Stormzy
photo: raph_ph · cc by 2.0 ↗Michael Ebenezer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr. grew up in South Norwood, south London, the Ghanaian-British son of a taxi driver, and turned a freestyle filmed by a fan in a car park into 2015's grime anthem "Shut Up." His 2017 debut Gang Signs & Prayer became the first grime album to top the UK charts, weaving his devout Christian faith and gospel choirs through the genre's confrontational energy, and in 2019 he became the first Black British solo artist to headline Glastonbury.
Stormzy has called himself "a child of grime" and directly named Lethal Bizzle among the MCs who shaped him; the combative, chant-ready energy Bizzle brought to grime's first mainstream breakthrough is all over Stormzy's own posse-cut freestyles.
listen forPlay "Pow! (Forward)" against "Shut Up": both take a bare, aggressive grime instrumental and turn it into something a whole crowd can shout back.
D Double E is another of the grime MCs Stormzy has named as a direct influence; his ad-lib-heavy, road-block delivery out of Newham Generals and the Nasty Crew scene set a template for the kind of raw, chant-punctuated bars Stormzy built his own reputation on.
listen forLine up "Street Fighter Riddim" with "Cold": both let a barked ad-lib do as much work as the bars themselves, riding a spare, bass-heavy grime beat.
Stormzy grew up devout and has said his faith shapes everything he makes, weaving gospel choirs and testimony into grime on songs like "Blinded By Your Grace"; that lineage runs back to Kirk Franklin, the gospel star who spent the '90s fusing choir arrangements with hip-hop beats and who later joined Stormzy himself on Jacob Collier's "Witness Me."
listen forSet Franklin's "Stomp" next to "Blinded By Your Grace, Pt. 2": both use a full gospel choir to turn a hip-hop-adjacent beat into something closer to a testimony.