If I Speak - 54: Forget the boycott, gimme that brand deal

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Why did Stormzy delete his pro-Palestine posts just before unveiling a Happy Meal tie-in with McDonald’s? Ash asks Moya if big artists are all just businesses in the end. Plus: how to deal with a delusional friend. Send us your dilemmas: [e-mail] Music by Matt Huxley.

Hello and welcome to If I Speak. The reason why I'm so excited to be here is no particular reason. I'm just, I'm just happy to be with you, Moira. How's it going? Oh, does that count? Does that, does that cover it? Does that noise? I like that one of us is happy at a time. I'm really happy. I'm just, there's a lot of plates in motion at the moment and a lot of moves being made, but I'm very happy. I'm just, I'm having to put groundwork in to play something out. Can you tell us what some of these moves are? I can't really.

One of them involves a creative practice, one of them involves professional decisions. And I think they'll be quite obvious for those who are following my work and can read between the lines of my substack. That's what I'll say. So what that means is that Moira's learning to play the theremin is going to play the theremin full time. Oh, is that an instrument? Yeah, it is. It's like a weird electrical instrument where you it's based on like how you move your hands and the distance from a sort of antenna and it's like, oh, OK. No theremins are in my near future, but who knows?

Let's just ask something else to my plate. Maybe. Yeah. There are you. Um, not not just there I'm in. Um, it's a it's a word I really enjoy. There I'm in. Um, I am good. I am in the middle of book tour, which is less glam than I thought it would be. But also really fun. And it's really great to be like parked in like a room with like a couple of hundred people

who just wanna hear your idea out. Like that's a real privilege. And then you get to go on Twitter and you see everyone who doesn't wanna hear the idea at all. Yeah, but you know what? Twitter is not the audience. Twitter is not the audience. This is the funny thing.

And everyone who's left on Twitter, including me, is just mentally unwell. I was gonna say, you gotta get off that, Ash. Now you have what I think is about to be a bestselling book, which, by the way, listeners, we will be talking about in depth very soon in an upcoming episode where I will be doing my version of Grilly. Just so you, just in case you think we're ignoring the book,

we're not ignoring the book, we're not ignoring the discourses around the book. I will be addressing the book. Moir Otrekbathi-McLean. But when I see, now you have this very large, successful thing that is selling more than Bill Gates's book. I do think you have the space to come off Twitter.

And I say this for your own wellbeing. I say this for your own wellbeing. I just, every time I, I have a burner on Twitter just so I can keep up with stuff, right? And I see the discussions on there and I see the positions it forces people into. And it's just not, it's just not like a large platform isn't good. But you know what? Um, this is going to sound disingenuous, but I promise you it's true. I completely accept that I cannot own people's perceptions and on Twitter that is doubly trebly the case.

So where people have criticisms where they've really engaged with what I've had to say, fine, fine, fine, fine. And actually some of those criticisms will be legit and I'll probably incorporate them into my paperback. Other ones I just disagree with because we've got different theories of change or we have different political priorities, that's fine. And then there are people who are just trying to like raise the social costs of disagreeing with you and you know are just trying to make the social costs of disagreeing with you, and are just trying to make you feel scared of judgment and ostracism. But that also doesn't, my real friends

can disagree with me without doing that. So what's the problem? Yeah, when I say getting off Twitter, I'm less talking about even specific critiques of your book because I think, we're gonna get into them on Friday, hopefully, when I've read it in full. And the other things of your book because I think, we're gonna get into them on Friday, hopefully, when I've read it in full. And the other things in your book,

I'm talking more about the way that I think Twitter, now having come off there, just completely distracts on being able to engage even in both positive discourse, negative discourse and anything in the middle, because you're in the constant state of fight. Even if you don't think you are, it's a constant state of defense, because the only thing that's gained traction on X,

as it now is, really is the negative. And when you put the positive out there, it kind of lands with the quietest thud ever, or anything interesting. I just don't think it is good for anyone's brain. And I say that as someone still has like a burner account. I didn't go on blue Skype as I've talked about because it was so fucking boring,

but it lacks the ag of Twitter, but now I'm off both. Like there's a reason I'm also able now to do like so much work that I just wasn't doing before. I just, I do think from things we've talked about before, and again, you can totally ignore me and you will, you know, you will make ignore me, and you will, you will make your own decision.

I just don't know if Twitter is good for a relationship with either what we're calling the left, the movement, et cetera, or a relationship with yourself. The way it makes you feel about yourself is shite. I think there's also a third thing which I- Third secret thing. Add to your list, a third secret thing, which is that it is really bad for your ability to process information well.

So Twitter is all about processing a volume of information and in order to do that, you've got to be very quick at categorizing things. So I think that this is part of why people don't always engage with what you've actually said. They engage with the genre they've filed it into because that's the only way in which you can take in so much information at once. But we should go on. Although I just wanna say that kind of thinking, a long time ago, I deemed it algorithmic thinking on Twitter and used, I think, quite a clumsy example

about ADHD and then got told I was ableist by about 20 million different people. And then I got my ADHD diagnosis so shut the hell up, I'm joking. But no, algorithmic thinking, I still stand by that phrase as a way of the way that we learn to think even more so like brains already algorithms, algorithms are based on the brain functionality, right? But when you're on site, like Twitter or any social media where you have to sort lots of information very quickly it becomes very binary and you have these distinct categories you have to sort it into which i also think is why also on those sites you present yourself identity first but let's not get

into more identity politics because we can talk well on Friday. That's that's to be a different show because first up, you have to subject me to our icebreaker Inquisition. Three questions, which is 73 questions minus 70. Moira, what do you got for me? Weirdly, the first one I just thought of a random one there on the basis of Inquisition. Would you rather be burnt at stake as a witch or a Catholic? So witches were hanged. Some of them were burned. Some of them were burned.

Heretics were burned. So I would go with hanged as a witch because if the hangman does his job right, your neck breaks as the noose falls and it's very quick, whereas the burning, very slow, unless they tied a little bag of gunpowder around your neck. I swear some witches were burned on the continent, but it doesn't matter.

Mostly hanging, mostly hanging in England. I trust you, I trust you on this. This is the kind of topic where you will have a deep knowledge that I am unaware of. Of execution distance. Give me three books that were essential reading to produce yours. Oh, okay. Book numero uno, Emma Dabury, What White People Can Do Next, which is such an incredible bait and switch because you think it's going to be a like, give up your privilege kind of wooly it poll book. It is not, it is not. And her way of framing the problem was just so instructive for one of the chapters in particular. Then if I can combine two people's work, because it's on a similar theme,

there's Jody Dean's work on neo-feudalism, and Yanis Varoufakis' book called Techno-Feudalism, really important for how I thought about the economy and what the economy is now like. And then, while it isn't a single bit of their work, but they are dotted all across the book is Stuart Hall. So Stuart Hall's observation that politics doesn't reflect majorities, it constructs majorities was the imaginative starting point for the book. Because I was thinking about how coalitions are constructed and also deconstructed. Thinking about his work on neoliberalism, thinking about his work on identity, thinking about his work on Marx, all of these things, super duper important. I actually did notice that a very red-faced gentleman with a big forehead and a small brain

inside got taken in by the old Emma Dabry Baines switch in a recent op-ed that he was writing. Oh yeah. He's like, well, somebody didn't actually listen to the content of that, did they? Okay, last question. What is your top word at the moment? Prick. Prick?

Ooh. Who have you been applying it to? So, the word prick I've been applying liberally, both as a term of endearment and also as a term of disdain. So term of disdain is fairly self-explanatory. But as a term of endearment, I say it in a little baby voice, because I think it was from like an episode of Misfits where like a talking baby called someone a prick. So whenever my housemate is winding me up, which is often

to be like, you prick. Misfits. Now that was fantastic narrative structure. It was so good. It was so great. I accidentally watched that show from the very first episode and I remember I tuned into E4 really coincidentally, caught this show, was hooked. And then I was like, so it has a special place in my heart because I wasn't around for the Skins generation. By the time Skins came through for me,

or I was old enough to really care about Skins, then it was shit. But I got misfits and I think that was actually better. I will always have a crush on Robert Sheenan. Yeah, I will always, always have a crush on him. Yeah, thank God. And also, did you watch Utopia? I think that was also in the sort of misfits era.

I did not, I did not. Thought it was very good. Yeah, it was very good. Some classic teen shows. Anyway, you have a large, a large timely theory. I have a large timely theory and it can be boiled down to this, which I don't think is controversial The big theory is this artists when they get to a certain level of success are Businesses they are businesses. They are not individuals making work. You connect with their businesses. They're corporations

So don't be surprised when they behave like corporations And the reason why I was thinking about this, you'll be unsurprised to hear, was because of this whole thing about Stormzy and his brand partnership with McDonald's. So what this involved was like some filmed adverts and billboards promoting a Stormzy meal where it's like order like Stormzy and it's a selection of his favorite menu items and then there's all sorts of goodies and you know prizes which go into it. And I think that this is an attempt by McDonald's to get a younger and more diverse customer base, right? That's obviously why they're doing it. And Stormzy, I imagine there's a shit ton of money involved. That wasn't the, I guess, catalyst for the backlash. The catalyst was that one of Stormzy's

Instagram posts where he said, free Palestine, if there is ever a clear injustice in the world, no matter how big or small, 100 times out of 100, I will be on the side of the oppressed. That post was no longer visible on his Instagram. And people, not unreasonably, wondered if that was a condition of the brand partnership, that there would be some kind of restriction on what he could promote through his social media. The reason why this would be relevant for McDonald's is that McDonald's is part of the BDS list because its Israeli franchise owner Alon Yael gave free meals to the Israeli military waging a genocidal war in Gaza. And when I say that, I think that this is a big deal and it's not just an online thing.

There is a massive billboard in Tottenham of Stormzy eating a McDonald's meal. And obviously they put that billboard in Tottenham because they think that lots of the kinds of people that would like Stormzy would see that advert and someone graffitied in massive letters in red free Palestine over it. So there is, there is, I think a real breakthrough into the real world. It's not just online. Stormzy issued a statement, I think he filmed a video of himself and what he said was this, I didn't archive the post where I came out in support of Palestine for any reason outside of me archiving loads of Instagram posts last year. In that post, I spoke about free Palestine oppression and injustice and my stance on this has not changed. He added, the brands I work with can't tell me what to do and don't tell me what to do otherwise

I wouldn't work with them. I do my own research on all the brands I work with, gather my own information, form my own opinion and come to my own conclusion before doing business. Stormzy said that he knew he had fans who are genuinely confused and hurt by what they think has happened. I understand it must feel disappointing and disheartening when it seems like someone you've said that he knew he had fans who are genuinely confused and hurt by what they think has happened. I understand it must feel disappointing and disheartening when it seems like someone you've championed has compromised their beliefs for commercial gain, but this isn't the case here." And I think regardless of what the truth is about this particular Instagram post, and I don't want to get hyper fixated on the post and did he archive it because McDonald's told him to did he archive it?

Just because he was archiving loads of things I want to focus on this question of when does an artist become a business? Because there is a literal element of artists setting up their own production companies the way Beyonce did with Parkwood Entertainment or Kendrick Lamar has with PG Lang and part of that is a way when You know touring and you a way when, you know, touring and, you know, big performances, you know, so much comes out of the artist's pocket. These companies are a way to funnel money back in. So artists don't get paid for performing at the Super Bowl. But if it's your production company doing all of the stuff for it, the production company will get paid.

That's what Kendrick Lamar did. And I think there's also a broader thing about artists. You know, if you're a musician and you get really big, it's not just you that you're supporting financially. There's your managers, there's your agents. There'll probably be a wider network of family members and friends. You know, your entourage, your hangers-on, your work, your marketability is the livelihood for a whole load of people, not just yourself. And that got me thinking about, can we hear that in the work, particularly for musicians, can we hear it in the songs and the songwriting, the sort of commercial pressures that they're under? How much effort do we have to put into preserving a myth

that we've got a direct relationship between, you know, us and like Beyonce or whoever else it is? And are our political expectations of someone like Stormzy reasonable, are they unreasonable? Are we setting ourselves up for disappointment? Or has something changed? You know, could you trust an artist to stick by their beliefs and not sell out in the past in a way that we can't today? So these are my questions for you, Moya, because I know that this is the kind of thing you'll have thought about quite a lot.

No, but the problem is with this question is I have both thought about and come to a position that I don't think is representative of the masses, because in some ways I think we're a bit too deep in the weeds as people who belong to the left and identify as part of the left. And I put the left in quotes because the left is such a nebulous, amorphous thing. We are in a particular section of sort of like urban dwelling, professional talkers, professional pundits about the left. So that separates us from say like someone

who is organizing trade unions. That's a different part. Oh yeah, big time, big time. And I just wanna make that clear. Like when we talk about the left, obviously our left is probably a different experience than someone else's left, even if they're partners in politics. The soft-palmed graduate left. Yeah. My palms are quite hard and also I've chewed all my skin off at the moment. Anyway, so the ways

I've thought about this is I've sort of, I'm really desensitized to it and I don't want to say I don't care, but it's a position where I think it's summed up in a tweet in 2015, which basically said, is MasterCard feminist? Is this TV show my friend? And I think that that has always rung in my head when it comes to these major pop stars, but I'm really, there's sort of like a dialectic

that happens where on the one, I'm saying to myself, your position on this is kind of nihilist. Is it nihilist or nihilist? Nihilist. Your position is nihilist. You have no faith in these major voices to be true to political positions they might profess to hold. You know that money will corrupt them. Basically, you're saying there's no hope for anyone to stay true to an ideological position. Whereas that's not always the case. You see with someone like Sally Rooney, who has built a huge career, makes loads of money and still has very firm political positions that she refuses to compromise on. She won't be published in Israel. She won't be published by an Israeli publishing house. And that's one of her absolute red lines

when it comes to politics. But in the most part, I'm kind of like, well, there's no one who can't be bought. And I think the Stormzy example is particularly interesting. To pick up on a couple of bits of it as well. First of all, you were like, I think this is to appeal to a more diverse audience. McDonald's has a diverse audience. I do think this is to appeal to a more diverse audience. McDonald's has a diverse audience.

I do think this is directly linked to trying to win back ethnic minority young audiences that Stormzy is supposed to appeal to prompt following the boycotts over the past time. Oh, that's interesting. I think that is directly linked when I think about the young people. And when I think about those boycotts,

they fascinate me because McDonald's is kind of at a loss here. Like what I'm about to say might piss some people off and my favorites might piss some people off. And also I'm not in charge of boycotting strategy, okay? Right? It's not up to me, but McDonald's, and I'm also not caping for McDonald's,

like not going to McDonald's. Since I boycotted McDonald's, and I'm also not caping for McDonald's, like not going to McDonald's. Since I boycotted McDonald's, my health is better. Like I wasn't going regularly, but it's good not to occasionally have McDonald's fries cooked in whatever random rodent fat they do. But the aim of this boycott was to make McDonald's take back its Israeli franchises. So the way McDonald's works for people that don't know

is they franchise it out. So somebody in an area, it could be Malaysia, it could be Germany, or it could be individual stores in say Portsmouth. They will have different owners. So somebody there, a business person says, I would like to buy the rights to sell McDonald's under McDonald's name in this territory or region or city. And McDonald's says, yep, you can

do that. And so it's not McDonald's, this giant company running these individual franchises. It's a franchisee. They give someone the rights to run the company. In Israel, the franchisee was that big company that I can't remember the name of. They are the ones who decided to give the IDF free meals and support them. In April, 2024, after the boycotts kicked in, McDonald's bought those fucking franchises back. They took the franchises off the Israeli franchise holder. Why? Because boycotts work.

But we're still fucking boycotting McDonald's. To me that doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. You know what, like, um, like I was just having a look at the sales figures while you were talking. So there was sort of like a bit of a double, double whammy. So the impact of the boycotts meant that the McDonald's business missed one of its sales targets. So it's first time in four years, it missed a quarterly sales target. And then that caused shares to fall, right? So you've got a double whammy, which is they lose money on the sales

and then they lose value as a company through shareholders. And I think that the reason why people are continuing to boycott is that I don't know how to form this thought. So be patient with me if it lacks coherence. I think that there is something about the Palestinian cause, which because it is obviously such an egregious moral offence, and when I say that I don't mean offensive, like, oh, I'm upset. What I mean is like it is a profound off defense to our like most deeply held values as human beings,

is that it is, you know, it's profoundly politicizing. But also because, you know, boycott, divestment and sanctions, it's a movement that's part of a call from Palestinian civil society. It is also one of the few ways in which we are encouraged to direct our eye towards corporations, which we know are doing us harm for all sorts of other reasons. So the catalyst is responding to this call issued by Palestinian civil society, the BDS movement. But the other thing is that, well, I fucking hate McDonald's and what it's doing to us and what it's done to food and what it's done to people's health. You know, I hate what

what Starbucks has done to the high street. So I think there's also something about, you know, yes, you're boycotting for one reason to start with, but it becomes an outlet for all your anger towards corporations, which, which has like relatively few political expressions in today's society I think. No I totally agree and it's also still on the organic boycott list. I just personally think, and again I don't give a fuck if we go to McDonald's or not like I if you if you made me boycott super drug it would seriously impact my life like I'm please please god don't let the boycots hit super drug.

And please super drug, do not give tampons to the IDF. The diet coke one has actually been really hard because I don't drink that much. So often my go-to is diet coke, right? And so many bars and pubs only serve diet coke. So it's hard. So it's like, okay, well, I'm guessing drinking a lime and soda.

And I've, you know, unconsciously automatically gone to buy diet coke at shops and's hard, so it's like, okay, well, I'm guessing I'm drinking a lime and soda. And I've, you know, unconsciously, automatically gone to buy diet coke at shops and then had to be like, no. One of my friends was like, you can't just buy fucking diet coke, like wake up bitch. And I was like, you're actually so right. I need a bit of shame. This is very early on.

Your friend just pushed a tea, order diet coke, that's a joke, right? But that was very early on when it's like, you're still getting to the habit of doing a boycott and remembering that this actually matters and remembering the ramifications of it. But it's just interesting to me because the aim of the boycott with McDonald's is achieved.

So I kind of think it would be more effective. And again, I'm sure people are gonna yell at me that you know nothing, you're not an organizer, but I feel like it would be more effective to celebrate that win really loudly and say, they divested, well they didn't divest, they took the franchises back, we have won, but I get what you're saying about the corporations thing.

I'm just like- Yeah, I suppose for me, and I guess it's the way in which I think that there are so few avenues to express anti-capitalist sentiment that I'm just like, yeah, keep going. I mean, and take a company like Coca-Cola, we're gonna come back to the specific subject of musicians in a second,

but take a company like Coca-Cola. They are responsible for so many fucking, crimes across the world. And the one I always think about because I went there is what they've done in Chiapas in Mexico. So Chiapas is one of the poorest states in Mexico. It's close to the border with Guatemala. And they've got this massive bottling plant

which has taken up nearly all like fresh clean water in a particular area. Meanwhile they sell Coca-Cola and other sugary soda products back to the local population. There's a very very large indigenous population in this particular part of Chiapas and diabetes and associated health issues is one of the biggest killers there now. So they take your water and then they sell back the means of killing you. And the marketing of Coca-Cola has been so pernicious because they marketed it and so Coca-Cola and Pepsi marketed directly at indigenous people, like in the 70s, I believe it was. And it's like to the point where now like Coca-Cola

is sort of a central part of like rights of passage and religious practices as well. So this is, you know, the way in which it's being sold back to them as their savior when it's literally killing them is just disgusting. So even if, even if, you know, let's imagine that Coca-Cola tomorrow said like, we're not gonna sell any products in Israel.

Like, I also kind of don't give a fuck. This is an evil corporation. And I think that, like, maybe there's something interesting about the way in which there was a sort of, like, anti-corporation mood in the 90s. And then it's sort of got, like, it's now seen as, like, small and stupid and a bit, like, crunchy and granola. But like actually it was something important that maybe we've lost. Well, I think there's obviously is this importance and I don't know maybe that's why I'm so intent on being like we should celebrate that this company was made to retreat and by that I'm

talking about McDonald's. There should be a celebration in that and then maybe it's like, okay, well you can continue if you want, but I think there should have been more made. And maybe there was, and I just missed it, but maybe there should have been more made of the fact that they did buy back those franchises. And they have, I hear people just being like, this ongoing boycott, this ongoing thing.

There needs to be a celebration of when change is forced as well, even if the boycott continues, I think. Just coming back to this thing about musicians and connecting with the artwork and what your expectations of them are. I mean, I suppose the most famous example of an artist being accused of selling out by their core core fans is Bob Dylan going electric. And I knew about that before and not just because Timothy Shalamu is in a film about it. No hate on my Timothy. Timothy. He's going to be one of the greats.

I love my Timothy. One of the greats. I look, I really, I really enjoy his work. I really enjoy his work. He's just like, you know, he's just like a little jazzy mouse. Do you know what I mean? He is such a jazzy mouse. Anyway, sorry, continue.

But yeah, so like, you know, that's an example where being seen to seek out a more mass audience by going electric was experienced by people as a profound betrayal, like a really, really profound betrayal. And so I guess I wonder, and this is sort of a question to you, is that for you, what is the sort of a question to you, is

that for you, what is the line of selling out? What does it mean to sell out? Or have you just accepted that your artists have all sold out and that's fine and you're just going to find a way to enjoy the work any old how? Well, I'm on the latter bit. I think Stormzy is a particularly interesting example because, and I'm sure some of Stormzy's team, maybe Stormzy's team will get in touch if they listen to this, I don't know. Stormzy's career is a really, at a fascinating crossroads, I would say, in that he has the appearance of a man

who is very successful. And yes, he is very successful. He's not making nearly enough money to uphold the lifestyle he previously was. His last album was kind of flop, didn't have any of the cut through, those previous ones have. He hasn't done anything that feels like directly

as relevant and maybe I might just be aging out of it, but he was at a peak when he headlined Glastonbury a few years ago and he was like the guy. I don't listen to Stormzy, I don't listen to much UK rap I would say. Like I'm a pop girl, you know? But even I knew what Stormzy was up to. It was cutting through and I'm a culture hound. Now I've got no idea what Stormzy is doing

except partnering with McDonald's because McDonald's must have offered him, like you say, a lot of money. I think people are perceiving this as like, why would Stormzy do this? I mean, the obvious thing is like money, but it's also because he's moving into a phase of his career where he needs to be shown to be able to sell stuff again.

And the stuff he's not selling is music. The music is not selling in the same way. Maybe he'll have a rebrand or whatever, but I think also it's difficult because again, we're moving into a real pop phase and the era of rap that Stormzy came up in is being elbowed out by the shiny new pop starlets.

That is very obvious. And where you have people like Kendrick Lamar who are big enough to weather this and the American stars, I think UK rap, it was interesting when the wireless lineup came out the other day and everyone was like, there is no one who can headline 30 years of wireless from Britain for three nights in a row. That is such an indictment of maybe the constraints we put on British rap, but also like where it's gone. Why is there no one who can do three days of wireless? Why is Drake the only person that we can get him to do three days?

And I can think of so many American stars who could probably do that. I think Nicki Minaj did two nights, didn't she, at one point? And she was, and that was in her real crackhead era. So you could have, I can think of lots of different American rap stars who could do three nights, and I would even think about going and seeing them.

Whereas UK rappers, who? Even the most, yeah, go on. This is actually also your complete area. Yeah. So one is that like, there's something about UK rap, which has not pushed people to I think, the artistic heights that you get with American hip hop. So I just think that while we have some really, really talented rappers, and you know, like Dave is a lyricist, right? Like he is a lyricist, retrofree too, lyricist. One of the things that many UK rappers say is like, look, I keep it simple, because that's what UK

audiences want. But what that means is that you don't have that sense of, you know, once in a generation musical talent like A. Kendrick Lamar or like Nas or, you know, like Andre 3000 or someone like that. There is sort of like a ceiling on quality because apparently UK audiences don't want that from our rappers. I think that it was JME who said, look, I keep it at a certain level of simplicity. And I think that, you know, if I'm honest, I know I'm gonna sound like an old lady who's like, oh, the music was better in my day. But actually when it comes to UK rap, it was.

Like Centrosy cannot switch flows. I've never, ever, ever heard him once switch flows. Not once. It is the most basic fucking rhyme scheme. Like, you know, I'm not seeing the dexterity and while I think like, you know, UK rap has had its like its own identity, it's different from America, that's fine. And, you know, part of that is maybe like, it draws a little bit more from football chanting, to be honest. There's a little bit of football chanting in there which define the genre.

Now that you don't really see people clashing anymore or doing live radio sets anymore, I think that that has just so obviously impacted the technical dexterity of the form. So you've had this sort of like ceiling when it comes to simplicity on like the lyrical content. So like, you know, someone getting to the top of it is like a Retro-Free 2 or a Dave or like, you know, Kano when he's at his best. But like, they're still not reaching that level of like a Kendrick Lamar. I don't think anything is about lyricism. I'm sorry to say like Drake. Drake is not the best lyricist. No, but he but think Drake is a pop artist. He can also sell out three days of wireless because he's an amazing pop artist. Where's our rap pop artist?

Like I would say that Dave is one of the best lyricists I've heard. But I might, I might be wrong. I might be wrong. But I just think Dave is pretty good. He's pretty good. I think Dave has everything and he can cross over. Things he did with that Central Sea collab album, there was great pop tracks on that. Sprinter. 300 years. Like, it's one of them.

Like that lives right through my head. But someone like Dave, I think Dave has such potential for mass, like a location. That was a fantastic pop song. It was international. You had Burnett. It was, I would say akin to one of a Drake playbook in terms of that crossover,

that pulling in a different artist, that pulling in that sound that can appeal globally. But I think it's got more to do with something like production because we have these artists who make great, Jay Huss, another person, makes great pop music. Yeah. Great pop music, great rap pop. He might kill me for that.

But I think there's something to do with production. I think there's something to do with these artists' plateauing. There is something that stores them. Is it the music industry they're working in? Is it the confines of Britain? Is it that they don't have enough platforms to go and do this sort of breakout work that say, I think it was Money Long did the other day, I saw her do a freestyle to 21 Questions that definitely wasn't a freestyle. It was very much taken from her new song, which is called Questions, but it was, it was amazing. It was so good. And

it was on Sway, I think it was something like that. And when I see someone who actually can freestyle, like Megan Thee Stallion, who in her early years was coming up, doing all these freestyles, really, like she's an old school rap talent, but in the body of, I don't want to say goddess, because I'm stupid, but she's like, she's, you know, Megan Thee Stallion has everything, which is why people go at her so much, because she is a fully rounded woman who wants you to know that. And I mean that in the most like metaphorical. You know, she's got like the emotional depth. She has the lyricism and talent. She knows it, she backs it, but she's also so vulnerable. Her documentary was amazing. Anyway, someone like that. I just don't think we know enough about the UK rappers in the same way.

They don't get pushed to us in the same. There's something missing, there's a gap. I don't know these things about Stefflin Donne, and yeah, I think Stefflin Donne's probably a bit of a bird. Again, why am I talking about these people like this? They're gonna come, if they hear this, they're gonna come kill me. But someone like Brie Runway, she had everything, right?

She could have done pop, she did rap, she could dance, her songs were amazing, her aesthetic was so on point. Where's she gone? What is holding these artists back? Maybe it's something that there's just like a smaller audience because it's the UK, like, you know, the, there is a limitation on how big you can get unless you go stateside, which is difficult because obviously, like, American rap is so much its own thing and there's so much like regional and like city variation of it. I think maybe that makes a difference. Shall we move on to some dilemmas?

We should wait, we should come up with a thing with a final thought on Stormzy though. Look, my final thought on Stormzy is that like, I think for me, rather than saying, oh, you sold out and this is the point at which it happened, it's about saying, well, you're a business. You are a business. There's the murky imprints, stuff like that. That's the place that artists get to. And I think part of it is like, I cannot rely on music alone to keep me very, very rich because, you know, because of what streaming has done to the financial model. So there is a structure, a financial structure, which encourages this particular form of selling out. And that has political implications.

Like if Stormzy releases a banger of an album, I'll probably still enjoy it. But you know, as much as he can have important things to say about society, and that's good, good use of platform, he can't be seen as a political tribune, you know, political leader, because he's he's subject to a set of economic pressures, which means that he's got to be a corporation. I think I would add, yes, you can hold your faves accountable if you wish, just think about how productive that is. And also remember that what once someone is very, very rich, as you say, they want to stay there. And think about what that what positions that will force them into and then think about whether it's useful or not to expect them to be a political leader. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I don't have the answer.

So we have come to the portion of our show where we address some of your problems rather than just yapping about our own. If you have a problem that you would like us to address, just email us at if I speak at navarro media.com. That's if I speak at navarro media.com. So I'm in big trouble. Moira, take it away. Hi, a few years ago, my best friend went through a bad breakup and started a really stressful job at the same time. She's always been someone who gets overwhelmed easily and I wasn't sure if taking this job would be a good choice for her mental health. Since these events I have noticed that she seems more neurotic and paranoid. Sometimes she thinks things have happened that just haven't happened. She's

been caught lying quite regularly by me and her other close friends. Sometimes she genuinely seems to think something has happened, sometimes it's just a lie, for example telling stories that have happened to me but pretending they happened to her. Sometimes she fixates on a narrative in her romantic life, either with someone in our friendship group or who she works with. All she wants to talk about is how strange their behaviour is and their relationship is and all their behaviour which she thinks proves they have feelings for her. I often have a different take as some of these people are mutual friends and I know they can be quite tactile or flirty in their nature.

But when I try and tell her she's reading into things, she gets really defensive. So same when I try and speak to her about some of the lies or different interpretations of reality. She gets really upset and doesn't seem to be aware of her behaviour and the impact it is having on her relationships. She had fairly healthy relationships in the past but now she is so hot and cold and a bit chaotic in romantic situations I mean feel she's maybe not in the right place to have a part even though she wants one. I'm really struggling with our friendship too. In order not to ruin our relationship every time I see her I'm biting my tongue and going along with her narrative. I find this difficult because I'm naturally quite an honest person. I'm genuinely worried whether there's a serious mental health issue

going on. She expressed before she has things like sensory overloads and patches of anxiety and depression. I'd be really terrified to admit that something is wrong as more serious. I think she's terrified to admit something may be wrong that is more serious and it's perhaps leading her to feel she has to defend her reality so strongly. But where does this leave me as her friend? A mental health intervention would be traumatic and my fear would end our friendship. But I'm struggling with pretending I'm making fewer plans with her, which she's probably noticed. What should I do? Love the podcast all the best." I mean, this is a really difficult one because

just going based on your submission, which, you know, is important to say that we're getting this through the eyes of someone in particular. But I think if, if what you're saying is an accurate and comprehensive picture, I'd probably say there is some kind of mental health issue going on. I suppose the thing which follows on is, well, what do you do about that? And I suppose the thing to say is that there's different kinds of mental health intervention. Like it doesn't have to be like you bring her into a room and you lock her in and you've, you know, called mental health services. I mean, it might just be an honest conversation that you have where you say, look, I'm really worried about you. I think it might be good for you to talk to a professional about some of these things. And you see how that learns. Another is that if you've got

shared friends, where maybe a few of you have that conversation with her, but I think you need to accept that doing so you're taking the risk that it might have a really negative impact on your relationship. I suppose where I fall on it is well, what kind of relationship do you have now? Like really, really. And does preserving her sense of reality at the expense of your connection with her, do anyone any good? Is it doing her any good? Is it doing you any good? I mean, probably not. I think maybe lastly, the thing I would say is that like, this is the case whether or not there are mental health issues at play,

but you have to fundamentally accept your lack of control over someone else's life. Like you really, really do. Like you can lead a horse to water, you cannot make it drink, you cannot make it think that drinking water is a good idea. You cannot make it see the need that, you know, hydration is key to their survival.

Like, you know, there's, and I say this because like, you know, I've experienced this like within my own like friends and family, people where I'm really worried about them and they're just not seeing it the same way. There's nothing you can do unless the situation is very, very extreme, where they pose a risk to themselves or to other people

to compel them to comply. Like, like you can't and that's sad and it's frustrating, but it's the truth. So yeah, I think that you can make suggestions. I don't think you have to make it a big traumatic experience where you're locking someone in a room, but just know that even that conversation may have a disruptive impact on your relationship.

I just think that you don't really have much of a meaningful relationship right now. What do you reckon? It's interesting, because this letter, I feel a lot of recognition reading this letter about relationships I've had with different people and who seem to be living in realities separate from mine. And what I get from this letter,

and again, I might be totally projecting, the letter writer might be totally projecting, I'm sure there's an element of that. But there's definitely resentment at the delusion, the resentment that someone can live in this deluded world and still seem to be happy enough. It's like, you're fucking mental. How are you getting along with this? Like, how are you getting away with this? What I have to be saying? There's frustration seeing your friend go down this road where it's like, can't they see that they're telling themselves these lies and they're also like just borrowing from me and I have to just hold that and not say anything? Like what? That

also plays into resentment. There's sadness and fear that someone can end up like this. And then there's just like that constant worry, that pressure, what do I do? What do I do? You're already doing something, which is you're pulling away. So the friendship has already changed. You're pulling away and the friendship has changed. You say there might not be a friendship left if you stage an intervention.

Well, I don't think there'll be a friendship left anyway, because there's such discomfort in this letter at what you're being exposed to, you're removing yourself from it slowly anyway. And that will just kind of continue because you're like, this is one of the things we do so much, right? It's this question of, should I do anything? And then you don't want to be in the situation. So you just kind of ghost, you just leave. The question that is being asked here as well is, is it right to impose my version of reality on someone else?

Is it right to challenge someone's perception of reality? Do I have that right? Do I have the permission to put forward the thing, the way I see things and say to someone, I disagree with how you're interpreting these events and I'm worried about you and I think it might suggest something deep is going on. Do I have that right? Because that seems kind of aggressive, doesn't it? When you think about it, you're like,

and I had this situation recently where I was like, do I have the right, am I even in the right, in quote marks, to want to say to someone, I don't agree with the way you're interpreting this, I don't agree with the way that you see this, I don't agree with the way that you see this. I don't agree with the way and I don't think it's healthy. And I think it's hurting you. But you know what's so what's so interesting about that is that we actually challenge each other's interpretation of reality all the time. All the time all the time. So like me and you do it on the podcast, or it's like I see it this way. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, I think it's this way. Like we've even like gotten into it in ways which have like, you know, had some fireworks,

like me and my partner do it all the time. You know, and obviously within the context of that relationship, it will be a bit like, I think we're interpreting it like this because you've experienced these things. And some of those things can be really painful and challenging. But we do that quite easily and naturally when we trust that the other person is resilient, has their feet on the ground, won't lash out,

won't be really volatile. The irony is that in a situation where you're really worried about them, really worried about them, is that when you go, oh, can I do this or not? Yeah. Yeah. And I, because you recognise that the response might be to end that relationship forever. And there's two different examples I can think of. I won't even say two. There's two situations I can think of where I've challenged the perception of someone

else's reality. One of those people thinks I'm the fucking devil and hates me to this day. perception of someone else's reality. One of those people thinks I'm the fucking devil and hates me to this day. One of those people is still in my life and is very beloved. And you host a podcast with- It can really go either way. And it's hard, because I don't want to be like,

it's up to you to talk to this person. I think you have to decide, we can't decide for you, you have to decide whether you can have the conversation with this person and what you want to say in it that's constructive, because you won't be able to just voice everything, you won't be able to just unload your true feelings, you have to think what is the most constructive thing I can say to this person, and then you have to accept that your relationship might irrevocably be over and they might fucking hate you, what are the consequences of that? But either way I think you're going to withdraw

from this friendship otherwise. So you can choose, you can go quietly and painfully like this and leave them even more confused and without maybe the opportunity to even see a reflection of themselves in someone else's eyes and take from that what they want. Or you can go by gently and lovingly talking to them. And the people who gently and lovingly talk to me,

and guess what? Even with the first example I was thinking of, the person whose perception of reality is so divorced of my own, to this day, to this day, the way that they see reality, and I know because they have said it to me recently, unsolicited, is so fucking divorced in the way I see things, it's nuts.

But within that, from that interaction, from the way I see things, it's nuts. But within that, from that interaction, from the entanglement, I've taken things, even now I am taking things that I use for my loving, caring friendships to make myself better and to make others better. There are seeds there. And with the other one, again, I took things even in the initial discussion. So yeah, your friend might not, but you have to give them the chance in my opinion. That's in my opinion. I think there's also, I mean, just to sort of, this is a word I don't use very often, validate, just to validate something in your letter, a special one is that it is incredibly stressful when you are in proximity with somebody who has a completely separate reality to you.

Like it is inherently really, really stressful. And, you know, I think that maybe there's, there's some wiggle room around that when you go, well, it's okay if I don't expect very much from them, but it sort of seems that, that do, that there is a closeness to your friendship that means that you can't just sort of detach a bit but still be around. And I think that it's fine to say to yourself, look, there are limits to how much I can engage with this. You know, like there's limits to how much I can expose myself to this.

Like one day I'll tell this story like in its entirety because it's so completely bat shit. But the last time I spoke to my biological father, which was a few years ago, I'd phoned him up to tell him that someone had died and he just wanted to talk about random shit like Brexit. And I remember being like, God, we're in two completely different realities. Like I'm saying, hey, someone you knew when their baby has died.

And he was just like wanting to talk about random shit. And my partner could hear through the phone what he was talking about, which was so validating for me. So I was like, I'm not the only one who thinks this guy's crazy. And when I was like, it got to the point where I was like, okay, I'm going to try and force the point a bit, and try and like force us to exist in the same emotional reality of like why I'm calling and what's going on. And I said to him, look, you know, the fact that so-and-so died, it made me think we knoweth not the hour. So if you want to meet up ever, I'm up for it.

It doesn't have to be a big thing. We don't have to break over the past. We can just meet up. And he was like going into, he was like, well, I can't do that unless you hear my point of view of basically why he had no relationship with me, rah rah rah. And I was like, I just don't think I'm ever going

to agree with you on that. And that can't be a condition. And it got to the point where he was being so and he was like, then why did you call me? And I was like, well, because someone died. He was like, well, you shouldn't have. And I was like, fuck you. This is why mom divorced you and then hung up the phone. And that was the last time we spoke. But the reason the reason why I'm telling the story is because here is someone who was incapable of being in a shared emotional reality. Yeah. Incapable. Like when they were forced into some kind of proximity with that shared reality, they rejected it.

Yeah. And I know that some people might say that I did the same thing, but I don't think that it's morally equivalent for a daughter to say to a father, do you want to go for dinner? And for the father to say to the daughter, you have to agree that leaving you as a baby was the right thing to do. Don't think they're moral equivalents.

But like, he just, he just couldn't, he just couldn't. And it was obviously painful at the time. But I now look at that situation and I go, God, imagine if I had to live with this person in my life. So special one, when you are making your decision, think about the reality of the relationship with them. Don't think about what it might be like to lose the idealized version, because you're probably never going to get that idealized version. Right. Think about the reality of what you got. And then as Moya said, think about the consequences. Final thing as well, as Ash said at the very start, you have to detach from their reality affecting yours in some ways. Like you have to detach from trying to control it and you

have to detach from that it kind of has something to do with you. The only thing you should be trying to give them is care within your capacity. And I always think give people a chance, give them opportunity, think how you would want to be approached. Think also what you can take and grow from this. How have you behaved in this situation? How can you take something forward, even if the relationship blows up? And then approach, make your move.

That's my advice. She's a smart lady. So are you, so are you, Ashtarqa. Right, should we say goodbye to the good folks of If I Speak? Let us say farewell. This has been If I Speak, I've been Ash Sarker. I've been Moya Lothian-McLean. See you next week.

Bye! Bye, bye! Thanks for watching!