Stormzy believes he has a "duty" to reveal his "own truths" in his music.
The 23-year-old rapper has described himself as a "social commentator" because he strongly believes he "needs" to address topics that are both negative and positive in his tracks, although he has tried to be "more careful" about his songs.
Speaking to Shelagh Fogarty on LBC radio on Wednesday (01.03.17), the ‘Shut Down’ hitmaker – who won the British Breakthrough Act at this year’s BRIT Awards – said: "The reason why we speak about, like, these things [such as crime], because these are things that go on in our communities, so we’re just being social commentators basically. But I feel like that is such a far-fetched statement.
"So every time I write a lyric or I make music, I firstly I’ve got, I have the responsibility and the duty to tell my own truths. Like firstly, so whatever that is, whether that’s something positive or negative, I need to tell my own truths.
"Secondly, now that I’ve progressed to a certain stage, I try to be more careful, but I don’t like to just like put some censor and say OK I’m not going to say that, because everything I talk about is truth, it’s things that I’ve done in the past or things that my friends have done, or things that we were immersed in, like so I have a responsibility to tell my own truth."
And the artist – whose full name is Michael Omari – decided to feature grime MC Crazy Titch, who is in prison and convicted of murder, on his debut studio album ‘Gang Signs & Prayer’ because he is a "legend in the grime scene".
He explained: "I included Crazy Titch because he’s a legend in the grime scene in terms of like, what he stood for and what he done for grime at that moment in time … because of the fact that he’s come from a similar place, he’s now in an unfortunate situation where he’s gone to jail for a very, very long time for a serious, serious crime and it’s something that he regrets, it’s something that he doesn’t endorse, he doesn’t, he’s not proud of it. But that’s someone who meant something to me in my childhood, me growing up."
Stormzy has a ‘duty’ to reveal his ‘own truths’ in his music
