By Jim Bate
(Photo: hypebeast.com)
Stormzy is a grime artist of the twenty first century and is producing music that remains prevalent in the UK charts in particular. Although his material voice may have remained similar, his metaphorical voice has grown in confidence facilitating his entanglement, or rather tackling of more controversial factors serving as a voice for change rather than a voice for popular opinion. A large reason for this metamorphosing of his voice into that of a highly relevant and particular one is through the construction of this voice from his fanbase.
The surging rise of technological change, paralleled with the creation of social media lends ability to have your voice reach all corners of the world in a matter of seconds. After establishing a platform for himself on the UK grime scene, Stormzy released his first EP in 2014, Dreamers Disease. Here he tackled issues surrounding poverty, the difficulties that people without the right start face, but it was not until his single “shut up” of 2015 that he began to become at the forefront of people’s minds. This song paralleled the surrounding hype of the major boxing match between Anthony Joshua and Dilian Whyte. With the music video being shared on Facebook and other media sites, Stormzy’s voice began to be perceived by listeners not just in the UK, but all over the world. Audiences would interpret Stormzy differently and associations attached to Stormzy began to emerge of him having a voice of violence. Because of the vast audiences that this track began to reach, the rapper’s voice began to be stripped from him by his audiences’ perceptions that would subsequently impact how he would be perceived in later tracks.
Stormzy, since this date, has shown to be tackling serious political issues using this voice. His voice now had impact and relevance given his popularity and justification because of his own background. Audiences that aligned with his political views would begin to shape his voice. Jeremy Corbyn was an admirer of the grime artist and this association began to attach greater political value and credibility to Stormzy as more than just a story teller. His vocal criticism of the handling by the Conservative Party of the Grenfell Tower tragedy in 2018 had such political significance that 10 Downing Street had to release a statement defending the Prime Minister. Audiences, then, are shown to have developed his voice into a political one through both increasing his relevance through social media and by associating the artist with, then relevant political figures such as Jeremy Corbyn. His voice had become imbued with implied political meaning and weight; this combined with its credibility in the UK and even the world contributed to him having a voice for change.
Another way that Stormzy’s voice has been constructed is by students. With the previous factors raising Stormzy’s political bearing, he has harnessed this to create his own scholarships for BME students to have a fully assisted place at Cambridge University. With the support of social media, and the recipient students of this scholarship, individuals and groups have constructed Stormzy’s voice and have portrayed Stormzy as an altruistic figure rather than the violent one that we first saw at the beginning of his fame in 2015. Since then, Stormzy’s voice has been associated with political change, altruism, and can reach an audience beyond the immediate fans that enjoy his voice for its sonic qualities and his own ability to rap.
Music students, more specifically, have also altered the construction of his voice on a less macro level. Discussing the various philosophical implications of his voice construction in itself alters the way that we perceive his voice and subsequently alters his voice for those that read this short essay, for example. The voice will sound different for everyone and when people are exposed to environmental factors before receiving the sound of a given voice, the metaphorical implications of that voice will have been constructed as a different perception for different individuals. For example, now that I have delved deeper into a philosophical discussion of the figurative associations of voice, I will now have reconstructed Stormzy’s voice for my own perception. The voice serves as a representation of the associations that the subject evokes for any given individual.
Stormzy has thus had his own voice shaped in parallel with his powerful musical development to leave a lasting stamp on the world for black communities. This has caused a domino effect for the subsequent, seemingly exponential, growth in the grime industry that shapes the voices of so many young aspiring artists and their audiences.