Stormzy has "made peace" with the fact he is an "annoyance" to the Grime stars who came before him.
The ‘Crown’ hitmaker – who has recently been locked in a feud with Godfather of Grime, Wiley, which saw the pair trade insults in a rap battle – has admitted that he can see why his predecessors on the scene might be "resistant" towards him, because he’s fronting the genre which they helped pioneer from the ground up.
He said: "I think I am just a natural annoyance.
"He genuinely feel like a lot of the older MCs … Even Wiley said it on a lyric, on one of his dubs. I reap the success. I reap a lot of their success. So for example, the awards, the plaques, the amount of records I sell and the places I am in, these artists couldn’t be in. I am not even saying that [in a disrespectful way].
"Even whoever comes after me in like 10/15 years, God-willing, I am going to think, ‘Flipping heck. I could never have done that, man could never do this.’ "
He added: "This is like a proper deep thing to my heart, I’ve had to make peace with it since I came into the game in 2014.
"I come in all like, with my heart on my sleeve, watching all these MCs that I love and I grew up watching them, and I am thinking … I come into the game understanding that a lot of them are going to be resistant to me, they are not going to like me or have energy towards me because of the fact I am this embodiment of a lot of their failures and their mistakes, and the things that they couldn’t do.
"That is not me saying that in a disrespectful way but that is just how evolution works."
The ‘Big For Your Boots’ hitmaker has always tried to "pay homage" to his "forefathers", but he feels it’s time they "left him alone now".
He added to ‘Ebro in the Morning’ on Hot 97: "They started something and they had to take the brunt, that’s why since I’ve come into the game, I’ve always made it a very prominent thing to me to say, ‘Yo, I’m Stormzy, but there’s these guys. Homage to these, respect to these, love to that.’
"I’m just little Stormzy, these are the legends, these are the forefathers. I understand that I am reaping the benefit and success that a lot of them couldn’t have. But I had to do that for me."
He concluded: "I am always paying homage and I am always been respectful, up until now, do you know what I mean?
"I am like, ‘Bruv, you’ve got to leave me alone.’"
Stormzy ‘made peace’ with being an ‘annoyance’ to Grime legends
