Jordan Stephens EXCLUSIVE: I Want To Tell JADE I Love Her ALL THE TIME! I Was Shamed For Going Down On Girls!

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0:28Absolutely adore foreplay. I think it's brilliant. I feel sad for people who don't. But then that became a thing. You know, that, like, I was somebody who went down on girls. So you became almost shamed for going down. Yeah. Everybody put their hands in the air! 17, you do coke for the first time. You are removing pain you didn't realize you had. And my last memory was I was trying to escape something. What were you trying to escape? My therapist would be buzzing that you're asking me these questions. If there's any question that feels off, you just say, Paul, let's not go there. I'd be impressed if you found somewhere.

1:03Wow. Okay. There was also a point where I was very close to a suicide. A mom rung me, and I was like, sometimes I feel like I just don't want to be here. Knowing that I'd put my mom in a position where she could think about losing her son while she was alive. My dream throughout my whole life was for my mom to be happy. Let's get to then Jade. Jade tells me she loves me all the time, and I f***ing love it. I never knew I could feel like this. She's my superstar, and I'm her superstar. Do you believe that you will marry Jade? We need to talk. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do. Before we get started, I want to personally invite you to subscribe if you haven't already.

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2:04I'm telling you, I think I've watched every Rizzle Kicks video. Did your father play sometimes with you? Yeah, he does. He plays in the live battle for Rizzle Kicks. So talk to me. What was it like growing up? And what influence did your father and mother have in shaping who you were as a little boy? I was mostly raised in a place called Kneesden, which is northwest London, on a council estate which I don't think is there anymore which is a shame my mum and dad I don't have any really solid memories of them being about them actually dating like being in a relationship but um my dad was in my life was always been part of my life but it was predominantly me and my mum and I think their most defining features of both of them is that they're very creative they're both lyricists my dad is a very accomplished musician um and my mom has you know yeah she obsessed with words I mean both of them are quite anti-authority so a lot of like fighting like a spiritually and and politically in my childhood yeah so you get it honest because I see this is how you show up in the world yeah right but but when did you begin to recognize that that that your your parents um weren't together not that they were not together but that they were uh not aligned with with politically what was happening my mom just took me to protests when i was a kid so so i i even though i couldn't i didn't necessarily know why i was in places i was aware that it was a fight against something you know so i had these early memories and my mom used to take me to music festivals as well when i was really little like we're talking like five or six seven my mom reminds me sometimes that i like stopped her from seeing i mean not in the mean way but she reminds me that i think she was trying to watch jeff buckley or someone at cypress hill one of these incredible groups or artists but i wanted to be on the play bus you know i was that age i had no concept of who i was watching but my mom was taking me to some crazy festivals and then with my dad my dad actually i guess i could i was aware you know because he's just he is like that he's he's a piss taker he's jokey he's charming but i didn't really know how much of an anti-authority person he was until i was a little bit older he was in a rock band but he used to be in a punk group when he was younger um my mom had a t-shirt that said muck shit on it wow when i was a kid wow wow this this is interesting because uh so that was what year was that roughly so i was born in 92 yeah yeah i guess i would have been taken on some kind of march or protest in the mid 90s and then i guess when i was older my most memorable one was was against the iraq war it's interesting so so you're growing up in that yeah i didn't feel like i was in the middle of of at least i wasn't aware of there being much happening literally where i lived to me anyway it was this fairy tale which in terms of there were so many characters i was obsessed with the names and stories and worlds of people that i'd meet one of the beautiful things about living in london especially living in you know working class london and an estate is it's a cauldron of culture and identity and and um stories you know so um which can be fun and enjoyable but also kind of scary and traumatic sometimes but i have vivid memories you know i remember on the bottom floor of our estate was a woman called linda and she had i think like 12 bouquets of flowers just outside her house that she just let die from a person a man i'm guessing she kicked out and refused to take back you know yeah there was a guy who called hop along genuinely and because he had a leg brace and the roof the story was that he was pushed out of the top floor of the estate and landed on his leg you know but it's like because i'm a kid i didn't have a concept of of the severity or like what that meant in fact there was i i've just had a memory then that of my my mom or my mom and dad shouting at me because i had like a water pistol that i tried to shoot at like a police car once or police van and they obviously freaked out yeah yeah i didn't have i don't know we did social media back then say true that was just my entire world this is true but i understand you did not grow they did not live in the same household no so with my no it was just me and my mum predominantly we lived in this yeah in the council flat top floor of this estate and my dad i saw now and again i wasn't allowed to see my dad for maybe a year or so just my mum felt that it was probably better for me to my mum's main concern i think when i was young was to make sure that my perception of my dad wasn't tainted you know and he was going through struggles of his own so she was protecting me from that for a little bit and i think actually it's good to contextualize that he had a particular struggle um with an addiction to opiates and and that was a really bad point but he did go into recovery and and sorted himself out and he has done two or three times so fair enough how old were you at that time i think i was about five okay so you remember not being able to see your dad but not understanding why i have i have one memory of my dad being at the flat in the morning only because i remember being excited and and jumping on him but i landed on his i like need him in the in the bits and he and he uh he was like and i was like oh shit you know i have a memory of that but it's only really when i've spoken to them more recently where i started to piece together what was even happening but yeah never never living in the same house okay okay ever.

7:54Fair enough. So your mother, from what I understand is she was an artist. Yeah. But, and then she transitioned to therapist. Yeah. I know. Tell me about that. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, when I was in my teens, she just went to uni, started studying psychotherapy. Oh, so she did that in your teens. Yeah. So in your teens, you had already moved from London though. Yeah. I moved from London to Brighton when I was 10. Okay. You were 10. Yeah. So now why did you move to Brighton well I think it was a mixture of things Brent was super rough when when up when we were there like the crime was pretty high I guess in comparison to upper boroughs in London and then also my grandma's was there my mom's mom and my mom's sister were both from Brighton so that there was a support network there yeah yeah yeah but now moving to Brighton your father remained in london yeah okay so at that point was there any thought of hey i'd rather stay with dad or no it was just no question go with mom yeah i've never that's interesting it's an interesting question um my therapist would be buzzing that you're asking me these questions actually because the dad stuff has been hard because i definitely do put up quite a guard with with my dad for some reason um no i don't ever remember wanting to live with my dad i definitely saw him enough to feel like i had a relationship with him and i guess when i'm younger you'd i'd naturally idealize both of them you know both superheroes to me my mum and dad and i literally didn't know any different i i don't even really remember being jealous necessarily of my mates who had a mum and dad in the house i guess his thing was quite dare i say typical fatherly thing where he would try and spoil me when i saw him and um he had various girlfriends and that's why i ask because you know i i think that what ends up happening uh with a lot of children where you're not living with both parents yeah is that you have the parent who's not with you full time yeah becomes the spoiler yeah you know so whatever you need toys candy whatever it is you go to them so they become the fun parents.

10:10No, literally. Yeah. Yeah, I say that in the, I say that there's a line in the book where I remember that. It's one of my most vivid memories is that my mom didn't let me drink Ribena. See? And my dad gave me so much that I threw up, you know. So what I'm curious about is why would you not want to stay with the fun parent? Yeah, I know. That's a good point. I don't know. I guess because

10:37I didn't like throwing up. you know like i think i think a part of me understood that they were friends the entire time other than that break which i guess was actually still quite a friendly loving boundary and i think that has bled into having quite a latent understanding of of partnership and and that family unit i've always been very open-minded another thing is that it was never just me and my mum she would have i have godparents and i would constantly meet adults that of different walks of life having an insight into openness around sexuality and race and gender and and um class yes class is a massive one because hilariously from my mum's side my mum was actually born into money her father is a man called john bolting who is one of these identical twins called the bolting brothers who actually made the most famous for making a film called brighton rock in the mid 50s okay which is a kind of staple british film it was richard attenborough's first lead role um and so like the attenboroughs were friends with a part of my family but the funny thing is these identical twins married five times each i never met my grandfather by the way so they have this huge kind of shrapnel you know family vibe yes where everyone kind of looks like each other but they're not that close to each other and a lot of people have lost the money so you know my mom literally signed on we were on the door we were on benefits when i was a kid because she had no money if i was homeless before neesden i was homeless for two years um i would just stay at my mom's friend tina's house you know what's so incredible to me about that is that so when i got to the uk six years ago what was most blatant to me was how rigid the class structure still is.

12:24Yeah. Still is. Because in the US, we do have class, but it's not as rigid as it is in the UK. In the US, it's predominantly, predominantly about money. Yeah. Right? Yes. So if you are uberly wealthy, you are typically considered to be whatever high class is, regardless of race, ethnicity, sexuality. It's definitely not the same in the UK. No. But that's why this is so interesting to me. Yeah, it's mad. So at what point do you become aware of your class? It's just funny that you reflect that as an American coming over. Because, yeah, my mom's values, I think a lot of people would agree, were middle class.

13:04But in actuality of our money and our financial status, she was most certainly working class. Like, sometimes even below working class because we couldn't afford to live without support, you know. Because her father died and the money, you know. with multiple marriages like that stuff money just goes it's gone but what was so funny was still at a wedding or whatever i'm suddenly like i'm suddenly in a room with people who are not only middle class but sometimes upper class and what was more fascinating was i would then go back to my estate and i'd know that i've just had an experience that like 80 of the estate would never have never have yeah and then and then i remembered that as a brown boy that gave me this extra step like there was a privilege in that because i never from that point onwards felt threatened in rooms of people who look like that because i'd seen it as a kid you know even though i wasn't allowed to see some family members because i was black which is a whole other mixed race complex thing about no but but but we have to talk about yeah okay we need to talk yeah yeah we do yeah because so your mother is white yeah mom's white yeah okay so your father's black yeah uh you're so by the time you're in brighton you're 10 so what is your impression of who you are when it comes to race now then oh yeah so the yeah the maddest thing about brighton was that there's not that many black people when i was there there wasn't that many black brown I think um I think we call it BAME then black oh yeah I remember it was six years ago it was BAME oh really yeah yeah because I got here I was like BAME are you serious I know are you serious I know it's kind of nuts um but all I remember was assimilation that's that's what I remember so vividly I am I've learned of myself I'm naturally a sponge anyway I do if I spend enough time with a person or a vibe some part of me admittedly does blend or i want i want to i want to merge okay um again even being mixed race as a as an idea or as a feeling is bizarre because you don't look like either parent and you're caught between two cultures it's the whole thing is is a trip anyway i remember very much being the london boy in brighton and then after about two years i i just assimilated with a couple of the subcultures there so I remember like I dyed my hair red when I was about 11 and then became like a grunge kid and I wanted to be a skater you know and I had like a couple of grunge mates you like even if I wore a football top they'd be like nah you know like it's too chavvy I think they tell townie or whatever it was um I now in hindsight I feel I was trying to minimize the qualities of mine that would be associated with blackness in order to fit into social groups in Brighton.

16:06At least you're sad. I could talk to you for a week. About race, yeah. On this particular topic. Yeah. In the United States, there was a very famous court case called Plessy v. Ferguson. Have you heard about this? No. So Plessy v. Ferguson essentially stated what constituted a black person. Ah, this is the one drop thing. Exactly. Which stated that if there was one drop, in essence, that was one eighth of your heritage could be tracked back to someone black, regardless of how you presented, regardless of the color of your skin, regardless of your hair, regardless you were black. So in the United States, growing up, I grew up in the 80s and the 90s, we didn't necessarily categorize as mixed race, black, white, it was you're black or you're not, right?

16:59And for the most part, if you had that one, you're black so for me you if you're jordan you're you growing up in new york with me you're black right now when i got here i remember talking to someone on a show and i said so are you and i said um are you it was a dating show and i said who you're interested in dating and he said you know well i'm mixed race so i want so i said you know i said you're not mixed race you're black wow he He said, no, no, no, I'm mixed race. I said, no, my brother, you are black. You know what I mean? I hear it. My American friends would say the same. Yeah, I was like, you are black.

17:38And then he said, no, he pushed back again. And I said, mind blow. Yeah. And I realized that I'm in a different place. I need to sit back and listen. So I'm still trying to reconcile this in my mind. Yeah. So even now, what do you categorize yourself as? I would say I'm mixed race just because I do think that there's quite a unique experience that comes with that in the same way as there's a unique experience that comes with being dark skinned black but to answer a few of the things you said at the same time i guess the the the first immediate thought i have is that i can't be white this is what i find so funny i couldn't and i would never be because um even if i am genetically half white there's not even a discussion with whether or not i'm white i'm definitely not white which is funny because that like based on percentages surely i could have a choice between the two but no that's not how it works and and there is a lineage of people whose features look like mine whose hair textures like mine and whose skins like mine that are treated unfairly because of that it's not like there's any point where a mixed race person was like uh you know um which which side do you want it was never that is you know if anything sometimes they're a reflection being mixed race in itself was a reflection of something having gone wrong before you know either a white woman as a text of a black man or a black woman as a white man something something's gone awry and this person and now exists you know but i also i understand why people why people challenge these ideas yeah i do and but ultimately it comes down to i think the culture you feel most aligned to and i do push against monolithic ideas of what represents blackness you know i don't like falling into spaces where something is seen as like un-black because it historically um it's not recognized as that you know right because then you fall into tricky territory like rock music people think what rock music could be like white music like you got that's a preposterous idea when you look at the history of rock music or guitar music you know yep so it is tough it gets into tricky territory but all i know is i was in a space i was in a city that was predominantly white i would just straight up experience things that would make me feel othered and i need to disclaimer this because i this isn't like a um a poor me situation this is very matter of fact i actually i've rarely been that affected by interpersonal racism because a lot of it i think is grounded in ignorance and that person's own just lack of experience with black people i'm with you so when i was a kid you know i remember the first time i was told in a football match to go back to my own country i actually i actually didn't understand what they meant i wasn't upset do you know i mean i wasn't i i actually was was baffled i remember going to one of the you know the manager being like what what what country is he talking about what what is he what is my own country let me know please i would love to go to this country i own apparently that would be fucking great i hear you so so so those but but you know the feeling of otherness that is something that i would have that would have sat within me and that would and that will that will have manifested itself in certain situations and i certainly have a complex about my position in black spaces sometimes much like i do in in white spaces and and yeah and that and that's that's to me what is uh what what feels so sad when i talk to many people who are mixed race yeah is this feeling of never feeling comfortable in white spaces never feeling comfortable in black spaces so it's like how do you even navigate life i think for me like coming from brighton where i feel like i have tried to assimilate with with a less black culture then re-assimilating with the london culture that i was initially raised in that was then confusing yes so when you think about Brighton in particular yeah that was really where you came of age yeah I guess people would say that yeah I was a teen I had all my first experiences there pretty much with you know drugs and sex and yeah police drug sex and crime it all happened right there this is Brighton every night yeah pretty much it actually was the drug capital of the UK when I was there oh yeah I believe it you know Brighton is is the only place where I've seen inflatable penises yeah of course on every corner Also gay capital, yeah.

22:09I think there's a massive gay scene in Brighton. And again, I felt that that's probably one of the aspects of growing up in Brighton that I really loved. So you're growing up in a much more liberal space. Yeah, definitely. Right. So it's a blessing, it sounds like, to be in Brighton. Yeah, but in that sense. In that sense. So you have all these firsts, right? So let's talk about, well, actually, let's talk about drug use. Yeah. Right. So in, I think it's, what is it? 17. Yes. You do coke for the first time. How do you get, because I've never done coke. Oh, really? That's a good thing. I was saying.

22:46That's a good thing. But how does that happen? Yeah. I mean, how do you get introduced to it if you're not looking for it? Are you looking for it? No, it was a friend of mine who was looking for it. I was on holiday actually I did it in Barbados the dealer was called Mr. Cool I swear to God and you know what was even more mad is he cemented his name because he came to deliver us the stuff and then we were in like a club bar kind of thing but it was like loud pumping music a lot of people and he walked in did the did the deal and then went to sleep on a sofa in this club. Do you know how much sense of self-assurity you have to have?

23:34So yeah, Mr. Cool, I remember it vividly. And yeah, we did it. I was instructed on how to take it. We were in a toilet. We did snort at two lions. And then... How did you feel? Because I was here as that first... Bro. It was the most memorable part of it for me. And this is... Which inevitably led to my immediate downfall. in that this was the situation was that alcohol becomes like water he's no there's no feeling of consequence a lot of people in the uk i would say most people in the uk unfortunately paul they'll be doing coke you know weddings uh birthdays because they've drunk too much and it gives them a little wake up sobers them up and they carry on drinking it's wild i would not recommend um but uh i remember being sat there speaking to this girl i was attending the chat up even when i was 17 i'd used a fake id to get in but she was like 19 and then i had these row this row of drinks lined up in front of me and there was literally six drinks six mixers and i was like yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and i'm talking to her and i'm just thinking oh my god this is i can knock these back yeah and i said to her i'm just going to the toilet and my last memory was saying bye to her and walking towards the bathroom and then i've come back round and I'm just like um under a car in the car park there was three women there was three women and I was like am I dead and then my friend parted them like the ending of some kind of war epic and lifted me up and it was like jord and I'd been like sick on myself and and then they basically got me a red bull and and made me drink the red bull and I you know cleaned off the sick and went back in and then you back in it's a morning but so but so but so it get it allowed you to go through the alcohol with no consequence yeah yeah or you felt like there was not initially that was the most memorable part of coke yeah but but what about the whole i always hear everybody not everybody but i feel like maybe it's it's part of the narrative yeah is that that first highlight you'll never be able to get that first high again or is that just all nonsense i don't know that with coke mdma maybe mdma i can hear that and certainly heroin i've not i've not tried heroin but that is the i've heard okay that that's the the part that's most overwhelming is that being that it's a painkiller you know that you are removing pain you didn't realize you had so just being alive feels painful and the only way to remedy that is to do more opiates that's why they're so dangerous gotcha coke man i don't fucking know i feel like you know it gives you razor sharp focus and you know like a sense of confidence for about 25 minutes until you've got fucking line in london it's pointless anyway because it's at most about 25 pure even though people will tell you otherwise everyone will be like yeah i got it off the docks my cousin works in the docks i got it it's not been stepped on it's like yes it has bust it's cut with benadryl come on yeah but um but no i don't feel that mdma yes the first high of mdma incredible and if it was regulated and i feel like there's actually a lot of medicinal and therapeutic benefits benefits so mdma did you try that when you were in the teens yeah i think 16 when i did that you were 16 i think i did that first actually before the coke yeah it's before the coke yeah we were pretty reckless in brighton okay with with drugs and sex which i only realized a sex thing when i started speaking to people in london about their secondary school time and i was like oh rub we were active yeah yeah i didn't realize that that that was going on in brighton But you know, though, the amount of sex, though, has dropped off.

27:11Oh, really? That's the thing. I think that's the part that people don't buy, but it's the fact. So if you look at the percentage of Gen Alpha, we're like up to your, what, mid-20s having sex, it's much lower than Gen Z. If you look at Gen Z compared to millennials, much lower. If you look at millennials compared to Gen X, my generation, much lower so we were doing our thing much more serious and then you keep going so you go to baby boomers social media so you know who was having the most sex our grandparents yeah if they're living it up in the 60s come on yeah 60s and 70s yeah free love it was it was a movement it was a movement but but to your point social media yeah makes it people think act like Like, he's ruined everything in that respect, for sure.

28:03Yeah. Expectation. Absolutely. So the first time that you have sex is in Brighton. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Do you recall? Oh, yeah. You recall the moment? It's a bizarre story. I can't lie. Because it came as a result of me being off school for a couple of weeks. because I was put on police suspension because I had allegedly assaulted a girl in my class, which wasn't true. I was found innocent. It actually turned out that that girl's mum was charged with wasting police time, but it was fucking surreal. Just in short, what happened was I'd nudged my friend on the shoulder to say hi. This was someone I knew.

28:45And then at the end of the lesson, the teacher said, this person said that you hurt her and oh my god you know i'm sorry apparently this sorry was considered legally an admission of of guilt so the next day i went into school and i was put into isolation i wasn't allowed to see any of my school classmates i was made to sit in the back of the class um and i did it was too scared to tell my mom that this had happened because i didn't know what the fuck was going on and i was trying to speak to this girl and her friends her friends were kind of a little bit confused i thought that tomorrow will be fine it'll be fine next day i'll go in i'm taken to the deputy head and that's when i now realize the severity of this memory is is i might have been pushing it down a little bit because he actually um he like locked me in this room the deputy head and he uh basically just told me that i was i'd been like raised to to beat women i mean but it was pretty i was in tears i remember breaking and a bit shocked at myself i didn't realize that i had done this so he made me write a letter of apology to like this girl and her mom and and it fucked me up bro like that was shit was crazy and that when it got to that stage it became a legal matter and my mom was working as an appropriate adult at the custody center weirdly at the time okay she was friends with some solicitors and they offered to work for free they said they said it's uh it's ridiculous what's going on and now i realized that there might listen there there might have been a racial element i really hadn't considered that at the time with the teacher he was a white teacher i was one of the only black kids in my school i don't know i definitely didn't think that at the time i wasn't even aware of that but it was horrible and i could now now thinking that as an adult to do that to a kid and tell the kid with no evidence by the way you know just this this story my friend and some of her friends they gave statements and then i was found and it's it you know yeah but um even with that it's interesting I can see how that waits.

30:39Yeah. And you're revisiting it. And you think how incredible it was for your mother to be in your corner and for her to have those contacts. Oh, she had a few words with that teacher, yeah. And what would have happened if you didn't have that advocate? Dude, exactly. Like, that would have been, you know what I mean? I could have, I remember being in that room, like, rewiring my own memory of the event. Like surely for somebody to be telling me this, I must be misremembering what I've done. Like in my head, I'd fucking grabbed someone and thrown them across, you know? Right. But I know it feels like an odd space to tell this story, but those really were the grounds in which I was then, whilst this investigation was taking place, I wasn't allowed to go to school for two weeks.

31:27And so all I did was meet up with this girl and then she ended up taking my virginity and leveraged it to try and make her boy jealous. So it was just... Oh, that's what it was. That's all you were. Yeah. you lost your virginity to grow as older than you. Yeah, but I mean, I couldn't have been consenting more. I was fucking buzzing, Paul. I was honestly... I could not have been consenting. Where's the consent form? And I actually remember as well that I had... Like the early forms of video porn had started to come about. Like people could get video on their phone. And I remember someone had showed me like a video of a blowjob.

32:06and I remember being like, what the fuck? So I remember when I lost my virginity, I was almost more excited about the blind children. So I was like, this is an insane concept, like that you can just pleasure someone with a mouth. That's mad. Like it was actually, that was also definitely a two-way thing because I didn't see at that point also, there was no conversation on whether I would do that. Not 100 % I went down on her. Like that was, just felt, you know, and then that was again a thing that became a thing, you know, that like I was somebody who went down on girls. and I always have done, always will do, absolutely adore foreplay.

32:40I think it's fucking brilliant. I feel sad for people who don't. Oh, so you say it became a thing. So you became almost shamed for going down. Sometimes, yeah. When I was, yeah, with boys, there's a whole term for it, Bo-cat, you know, which actually stemmed from Jamaica. But like, it's some power thing. I don't know that it's been, you know, repackaged and thrown into youth culture, but I didn't get it. And then also it helped me because girls were like, well, that's great, you know. Right. Exactly. I get a bonus from this guy. But so just to move us out of Brighton. Go on. Is you fall in love with music.

33:15Yes. I would imagine. Yeah. But the question that I have is rap, hip hop in particular. At what point do you fall in love with hip hop? I mean, man, listen, I'm giving my age here, but there was once a time. Any story that's like that? There was once a time where UK hip-hop was predominantly a space in which people would voice their struggle. Like, the true legends of UK hip-hop would be that Chester P, Task Force Foreign Beggars. Hip-hop was this form of, like, you know, I've got no money, I'm scrounging, I'm trying to do something with my life. The currency in rap at that point was, how many words could you rhyme in a sentence?

34:00That was... The rappers you'd hear would go, oh my god like there's a rapper called charlie tuna from a group called jurassic five that group inspired me and harley to make rizzle kicks right charlie tuna is known for multi-syllabic rhyme schemes cadence delivery that's what we were listening for and jurassic five spoke often about they were quite anti-capitalist they were talking about not wanting to be celebrities not wanting to be stars they spoke about community and the genres they liked and they just were fucking around you know that was the rap that inspired me at that point so i'm like fuck i can get down with this this is the kind of shit my first raps were about like um like rumors in school one of my first raps was a diss on my school form tutor oh wow like that like there was that was that was that it was my it was a channel for me to express my frustration with something in my life but i didn't feel like i couldn't use it because i could talk about anything like i was really talking about like quite minimal experiences you know like going to a house party or like playing spin the ball i would literally rap about these things you know interesting because that's what i that's i didn't feel like there was any barrier it was just how am i saying it what words are rhyming when i say it and then now i guess it's another conversation but now there was a massive shift around that time and now you have to really look for those artists hip-hop and rap i think has got this this it's been tied in quite heavily to consumerism and you might talk about having struggled but you're definitely ending it by telling people how well you're doing now you know yeah and like those rappers before that were talking about where they were at they're like you know they struggle to sell records so you'd like selling a dream is kind of more marketable it is it sure is yeah so so at that point though i would imagine that you're not necessarily thinking okay this is a career this is a profession it was this is a passion and i'm pursuing it i made music because well firstly i made it made it genuinely because i just wanted to express myself i know it sounds mad but it really was it and i guess my mom i'd grown up you know reading my mom's lyrics on the on the living room floor and a lot of my mom's demos that she was making when i was six or seven i remembered every word every lyric you know so the idea of writing lyrics to express an experience or a self that wasn't out of the that wasn't an an alien concept my dad was in a band called the self and i'd hear his music and you know he's had a song called conscience like you which was this like rock song and i'm like you know so i felt like that was already something that i could do to express myself where it might surprise you is i fundamentally didn't understand what i considered to be the time wasted with people just hanging out i i it's sad that in hindsight you're sure at school just at school i didn't if if they went oh jordan we're gonna go to the park it's for me i don't understand why to do what to just sit didn't understand i'd rather i'd literally rather watch a film at least at least i had this insatiable desire to be moving forward okay and so at the same time you know my mom she's trying to make it as a psychotherapist uh money's tight she's doing mad hours trying to finish her degree and I wasn't really helping, I wasn't very good at helping out around the house.

37:17I now understand why with what I've learned about ADHD, but I really struggled. So I was like, all right, cool. I know what I'll do. I will make myself so good at creating websites, so good at making music that I will get us out of this situation. And I had that focus from 15 years old, like 100%. And actually I got voted most likely to be famous in the school year, but firstly, I wasn't even there for the end of the year. I was somewhere else. it's a whole other story but i knew that if i put enough time in my own time i could get out so i made this music i had a paper round i'd use the money from the paper round to pay for studio time i'd make these demos i'd then print these demos i'd print the cds stickers i made press packs i put press packs through all the record labels doors i emailed people like constantly i had no shame no worry no embarrassment people were mocking me about it they were oh my god i I got people, one guy made a banner on his MySpace that said like, if you think, they used to call me Rizzle back then.

38:19If you think Rizzle's a dickhead, text this number. And it was my number. So I would just get a random text saying dickhead for the other day, which was just, but it didn't, for whatever reason, I had this armor at that point. I was like, all right, cool. I'll chat to you in a couple of years. And actually that same person came to see me. Wow, look at that story. So it's like, I just had this desire. I would discourage this in my child, personally, because I was trying to escape something. What were you trying to escape? I was just trying to get my... I wanted me and my mum out of this hole, you know?

38:54She was stressed. I wanted to give my mum money. My dream throughout my whole life was for my mum to be happy. My mum focused a lot of her intention on me being happy and gave a lot of herself to me being happy. But, of course, as you'll know, children they pick up how the parent is also treating themselves and it broke my heart like every day i could see that my mom wasn't treating herself with kindness so i went okay well i'm gonna go ahead and and and sort this out for us which i shouldn't have really been thinking as a teenager i should have felt more guarded i think by both my parents but it is what it is they're both doing their best so that's why i stuck to music because it felt like something i could 100 percent do i entered every single music competition possible i literally would google uk music competition and i would just enter every single one about where it was applicable that i could enter it okay and once one of these websites was called go busker they went congratulations you've won um our bursary i'd given one of these songs that i'd made with my um paperboy money okay so we're going to give you 500 pound and i was like 500 fucking pound yeah and they were like all you have to do is show us that like what you're buying is musical okay can't i get the 500 quid and like buy a tracksuit which i almost did so i remember i bought i must have i bought an ipod maybe because obviously i was really wanted to get an ipod and then the other thing was i bought these three beats off this guy called Dag Nabet.

40:31And one of them later became a song called Down With The Trumpets, which is to this day the biggest Rizzle Kick song release that I made when I was 15, 16 years old. You can tell by the chorus. But it's a banger. It's a banger, you know, and it was really made out of that kind of desire. Over a million sold, right? Single. Oh, yeah, singles. All over a million. Over a million. all right so it was that it was that song that allowed you to get the deal actually i think the moment where i was like oh something's going on here was was when i so i was doing all this stuff on my own actually like the first time with the trumpet song it was just me i was just rapping in and the whole thing and then i was at college and harley the other member of rizzle kicks he he was studying theater at brit and so we would get the train in i was there's only like eight of us from brighton who were getting the train into east grade and every day and i heard this song by the streets um where there's a singer singing the end of mike skinner's lines uh the studio industry yep yep and i went oh that's so cool a singer at the end of a rapper's lines so i said harley do you mind coming to the studio and singing the end of my lines and it was like yeah yeah because i knew you could sing and then while we were there we're like oh do you want to just jump a verse on on this song and i put that song on my myspace and then suddenly everyone around us was like oh this is cool and then that was the moment where i'm like i actually don't know firstly of any other duos at in that moment there was some historical duos like salt and pepper or kid and play yes you know um nice and smooth yeah there's all types of you know double acts but um but certainly in that space at that time that seems like a unique thing a singer and a rapper hadn't been done at that time so i was like let's do this and and from that point onwards everything we kind of did seemed to go on a more attention and then you get the deal my mate was having birthday drinks if i hadn't have gone to my friend's house and met his cousin's boyfriend okay he's a wedding photographer showed me the video function on his camera and i was like god damn that's amazing this is where shallow depth of field was like an insane concept and I was like want to shoot a music video and he was like yeah right you know I wouldn't mind using the function monologue shot a music video 100 ,000 views what music video this is so it's actually not online but there's an original version of Down With The Trumpets Down With The Trumpets okay in the new version you can see a video at the beginning yes of the old version yes the old version got assigned is that the tape going no no yeah that's the tape going yeah yeah okay yeah so we had we had already shot another video and when we got signed, the label took it down and me and Harley were like, what the fuck?

43:16There's 100 ,000 views. Are you mad crazy? And they were like, shoot another video. We'll re-release it. And then it's on like 26 million views or something. Yeah, look at that. Yeah, but it was just us and Toby. And our videos cost barely anything and they all got millions of views and we became a sensation momentarily. Yeah, look at that. You said momentarily. Relative to my life, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So when you look back, I'm sure you're proud of that chapter of your life. Yes. Are there any regrets? Yeah. I've got loads of regrets. Do you? Yeah, of course. Specifically. Do you, are you on the side of, well, if I asked you if you had regrets, would you say?

43:56Yeah. Well, you know what I think I do is I take that and I pull the lesson out. Yeah. And then I say, you know what? I couldn't have received that lesson. Unless I had done the thing. and I mean are there moments that I wish I could get back I wish I can get them back but at the same time then I always counter it with with I learned that thing that then I does that make it does that make it not a regret then for me that's that's what makes it not really yeah but what I mean so when you think about I've got regrets specifically well I just I just think I'm career the music career what are your what's what's your top regret i don't like our second album cover

44:43and i had to because we we rizzle kicks me and house we released an album for the first time in 12 years or something like the like literally last month and we were doing signings you know we're our approach to it nowadays is a lot more low-key you know we're not trying to reach the heights of pop stardom that we kind of accidentally fell into yeah all those years ago but we're doing a signing and people would come with you know our first two albums on vinyl and i remember looking at the second album cover being like i fucking hate that shit i hate it and it was me it was me i was so high on drugs at the time i was like this is a good idea and it just was not a good idea in any sense it was so and we had shot a whole other album cover with an incredible up-and-coming videographer who ended up working with asap rocky and you know i i don't know paul I don't know what the lesson is there.

45:29I don't know what I can say. I don't know what the lesson is. Don't do drugs, kids. Yeah, literally. Don't do drugs. But other than the album cover, what is a top regret on just the music career? I think if I was to be objective about music careers, like 18, 19, 20, being that famous, was now, I'm realizing, completely like what what do i do with that how do i do i don't know who i am i hadn't developed as a person a human being um i i'm being constantly criticized because we had ended up in the pop sphere there's a whole other level of of snobbery attached to that pop stardom people just assume for example that pop stars are morons for a start so and also the irony is i was a moron at 20 21 what do you expect from a 2021 year old boy you know what i mean like so if i was given the option and choice objectively i'd be like no man chill do exactly what you want to do make the music you want to do for as long as possible and and crescendo into your 30s that's when those are careers that i love seeing are people who've been knocking away for eight years nine years and then boom and then once they're there they have that resilience it's like you know it's like a butterfly are coming out of his cocoon whereas for us we knocked on the first door paul right and it opened and went ewa boom number one we had like eight top 20s i don't know what it was but it was it was astronomical so fast to the point where people thought we were industry plants they thought that some people didn't believe us because they didn't see our journey because our journey was playing to 35 people in a basement in brighton to headlining the introducing stage at reading within a year to like 15 ,000 people.

47:12It was really one month of our lives. July 2011 just shifted everything in our lives. You know what's so interesting about what you're saying is that now I'm reflecting back on guests, especially artists like Jamelia, like Cher Lloyd, and they were trying to escape something. I mean, it's hitting me for the first time. Right now, they were trying to escape something. they got it young and there were issues as a result of of that massively it's uncontrollable uncontrollable and and also you know we have a society maybe or i don't know if that's an overused term but we obviously celebrate in my opinion quite nothing material we have this obsession with materialness so i was told quite early on don't complain about fame they can't complain about fame you know because look what you get you know get free clothes get taken places in cars you know that i'm having instant alleviation from the poverty i was in before i tried to pay off my mom's debts but at what what's going on spiritually right that that doesn't or emotionally you know i've got stuff i've got to work through you know i have to mature i haven't had a rite of passage i've not gone through that that pain and i'm and i'm stuck in a suspended state where i have a social currency and now i'm privy to rejection and and um comparison my ego is through the roof you know at in my early 20s like it's it's a lot in that fame um and i want to go to connect it to your book yeah okay so i said this when you walked in but i want to make sure that everyone hears me say this is that i believe that your book is so it's um uh avoidance drugs heartbreak and dogs yeah right which is adhd right i believe that this is one of the best books that i've read this entire year thank you paul it's phenomenal that means a lot for me honestly it is phenomenal i encourage everyone to read it you know just for those just to give it context my book is centered around me cheating on my ex-girlfriend telling her that I cheated um her leaving me as a result feel rightly and that pushing me or almost triggering me into a desire to rewire myself slightly go into a state of recovery do you feel like there is actually a kind of crisis in terms of men being able to be honest about how they're feeling about life and society in the west oh absolutely i think all over the world you know men we have a challenge around identifying what the emotion is yeah um and what i notice and i do this with a lot of the television shows it's it's funny enough I was filming um uh I guess I can say it I was filming Married at First Sight uh yesterday and there was a gentleman that I was working with and I asked him I said so tell me what emotion do you have in this moment right now as as you sit with your wife what emotion is it he he he had no words and he he wasn't armed to be able to articulate the words he doesn't know what an emotion is yeah so i said if if you cannot tell me what the emotion is you can't tell me what the feeling is therefore you definitely can't tell me what your partner's emotion is yeah and you definitely can't tell me what your partner's feeling is and if you can't tell me what your partner's is then you can't hold space for them no you that means you can't connect with them like the most important thing it is and you said it it is it it is like do we start like a heartbreak high or you know just some space where you where we can just in get like why at school is that not the utmost priority to be i think it's one hour a week in the uk psc personal social education one hour a week well when i went One thing that all children and young people need to understand is how they feel and how they engage with people interpersonally every day of their lives.

51:34Yes. And this would and I bet you you feel the same. This will definitely get us both into trouble, but I'll say it. So it'll get me into trouble is trigonometry. Yeah. When I was in high school. You used that today, right? Yeah. I was going to say, I have not used trigonometry. Oh, what? Since I was. But yeah. Cute angles though. yeah no we i have no idea like i'm not treating it yeah it's it's it's like it is it is almost pointless yeah if not pointless yeah right however being able to identify your emotion and feeling is everything yeah in life everything everything in life like i'm saying this is what spins me out then at the basis of these huge political social economic shifts is a human being yes like a human that is feeling something and that feeling is a part of their fucking decision.

52:28Yes. Sometimes I look at like the House of Commons. Yes. And they're talking about this massive change of policy. Well, someone's fucking asleep. I'm going, I definitely want them to be awake. Like when, do you know what I mean? Like, how are we not like, like if it's down to me, they'd be having, you know, therapy is a no, that is, you're in therapy 100%. If you're making decisions about my whole country, yes i want to know what you're eating how many hours you're sleeping yes and who you're talking to yes like these are getting pissed at the bar and passing out in the yes so like we need to re-engage with that very fabric of our society of putting so much like how much better would decisions be if we were emotionally regulated when we made them that's all i'm asking yeah yeah and and this is the reason why i think these conversations are so important yeah this is the reason why uh being considerate parenting yeah is so important this is the reason why um you know normalizing these conversations with friends especially among men definitely you know one thing that i noticed is is that um you know i think one of the most toxic places for men other than the internet yeah is the barbershop brilliant uncle's telling old stories i know and and you know it's so funny so clearly i don't have to go to a barber shop right but my boys do one yeah and so it was this is this is this is this blew me away so for years i would cut my my boys hair right and part of it was i was cheap yeah right then the other and i was like they're young they don't care they're dad like they don't care right then i brought them to the shop yeah and i was like oh no no i can't keep them in this no way so because they were bringing stuff back so i was like i'm gonna bring them home and i'm gonna cut their then i thought this is bad parenting because they're going to get exposed to it anyway yeah so what's the best to school what's best is okay i need to be there so that we can have conversations around you can go and chat to the other guys around it oh my god but but but what is said is just and this is not in the uk every barber shop in london but this is in london i'm wearing in barbershops in South London.

54:39South, London, you're in South. And once again, I'm not throwing all of our, all of these barbershops under the bus, but what I am saying though is that I think that... You're going to get dragged for this. Yeah, yeah, I'm definitely going to get it for this. But what we do need is we need to have conversations around these topics that we're talking about in the shops. One of my biggest frustrations with, obviously I'm generalising here, but with the male community is this. internalized homophobia definitely rooted in misogyny where anything outside of this heteronormative framework right anything is just is just it's gay it's you know there's all these kind of phrases that are thrown around like why why feed out or no homo pause like all of these phrases are are and i said gay as an insult when i was a kid which is again hilarious because i was so i was so not homophobic it was just i was just trying to fit in you know um i think everyone did my in my generation as a slur you know and and culturally it was way more acceptable to be like that about it but it doesn't make any sense to me i honestly i cannot get my head around the concept of homophobia so i just ask myself questions what can lead to that and i think there's a lot of issues in society that are rooted in this immediate limitation on boys sense of intimacy you know like i there's so much in the world that seems to be as a result of boys and men who if not gaining that intimacy from a woman there's no chance that that's happening from their male friends because there's this fear and i remember seeing these these pictures online like there was these photo shoots that used to happen in like the late 1800s or something i don't know and there were men who are best friends and you can look at the positions that they did sat each other's knee head on the shoulders yes they were they were very tactile and then there was this introduction of heterosexuality and homosexuality as a means of understanding this human psyche psyche so you're saying that in essence society has shamed us yeah into performing this script this is why i sent to so much of my work i'm doing now around trying to push back against this self-hate that i think festers within men because of course you have to understand the beauty of another man or the attractiveness of another man in order to have an understanding of your own beauty and attractiveness and there's you know you know what's interesting is i'm with you entirely yeah and uh for me and i'll never so i grew up in the states playing american football right and there were many things that we did in the locker room that i would think you know what's interesting we as a team as players we would never do in public Right.

57:42You'd smack somebody on the butt as they're going out. But you would never do that outside of the context of football. And I think that I grew up being shamed into this script that you're talking about. And I will never forget the moment that I decided to break out of it. I was visiting Turkey. I was in, I don't know, maybe my 20s, late 20s. I'm visiting Turkey and one of my good friends were on the Bosphorus. We're walking and he tucks his arm in. Yeah, we locked arms and we're walking arm in arm. And as soon as he does that, I pulled my arm back. I said, what are you doing? What are you doing?

58:25He said, what are you talking about? We're walking. We're walking. He said, this is within our culture. This is what we do. And I realized at that moment that I was falling victim to this societal script. And I locked my arm in arm and we walked. And I thought, I need to figure out, I need to do my own. Have you done or looked at the Kinsey research at all? No, what's that? Okay. So this is interesting because when you said this, I thought, I was like, he's talking about research here. Right. Because there is. So one of the most, I think, famous studies around sexuality is done by Kinsey in the 1940s, I think.

59:13Wow. And you know what his findings are? Wow. That the majority of people are bisexual. Really? That's his findings. To the tune of 80 some odd percent. Listen. And now there's lots of pushback, especially recently. Exactly. Bias in the survey, the data. You looked at who they're speaking to, et cetera. So we have to take that into consideration. But in essence, what he's saying is that if you have someone who is interested in same sex purely here, someone who's interested in heterosexual relationships here, what kenzie is saying is that the majority of us 80 are somewhere in that spectrum and what's interesting is is that you are without even having read his research yeah going back to the 1940s you are saying from your observations you're in agreement fluidity as a concept you know waves this is something what i had to learn in myself about emotion that a lot of the bigger emotions that I had struggled with and now less so were because they are non they're not fixed it's not a fixed principle you know grief isn't a fixed idea it's something that will like the shore you know in and out obviously I don't need to tell you this yes but no these are facts yeah so so it's just odd to me that something as free as as sexuality has to then be forced into this space and and i think what it results in is a lot of people who are angry as a result of having to suppress a side of them or they uh yeah or um they are ostracized for being brave enough to be like yeah that's cool yeah absolutely all right so then from there this is the perfect segue to the bridge tell us what the bridge is a bridge so that yeah just to contextualize i i had written during this heartbreak i wrote an article for the guardian about my my perception of masculinity at that time i i was heartbroken i was left by my ex in the middle of the me too movement which was a quite it was quite a wild time to to to have been the cheat you know it was like obviously that we were looking at the extreme cases but there was a much as you know there's a so much more watered down social discussion going on generally around behavioral patterns yes so it was seriously like whoa what the fuck anyway i i was invited me to this retreat called the bridge the retreat is a six-day transformational course dealing with grief it's essentially group therapy it's you deal with these issues as a community as a group and i had i know i instantly had imposter syndrome you know i i went in there and i'd hear these stories and some of these stories like you know like some of the things people had seen or gone through i said to get i should be here you know i mean i'm going for like a breakup and my gran died like it's not that deep and she's like nah that's not how this works that's there's no comparison in grief it doesn't work like that it's relative and um yeah you build up over six days to write these two letters and those letters are then read out um and the facilitator with their decades of training will sit in front of you and then challenge some of what have you said what you said in order to to summon these buried truths and realities and if you're if it works you have a trauma response which i did twice and many people did and you feel literally a stone lighter and um the lust for life kind of returns which is just insane yeah yeah it's beautiful yeah it's beautiful so then lessons top two lessons from the bridge for me personally there were two things that stuck in my mind i don't know if they're the best lessons okay but there were things that stuck in my mind one was the relationship between feeling and movement you know a lot of the work on summoning feeling was shaking yoga pilates you know these things that perhaps again because in the maybe in the pop lexicon or like in in the in the spaces we share these concepts can be tainted yes like yoga scene oh lululemon yummy mummy you know or like or shaking are you shaking like you know you're shaking all animals who experience anxiety ever yes they're going instantly and yet we don't so just those principles first lesson second lesson which is fucking hard for me paul because i'm a people pleaser i'm working on being less of a people pleaser caretaking was banned in in the bridge which is oddly therapeutic work for me specifically maybe not other people but there was a handful of caretakers at the bridge and just for just to give your audience an understanding of what i mean by caretaking is when people are processing these quite profound emotional experiences you know they had to experience it on their own which is hard so you could be with someone you you wake up that morning you have breakfast you're chatting you're chilling you're joking you do an exercise you got to write down you know what was your first memory of this person breaks you have to leave them alone number one rule do not touch them do not ask them if they're okay you let them have their moment crazy yeah because i'm there i'm personally like let me make you feel better right and and why is that so important because it makes it about you it's not not i'm not consciously not like hey look at me i'm a nice person it's just uh i don't like that i don't like that that's happening i know i can make it better and what is better in that in that context we're so used to better being not crying yes or not processing because it's not it's not happy it's not bright but actually that could be the best moment that person's going to have that week because the other side of that is freedom release joy you know yes yes this is why i always talk about how it's so important like we're all we're all either in the fire you know heading towards fire etc but you have to allow someone to go through it yeah and that sounds like precisely what's what's what's happening yeah yeah and obviously there are you know i wouldn't go wouldn't take it as extremely as to be like if my girlfriend now was feeling sad i wouldn't just leave her to there's a different context yes you know what i mean for like there is a space where you can hold someone.