different rooms people coming in to shoot music videos and I'm just like immersed in basically the thing that I love the most and I I would go as far as to say after acquiring that studio and getting it to where it is now that's what inspired me to want to make music again because i i got to 30 and i was like i guess i'm one of those guys who i kind of it was not like all pre-planned i don't want to want to want to make it sound like it was all meticulously planned but it kind of i i would say with the help of god everything just fell into place so i've got to 30 and i've achieved like most of my goals you know like almost like uh the the trajectory of a football player yeah player to coach there you go so i've got to this stage now and i'm like damn like okay i actually want to just like take a break i want to have kids do you know i mean i want to settle down and in give my kids all the things that i didn't necessarily have just because of the way we grew up you know i mean economically so focused on that got married had kids um beautiful built the studio and then again like i said just like seeing all of these incredible artists looking at my kids looking at you know the way they're living their lives I just became incredibly motivated again and then with my kids I could just see that you know and it's our fault but you know because we'd bought them like iPads and stuff like that we have TVs everywhere I could just see how powerful the screen was and then I could see that they could see me and their mom always on our phones as well and so i was like the world has changed to the point where like now that's the main way that people communicate and there's something exciting about that in the sense that you can communicate with thousands if not millions of people instantly all over the world that is incredible but i would say there's something socially and like what's the word interpersonal yes interpersonal that you you lack as a result you know like there's loads of different things whether it's body language whether it's like eye movements smiles a little joke that you could crack that you're just not going to get from being on the screen so then I started having all these ideas visions dreams and I was like you know what I want to make a project here that just focuses on like you know like the sort of night we had when we went to go and see KSI and Logan Paul like the whole process us getting to Manchester getting to the hotel having a lovely dinner do you get me like we did I want to make an album that kind of like embodies that and has that frequency it has that energy to it tells that whole story linear from start to finish so that obviously people who have grown up on my music will know that feeling will resonate with that feeling but also people who might not know who I am will hear something that kind of makes them feel like they want to get away from that and get up and start moving or go to somewhere to kind of enjoy the music and it doesn't have to necessarily be like a music venue or a club it could be a run club it could be a gym it could be any form of fitness you know because these things now are almost the way I think people meet will meet up and socialize and so now then I had the clear idea and so it inspired me to start recording music again and yeah albums done um yeah just i'd like to go back in time just slightly to the time at which you transitioned from being a mentee and a player on the field with your music to moving towards coach and mentor opening up your own studio and teaching a lot of artists the lessons you learned in your own journey what was that process like and how long did that take so it was a very natural process and actually i can even go back to jeremiah because jeremiah was probably the catalyst for it we'd always done things even with like what we wear we always had like interns in and you know people that just come out of like fashion school or whatever because for me it was always about paying it forward and for me it was always about showing people that you didn't have to have the best resources like I didn't start out in life with the best resources but with the little I had I was able to turn it into a lot and I think that that's a very important lesson for young people to kind of learn because sometimes you know there's there's excuses you know I mean I didn't have this he has this that's why he's there and but um yeah so it started quite naturally through Jeremiah and then from Jeremiah I just kind of like continued in that same vein and sometimes it would happen via an artist so an artist just coming into the studio because we've created it again there's the same build it and they will come so the building's there people show up and then you form a sort of organic relationship with an artist who's maybe younger than you just starting out and then the mentoring can kind of happen that way or on the entrepreneurial side people have seen maybe some of my like side quests I like to call them maybe a couple of investments or the tv stuff so getting into other areas of media etc can we talk about the side quests briefly yeah yeah yeah how did you get into those those things uh investments the good question uh i guess when you're in a certain position a lot of stuff gets put on your table as you're probably experiencing as well yeah so i guess there was a point where i just did like i started receiving loads of decks but one of the i think one of the investments i made that kind of like made some headlines was um there was a guy called sam uh and he has a business called generate which is basically like a data protection business okay and he went on dragon's den which obviously is very famous in the uk it's like shark tank in the us for anyone that's over there watching now and uh yeah basically he did this incredible pitch had a sort of proof of concept and all the dragons were like i'm in i'm in i'm in i'm in i'm in so i was sitting at home watching i was like if they're in i'm in so i just went on on google i was like who is this sam how could i find him found his instagram i was like bro congrats on the dragon's den investments you did a clean sweep i also want to invest so i did that and i think that kind of got people not got people's attention but people were aware of that investment and i think off the back of that loads of other decks started coming my way and then there's also something that you should come to as well i know there's a few of these sort of conferences and summits but there's one that i really like this led by a guy called paddy crossgrave irish guy and he has this thing called web summit and so initially i went to i went there to speak i actually spoke the the year that jarul was there and he launched firefest i don't know if you ever watched that firefest documentary but yeah there's a point in that documentary where he's at the web summit and i was there that year that was basically the the entry into my sort of like investment side quests okay nice yeah so basically yeah like i said it just happened kind of organically just like from jeremiah onwards it just became a natural thing to do whenever you see someone who's starting out or maybe they're a lot younger than you just lean in do you know i mean and and kind of give advice also understanding that people don't necessarily always want advice do you know i mean and also understanding that people are not always going to take your advice So even if you can make one person's life a little bit better or move it slightly, you've done kind of enough.

42:27That's sort of the mantra I go off. But yeah, it's just a very normal part of my life now. Early in your career, you spoke about this position of scarcity that you were in. And that drove a lot of your desire for success. And now you're going back into music. But from what it sounds like, you're in a very grateful and blessed position of abundance. You're a beautiful family. beautiful home, amazing businesses. How does scarcity versus abundance affect your creative process? That's a great question. It's a great question. So for me, it's very interesting because I think, like they say, you can take the boy out of the hood, but you can't take the hood out of the boy.

43:10Do you get what I mean? So no matter what, my upbringing is always going to shape to a certain degree who I am and how I think. And I think that whole idea of like a failure, fear of failure is still something that is like very uh like pertinent in my mind and so regardless of the level of abundance that I have or the blessings I'm still like hungry and afraid that I could go back to like where I started out that's the thing that kind of continues to motivate me to to keep going forward but I guess the abundance that I have and the blessings also means that I don't have to I don't have to react hastily I don't have to like make uh like knee jerk decisions if that makes sense because yeah I mean when I started out my career I will because of the scarcity I think you know again and this is actually like a lesson for any young young person out there who maybe has come from a similar background is trying to get somewhere when people kind of discover that you have talent you know things can be put in front of your face and then you see like the money at the bottom and you're just like yeah like why not and that's that was something that you know I'm happy to be able to tell the story as someone who's had like not a happy ending because this is just to me this is like chapter two but yeah like you know when I was younger and I was a little bit there was way more scarcity in my life like I ended up being someone ended up putting something in front of me actually probably even more than once but there's one main instance that I can think of where someone ended up putting something in front of me I was excited I was wide-eyed and I was like yes I just want to do it like let's just do it and that has now in the long term meant that it wasn't the best decision I could have made in my life.

45:11And I'm saying that to basically say that, you know, when you have abundance, you can actually like plan and make smarter decisions. You don't have to, you're not desperate to do anything. Do you get what I mean? And I think that's one of the luxuries of being in a position of privilege. How have your emotions changed in moments of scarcity and moments of abundance in your life? Do you feel happier in certain ways in certain categories? depending on those two states of life it's a good question to be honest with you i think being able to know the two and understand the two is for me the beautiful is it's kind of the beauty of life it's the magic because i know some people who have never experienced scarcity and they're incredible people but to me maybe it's just from my lens i think if they had that understanding of scarcity it would make them even more well-rounded than they already are they're already well-rounded people but I think it would make them way more well-rounded similarly I know people who are in adverse in adverse situations who are experienced in a life where there's a lot of scarcity where I'm like you know what if you just went to start and I'm joking if you if you just like were able to experience this in the way that I've experienced it that again you're a very well-rounded person who am I to judge but this would even add to that and so for me the way my philosophy of life now is that there's ups and downs there's highs and lows there's good and bad but it's about the journey it's not necessarily about the destination because we all know people who have reached their goal but then there's just another mountain to climb do you get i mean whether it's i want to get a number one record okay i get a number one record now what you have to get another one because if you don't then you're a one-hit wonder so you get the next one then what do you need to do you need to get another one it never ends i want to make my first million pounds okay i've made a million now what i need to make more the tax man's come wow i've spent money on this and that i need to make more okay two million five million okay then then like we said i said as you and i both know people who have abundance abundance excess of that but they would still want more do you get i mean so once i've kind of learned that okay cool you know you are in a position where you have hundreds of millions billions several billions but you're still trying to make more it's made me um it's me it's made me not focus so much on the chase because i know that once you get to that place you're just going to continue so and then also like i'm a christian but then also i guess as part of like a buddhist philosophy where it's kind of like you know naturally the human state tends to kind of migrate towards pleasure and kind of run away from pain and I would attribute I would sort of describe pain as like scarcity in this in this conversation but it's like yeah you don't need to always run away from you run away from pain and run towards pleasure because there's sometimes beauty in the pain like it can inspire so much and that's also what I think about now when I'm looking at my kids when you're talking about the lens it's almost like I don't want them to go through scarcity but i want them to have like we have it like without getting into it too much like for example every every toy every experience like my kids have had a better life up until now than i have ever had to get me like what they've been able to do how they've been able to experience life they're skiing they're doing whatever like even up until now i haven't enjoyed life as much as they have and I think the one thing for me is kind of like you know when I was sitting in that bedroom and I was sharing it with my brother and like we didn't really have much that's where all my amazing ideas came from that's where I was like how do I get out of this scenario how do I stop sharing this room with this guy do you get I mean and if I never had that where would I be how would I think so for me the two go in tandem and we have versions of it like it in the world that we're living now like I don't want to just keep going on about this but in my opinion and this is no disrespect to anyone because I loved it so much but I think this is why people will go to things like Burning Man and stuff like that you know we're going to be in a desert for seven days we're not going to have anything it's almost like a snippet a snapshot but in reality it's not the raw the raw source so I get that but for me I think yeah the two go in tandem and you kind of need both in the journey of life to make life meaningful and to make life beautiful i agree completely agree perspective is everything i know some people kind of like channel it through like fasting do you know i mean that's also one way i've abstained from food or alcohol and i've gone without and now i know the feeling of hunger and now i'm going to go back to it after 30 days or you know things like that that's also ways to do it but i think you definitely need the both life for sure yeah yeah the two sides of the coin are everything yeah i mean you're incredibly young and you've achieved so much in your life and you undeniably have been blessed with perspective you've seen two sides of most coins in most industries that people wouldn't even touch in a lifetime and you've done it in a really short span what is the moment that brought you the most joy in all the things you've done can we can we describe joy in sort of like different tiers of joy like can we do that yeah okay cool so i would say there's there was definitely a satisfaction and a joy in kind of being able to prove my and this is like with no malice but like to be able to like prove my parents and also you know my local community not wrong but prove to them that I was right in my belief and in what I thought and in my dream there's definitely a joy in that and a relief because it was like I was so hell-bent on this dream and it's either going to go one way or the other so it was like a high risk investment yeah and it's paid off wow i did it so there's definitely an elation and a joy there but then i would say for the sort of guy that i am the joy the true joy is seeing everybody kind of benefit from the situation if that makes sense because again even though i have abundance like most people who have kind of come from like some an immigrant background or have grown up in a council house the reality is you're one degree away from poverty one degree of separation from poverty see the same way they say oh we have six degrees of separation from anyone in the world so i feel like coming from where i've come from we're always one degree from poverty so you're constantly reminded of that one degree of separation from poverty in many different ways it could even be like even though there's incredible amazing parts of nigeria but it could even be something as simple as that going back to nigeria going back to the village that i grew up that my parents started from and just seeing the reality of the way people are living there so i think i think that seeing everybody being able to benefit from this from the success is beautiful what is it about nigeria that creates so many creatives like i i meet so many people that are incredibly talented and creative and so many of them come from nigeria specifically yeah i think about this all the time and i'm going to come back to this yeah i think about that um but yeah so so so quickly the joys yeah the three joys i think the true joy has been being able to watch people that i love um experience what i'm experiencing and benefit from it and sometimes build careers from it and you know build build out something for themselves from it um knowing that i'm kind of changing the course of like not just my trajectory but others as well I think that's the true joy and then outside of that I think the third one would probably be just like actually having kids of my own and knowing that they are a byproduct of obviously love first and foremost but success and success isn't everything but being able to give them a life that I never had is is a true joy so what you were saying about nigeria i think about this all the time and i have two theories yeah but you can tell me what you think yeah because you know a good few nigerians i'm sure i do right so i would say because by default it's the most populous uh black nation yeah so it's the most populous black nation we have more black people in that one country than anywhere else on the planet for me it's just a numbers game do you get you know what i mean it's like there's just so many of us so of course you're going to get your antony joshua of course you're going to get your this person of course you're going to get your uh femi otter dollar of course you're going to get because there's just so many so but still let's assume yeah every other african nation combined i've met more nigerians than i have and create more nigerian creatives yeah than all other african nations combined yeah yeah and then also yeah i then also okay so maybe three theories so so then the first theory is that we're the most populous black nation so just by numbers alone and then second theory is not everyone because there are some very incredibly incredibly wealthy nigerians trust me but the majority have grown up in um with a certain level of like scarcity in their lives and even now like the economy in Nigeria is the worst it's ever been and so like I said going back to that whole conversation we were having about scarcity versus abundance I believe that when you're in a position of scarcity and immense scarcity you're almost forced it's like survival instincts and then also I'm from the Ibo tribe yeah and I do believe I don't want to upset anyone here but I do believe that there is something very intrinsically creative about Ibo people so you know the Bookerman Prize I know okay so it's a it's a book award there's been like growing up and starting to understand there's been loads of black authors that have come from Nigeria specifically the Ibo tribe that have won that prize and that's like a global award from like Chinua Achebe to Ngozi Chimamanda that was on the Beyonce album as well.

56:02And so now I just think, okay, something to do with also like my heritage and lineage and like where I've come from. Beautiful. Yeah. I love that. Shout out the Yebo tribe. There we go. Victor Muttman, my people. I love that. Well, something we always do on the Stad Guy podcast is talk about the things we find to be à la poubelle and what we'd like to change about our industries, the world we find ourselves surrounded by or even about ourselves à la poubelle and things we celebrate, love and that we're grateful for that we call fantastique can you please give me a couple of things that are a la poubelle to you first i don't know if you know but we're losing a ton of our music venues in the uk so like three are shutting down a week wow yeah why is that uh i guess pandemic cost of living like culture has kind of changed as well but when i think about my upbringing and the way i was exposed to music after pirate radio and stuff like that if i didn't go to all of these different clubs and music venues and see artists like I definitely wouldn't be where I am now and I definitely wouldn't have the eclectic palette of music that I have now so for me that's Alapubel because you know I think by 2029 there's going to be virtually no music venues in the entire UK well so that's scary especially as a musician and then what else is a la poobel uh this is a slight slightly interesting one but i would say um i would say to a certain degree resellers are a bit a la poobel yeah yeah resellers yeah because it's just messing up the whole game isn't it it's messing up fun for everyone and um yeah this culture where i get it you know people are making great careers out of it and i know a few resellers so i'm not trying to attack you but like yeah this whole kind of culture where you know we have to get this first and then within minutes it's going to be on a resale site for like double the amount it's like i'm a capitalist to a certain degree i believe in the ideologies but it's like taking it to like a whole different level so for me resellers yeah love those okay now i know you're an incredibly grateful person this will be easier yeah but a few fantastiques as well things you love a few fantastiques i would say human connection and friendship so at the end of the day you know uh you know me and you we could have met each other online and whatnot and we could have had maybe some sort of decent connection or friendship but the fact that we met how we met means that when we're today i'm sure people are going to feel it you know on the screen the connection is different do you get i mean because the relationship is real it's it's based on something real so human connection for me is definitely fantastic being able to travel is fantastic because if you don't travel how are you even going to learn how to say fantastic you know what I mean I'm even going to learn how to say that you're not going to be thinking about that and when I think about where I came from obviously my parents tried we went on a couple of trips but I just think when you travel whether you are traveling with scarcity or abundance because i'd advise that you do both it just opens up your mind so much to the world do you know i mean and to people and i do think that some of the most successful people in our time are going to be nomadic people digital nomads do you mean people that can move from place to place they know how to communicate with black white gay straight fat thin they're malleable um for my kids i want them to like learn different languages as soon as possible like that for me is such a big thing love it yeah and then um i would say the other thing that's fantastic is music as well um music is the soundtrack to life and i'm so grateful that i've been able to be part of people's lives via my music like people have had seminal moments in their lives while my song is playing in terms of actually like giving something back to people i don't know if there's actually anything better than that you can do so the power of music and how it brings people together of all you know different types is definitely fantastic so tiny thank you so much for being here on the stadge podcast this is an incredible moment for me i've learned so much more about you i actually never knew a lot of these details about your life and your story so it's great to we usually chat rubbish exactly so it's really great to learn all these things about you and hear your perspective on on life and the things you've accomplished and also all the amazing things you're working on i wish you all the best i can't wait to see all the amazing things you continue to do and hear your new album thank you bro and you too as well man like can i just say because i feel like it was very one-sided but like everything you're doing is amazing and i just love the way that you're communicating with your audience me included because i'm part of that audience and i love the way that you're kind of your content has a lot of take home from it like you can actually like take away from it in a positive way and like obviously it's a perspective and it's an opinion and it's entertaining but i just love what you do and i think it's very unique and so much loads of people have asked me to go on podcasts but yours i'm not gonna lie was the first in a long time thank you that when i saw the um the opportunity the invitation i was like absolutely because yeah i think what you're doing is so great and i think you're gonna like what you're doing is so unique that there's going to be like a start guy 2.0 if there isn't already i appreciate that yeah and in a couple of years to come and then there'll be another one after that so well done for blazing the trail thank you so much it means a lot thank you tiny last one thank you for listening to this episode of the start guy podcast if you're keen to learn more please follow along by engaging with our social channels on instagram tiktok spotify youtube and Apple Podcasts and we look forward to seeing you next week.

1:01:59Merci beaucoup. A la prochaine and a big hug from the Start Guy.