The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Professor Green - How To Overcome Life’s Hardest Challenges & Find A Purpose

Episode Date: May 10, 2021

We all know Professor Green aka Stephen Manderson for his multiple chart topping songs throughout the years but there is so much behind each and every track inspired by his rocky upbringing, to say he has faced and overcome adversity to reach where he is would be a real understatement. He was born and raised in Hackney, growing up on one of the most notoriously troubled council estates at the time. He has won a number of personal battles ranging from health trauma and poverty to parental abandonment. Stephen's mother gave birth to him at 16 years old and left him and the home when he was just one year old. His father was absent for the vast majority of the time, leaving Stephen troubled and alienated. He was raised by his nan Pat. Stephen was stabbed in the neck in a near fatal attack with a broken glass bottle in a Shoreditch nightclub when he was 26. Convinced that he would die, he fled the club in shock and phoned both his mother and grandmother to say 'goodbye'. In 2008, Stephen tragically lost his father to suicide by hanging. He opened up on this is in his pivotal documentary 'Suicide and Me' released in 2015 for BBC III. They had had a difficult relationship prior and only occasional contact - he had not seen him face to face for six years before to having to identify his body, and his last words to his father had followed a bitter argument. In 2017, Stephen had a major health crisis and ended up with “a paralysed stomach”, totally unable to digest food. He managed to heal himself in large part through his own research and combinations of gut/balancing products. Since identifying a gap in the market for similar solutions through his own health battle, he has converted that newfound knowledge and research into co-founding liquid supplement company Aguulp, its product range receiving rave reviews so far. Stephen is incredibly level-headed and self aware despite treading such a rocky path. His constant battle with mental health both personally and within the family has created a mindset that is very unique and this conversation is one that I think everyone needs to hear. Stephen: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/professorgreen Twitter - https://twitter.com/professorgreen  Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. To say that Professor Green has faced and overcome adversity in his life is such a gross understatement. He's self-aware, he's honest, he's critical of himself where he feels he needs to be. I've got to do some work on myself here. Things need to change. As you push things down, they come at you sideways. I can't keep projecting my problems onto other people and blaming them. You know what? If I ever see you again i'm gonna knock you out and people are like wow do you wish you could go back in time and change what your last words to him were no of course not because that anger was just it was that constant it was him being in and

out my life him being such a kind generous gorgeous man but being such a shit father i felt like he was threatening me and i felt like i was right to stand my ground i didn't expect that five minutes after that he'd walk up behind me and put a broken bottle in my neck i got my phone i called my nan and i just apologized for all the work she put into me that this was how it was going to end to say that professor green aka stephen manderson has faced and overcome adversity in his life is such a gross understatement there's moments in this podcast today where you realize how unfortunate his life has been at certain moments and how much of a seemingly unfair start he had that it almost doesn't seem like it can be true and we know Professor Green we know his music I grew up

listening to Professor Green's music we know his documentaries more recently and how inspiring and vulnerable those documentaries have been and most of us will know about the tragedy that met him in his early years when his dad decided to commit suicide. But it's interesting to see how all of these events came to shape this man, a man that is empathetic, a man that refuses to be bitter, and a man that has overcome and thrived despite all of this. Professor Green is a remarkable person. He's a remarkable guy. He's self-aware. He's honest. He's critical of himself where he feels he needs to be. And because of that, because of the content, the documentaries and the music he's made, he's one of my sincere inspirations, especially as it relates to mental health

and the change that he's been able to make in the conversation. This is an honest conversation today. And it's one that I think everybody should and needs to hear, especially men, especially in the world we live in. So without further ado, I'm Stephen Bartlett, and this is The Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. I did a lot of research on you and I've listened to podcasts you've done and I've read parts from the book that you authored and I want to know from your perspective what you think the most pivotal moments were from your early years that came to shape the man that you became later in your life? Wow. Let's start with the big ones.

Yeah, we went straight into the small talk to. It'd be really easy to draw from some of the more traumatic events, I think, because they're the more obvious and they're highlighted quite often. They come up in conversation all the time. But I think, I don't think they're specific moments. In the same way, I think the worst traumas that I actually endured weren't any single moments. They were cumulative. They were things that happened over time. I think it was probably more a case of my,

or what shaped me being cumulative as well it was the time that i spent with my great-grandmother i was sort of six of us in the flat when i was born there was me my great-grandmother my grandmother my mother and my two uncles so my nan's three kids um my mom was the first person to leave the house when i was a year old she was a consistent you know she was she was there consistently throughout my life but my nan was my legal guardian when I was by the time I was three um and at a point when my nan could have started a new life for herself she took on the responsibility of of her mum and her grandson but it was amazing because you know apart from the ancestral shit that i absorbed um sorry the ancestral shit yeah well just you know you think like my great-grandmother went through two world wars

whatever relationship she had been through the relationship that she had with my grandmother all the problems that they had as a mother and daughter the problems that my nan had with my mother the problems that my mother had with my grandmother what were those problems um i couldn't tell you because they weren't my problems but they existed and i was aware with my mother the problems that my mother had with my grandmother what were those problems um i couldn't tell you because they weren't my problems but they existed and i was aware because there were arguments and there was stress and there was shouting and there were financial problems and struggles and there was robin peter to pay paul me being shuffled off into a room when you know money lender would come around to you know pick up money and conversations and that i wasn't supposed

to be privy to but in a three-bedroom flat that was about as big as the room that we're sitting in it was quite difficult to avoid being aware of these things um but there was a lot of good people always go it must have been really tough growing up in hackney but i didn't have i didn't know anything i didn't know any different you know it wasn't like i grew up in wiltshire until i was 13 and then it was just airlifted and dropped off in hackney and told to survive you know it was all i knew but in hindsight there was a lot that wasn't mine to take on but that i absorbed that that stress and that anxiety definitely seeped into me and i was a very anxious child i was always mad i got a tummy ache but at the same time, I was really fortunate because when people talk about, you know, kids who aren't brought up by a or both parents, they normally miss out on the larger part of what good is in me or encouraged the good in me.

You know, I would run out into the living room, which was where she slept on a chair that folded out every morning when that weird holding screen was on the BBC with a little girl holding that puppet with that, which in hindsight is quite scary. You're really weird. Weird. But before the cartoons would come on and you know she would read to me i always remember her blue blanket that i'd jump underneath um and she taught me to read well ahead of my years you know basic numeracy and stuff when i went to school i was ahead of most kids because of that time spent with my great grandmother and i enjoyed learning so i sought validation in the right places rather than throwing tantrums at school like a lot of people did because they

weren't getting attention you know in single parent homes parents have a tough decision to make do I go out and work and lose out on the time of my child but be able to provide or do I lose out on the money that I would make which would make supporting a child easier it's a you know that's a conundrum. That's a really difficult situation to be in. I was really fortunate. I didn't lose out on that. And I think it's that, that's what shaped me.

You know, it wasn't any of any single event, really. It was that period of time. And you said your mum was the first to leave the house. Yeah. So my mum was 16 when she had me. Oh, wow. Yeah. My dad was 18 they were separated very quickly um and my mom had a lot of growing to do i'm more than twice her age

and i've just become a father i can't imagine you know being a parent or having tried to have been a parent when i was 16 yeah 16 yeah it's a crazy age to well you're a baby yourself aren't you at 16 it's like very much so yeah and how was your what was your relationship like with your mum from that point onwards um so me and my mum we've had an on and off relationship in in the latter years of my life you know i don't talk about it too much um loads of loads of stuff out there about my relationship or lack thereof with my dad because of how his life ended. But I was brought up to not air dirty laundry. My mum did try. She did.

Like I say, she was a much more consistent part of my life than my dad was. She made the effort. Has it taken you know she made she made the effort has it taken you some time to get to the point where you can be compassionate about your experiences with her i think it's taken me some time to get to the point where i can be compassionate about my experiences with everyone that i was involved with growing up um and i think I got to that place quite a while ago and it's quite, it's quite liberating, man. It's, it's quite freeing

because that, I think holding onto anger, you know, it becomes resentment and that leads to bitterness and, and bitter is not something I'm interested in being. I think a lot of people get, you know, end up quite bitter and jaded quite early on and that determines the rest of their lives. And I used to be quite scared to even say the words I'm happy because I would worry about what was around the corners that I couldn't see around. Now I'm never going to develop the power to see around corners

and worrying about what's out of your control and preempting things that may or may not happen is not the healthiest way to live. It's not great for your mental health. It's not great for the quality of life that you have, because if you're constantly worrying, I can enjoy a lot of what or be happy about a lot of the things that i've achieved with hindsight but actually when i was going through the early years of of my of the successful part of my music career there was a lot of things that i didn't enjoy in the moment as much as i should because i was worried about dropping the ball because i experienced loss quite early on um and come from quite a disadvantaged background and i wasn't used to a lot of the things i was starting to encounter i was scared of of loss and of losing it and of

dropping the ball you know it's why i didn't take holidays i would attach a few days here and there on to work but i felt i was you know scared to enjoy myself or to to let go of that kind of almost incessant need to keep working because I was worried about losing it, but I wasn't enjoying what I had, so did I ever really have it? And it took me a while to get to a point where, you know, I'm in a place where I enjoy things as they happen and life is a lot more pleasant because I don't spend my time catastrophizing

about what may or may not happen. Not least of all because I've survived things, you know, and I know that if shit does hit the fan and things do happen, it's quite likely that I'm going to get through them. So I can worry about them happening and ruin my life day by day because all I do is worry about what may or may not happen, which is also distracting and doesn't allow me then to focus on the things that are in front of me and that are important,

which will build a happier, a steadier, a more consistent life for me. Or I can deal with things as they come, knowing that I have the strength and the resilience in myself to handle things. And it's taken me a while to get to that point. It's taken some therapy as well but it's kind of it it's you know I feel quite calm and relaxed in saying right now that I am happy and I feel quite secure in that I can handle what may or may not come my way talk about worry there and you referenced earlier you you'd say to your I think your nan that you had a like a pain in your

belly yeah and I guess you didn't really know what that was when you were younger nope what did you come to learn about that pain in your belly and it was anxiety it was a night in my stomach the problem was i was born with a problem in my digestive tract i had um called i don't know if it was a procedure that was called pyloric stenosis or the condition but stenosis is narrowing um and my stomach basically your pilar muscle at the bottom of your stomach should open and close to let food pass but mine was just closed so at six weeks old i had an operation which has left me with a scar that goes from there to there um so whenever i said now i've got a bellyache i've got a tummy ache man i've got tummy ache it was straight to the doctors um and that then meant that i would go to the hospital and have cameras up me down me you know be put into machines to be scanned to

make sure there wasn't something physically wrong which there wasn't it was psychological um i was diagnosed with ibs really early on and that's still quite misunderstood you know is it something psychological that manifests physically or is it physical and causes mental problems um and i think that really highlights the intrinsic link between the gut and the brain um and it again i guess that's a bit of a chicken and egg situation never really considered that before never really ever considered that there might there might be a link between the two um and with IBS especially it's something that I've become increasingly curious about because as I said to you before we started recording I've definitely got a problem

with my gut I just haven't figured out quite yet what it is um going back to your sort of your formative years was there anything else through that period that would shape the man you you became that you can really think of between the age of like i don't know zero and 16 like school life and stuff like that and yeah um so i was i was quite a bright kid um and you sound surprised yeah most most people i sit here don't seem to be especially people that come from that kind of background don't don't tend to be that academic their smarts and genius teams seems to come from other creative sources. Or they're like, like yesterday we had Russell,

Russell Kane here. He's just like a, you know, comedic genius. And then became a bit more academic when he left school. But yeah. I've kind of, I,

I guess there's, I've kind of gone full circle in that. I have to use the academic part of my brain and what I do now more than I have done for the last 10 years during making music um but that wasn't really harnessed it wasn't you know education wasn't big in my family no one had been to university so me being as bright as I was I wasn't pushed as as hard as I as I should have been because my nan sympathized with my situation um my dad being in and out of my life, me being a very sensitive child, my mum not bringing me up,

and that all quite clearly affecting me. My only problem at school was ever, the only problem I ever had at school was my attendance. And I went from, you know, leaving primary school with the opportunity to sit the exam for St. Paul's to the age of 11 to a pupil referral unit by the time I was 13 um because of attendance yeah because of attendance and by that point you know at 13 I didn't really draw uh I didn't really join the dots or draw a

parallel between the two things happening but my great-grandmother passed when I was 13 and that was very very difficult for me because she was the person who if she said to me that everything was going to be all right she was the one person I believed up until that point when I realized that sometimes it isn't and some of her last words to me when we were in the ambulance on the way to the hospital were, you know, I can't fight forever. And I knew at that point that was her saying, hey, I've had my innings. And she was 90. She had a good innings, two World Wars, one World Cup. I can't fight forever.

Yeah. What was the context of her saying that to you? I believe that was her saying that she had made her peace you know she she had you know she lived with arthritis diabetes um we made a good stock though you know to go through what she went through a metal plate in her leg she got run over when she was 19 um i believe she she was um and this is only stuff i've started to find out recently, she was placed on a doorstep when she was a baby and she was brought up in foster care. Her sister wasn't.

I didn't even know she had a sister until recently. And we talk about ancestral shit. You can see where these things start and come from. And the issues that abandonment and detachment cause they're they're more than just social issues they impact development i can just see how it a lot of my family experienced a lot of trauma early on from my great-grandmother to my grandmother to my mother to my dad they all had pretty difficult childhoods my dad ended up in care because he was the six of

six children and his mum walked out um so he was in care for the first few years of his life he was also born a twin his twin died at birth um my namesake my uncle who i never met stephen died when he was 19 went into a diabetic coma and passed away two years before my dad took his own life his brother took his own life in the same way in the year in between that of them two taking their own lives he lost his sister to cancer that he was the last possible donor for and he wasn't suitable there was you know there's trauma has been a pretty, trauma has been pretty constant throughout almost, almost all of my elders.

When you think about all that's happened in your sort of generational cycles and with your elders. And then this is me just thinking like, had I been through that, I would, I think I'd I'd be overly conscious about how I maybe unconsciously um can work to make sure that my you know you've just had a boy right can make sure that it like stops with me right like you know what I mean as much because yeah I mean I see it in my own family I see that I've there's parts of my parents that I've become that I don't love you know and I don't and I and I do you know what and my parents were actually really um

unaffectionate relatively unaffectionate and quite vacant I still call them by their first names and I find it really awkward to call them mum and dad like I've I've never in 27 years looked at my mum or dad and called them mum or dad ever not once ever never crazy and even like i i i'm not close to them at all and i'm terrified by the prospect that when i have my kid same thing will happen um so that's what i want to ask is like i would be like what are you what's your thinking and your like concerns when you think about your child and making sure those generational cycles end with you um my concerns uh i mean my concern that around that to be like 100 honest that there there aren't any um had i've had a child years before now i think there would have been many but i've done a hell

of a lot of work on on trying to myself, trying to, it's weird, right? You spend so much time learning and then you get to a point where you're like, now I've got to unlearn all of this shit. Because if you're fortunate enough to be smart enough to be able to take a long, hard look at yourself and you're self-aware, which is painful at times, but then you can put your hands up and you can own your behaviors. And, you know, you can take responsibility for your choices

and your decisions. And, you know, you go through relationships and I found at points I was finding the same person in a different body. Oh, yeah. And then, you know, the same problems occur in the relationship. But what's, you know, what's the common thread throughout that narrative i am the common denominator so i can't keep projecting my problems onto other people and blaming them for just being themselves i've got to do some work on myself here things need to change

and well one thing needs to change me how do i do that i have to understand myself better i have to understand my behaviors i have to understand my insecurities it's hard to do it is because it's the most this you know it's that kind of i've never had this anxiety dream i've only ever had the one where i can't stop pulling teeth out of my mouth like and even in a dream going okay i know i don't have that many teeth but they're still coming out but it's that whole like kind of all of a sudden you're naked in front of your entire school if you're going to go and see a therapist it look you you have to go in and be honest you can't lie to a therapist um otherwise it won't work and so you have to explore your deeper most darkest and and frightening insecurities in order to understand why certain why you have certain behaviors why you respond so defensively

in situations what makes you insecure what did you how did you go so that process of unlearning all the shit you had to unlearn and like turning the lights on i guess yeah um that started with therapy i think it started before therapy i don't think it i wasn't ready for therapy until i started to do some of that work myself i think like you similarly i have grown up uh with a mindset that i can do everything on my own which is uh it is it is it i mean it's definitely helped me achieve a hell of a lot but it it also has put distance between me and people that it shouldn't have and it's also made it hard for me to develop lasting relationships in at points in my life um some which you know i i look back on and think i could have i could have done better i could have been better um what were the key things you had to unlearn through that process

though about yourself mine was mainly defensiveness really defensiveness and i kind of want to i guess the attendance thing is that that played out throughout my life i found it very very difficult to finish things um you know so i would always have ideas i would always begin things i would get to a point where that sort of you know i didn't have my my nan as she wasn't as present a figure as for me to be able to just go now and I've got a tummy ache, but I would still get that feeling, which would make me want to withdraw and would make things harder. Despite that I've managed to kind of use that same energy. And this is why I think, you know, stress is,

comes down to perspective because work can be stressed or work can just be work right it depends on your perception of it and so my anxiety can be anxiety or it can be nervous energy and energy is what you need to get shit done and i've done a lot of work around mental health not least of all because of my encounters with my own problems but also what first made me aware of even the phrase mental health was that my father took his own life. And that work kind of, I think, around the conversation of mental health and encouraging people to be more open and honest with their sensitivities. You should be open to everyone. Be smart enough to be open to the people that you can trust

because if you're open to everyone, you're opening yourself up to be taken advantage of. But the word, the one thing that goes missing in that conversation all too often is resilience. Resilience is incredibly important. And I think the only time that you can learn or become resilient without going through trauma and surviving it is therapy when you're not at a point of crisis so that's why i was saying i did i had to do some of the work on my own for me to be able to go to therapy and then be able to grow through that because if you just go to therapy when you're at a point of crisis it's like waiting until you get sick to go to a doctor you know i

try now to take a more proactive you know a proactive approach to my own health and that's not just my physical well-being that's my mental well-being ultimately they should be one in the same it's just health um but i think we have a very reactive nature to most things in in in western culture we're not encouraged to be proactive and we also probably have a foolish sense of optimism about how life will unfold right we think it'll all be okay our health will be fine we think we'll never really get old because it kind of creeps up on you so it's crept up on me i'm 38 and me i looked in the mirror the other day i saw gray hairs i was like what the fuck is going on here i love it

though you know what makes me laugh right people always moan about getting older yeah and i'm just i'm very like i can be quite simple a matter of fact about things and it's just like well okay the alternative is you die right that's the only way you stop getting older is you die so so what's you know well unless you're biohacking and trying to uh lengthen your telom is um but you know it's i just think growing old is is great growing older is great if you can do it with with i don't know with yes we not just with good intention i've always had good intentions but i've made a lot of bad decisions i think growing older once you get to a point where you feel happy and comfortable in your skin is is it makes it easier i'm not stressed about getting older because i'm really happy with who

i'm becoming that's exactly it that's exactly it when i this sounds like a fucking weird thing to say okay but like when i looked in the mirror today and i saw gray hairs it's funny because the most comforting thought that i had was like but I'm happy and like you know it's a strange thing it's like I'm getting older yeah but I'm happy and I'm I'm doing myself justice what I mean by doing myself justice is like I'm living my life yeah I'm like being myself yeah and so I'm happy to get you know the worst possible scenario would be I look in the mirror I see gray hairs and I've been working at fucking KPMG because my mum said that was success and I'm like I'm on my way to a midlife crisis I'm not being myself i've not pursued my dreams it sort of feel like the clock

is ticking but when i look in the mirror because i feel like i'm i'm living my true self i'm like cool every time i get you know they add another number to my age i'm like cool ultimately i'm like cool because it's because i'm living my you know and that's why this sounds like a very interesting thing to say but it's also one of the things that's why this sounds like a very interesting thing to say but it's also one of the things that's made me not fear death like I used to yes I'm scared of death yeah because I guess it's getting to the point of your life where you feel as though and I do wonder if this played a part in what my dad did get into a point in life where you think you can't start over I'm too old to make the decisions that i wish i made

and it makes me it's given me more i guess more comfort's the wrong word but like i've always been quite happy to fall on a sword as long as it's my own yeah yeah and i'm always more scared about having and look i worked 10 years speculatively you know as far as music you know from 18 to 28 it was 28 when i first sold a record i had people around me going come on bro man you've got to find something else to do um and i just i don't know if there was like a bit of of self-belief buried beneath all of the insecurities that kept me going or if it was just blind stupidity or a combination of the two but i kept going because i wanted it so badly and i loved it you loved it i loved it i really really loved it there was nothing in my life at that point that made me shake my hands like writing a good lyric

you know that type of excitement when you nail something you know you're walking around the room trying to get that last line of something and then you get it and you're like that feeling is not something that i get from you know many aspects of my life um and so i i continued and i think it's something that's it's quite it's not the easiest thing to do is it when you've got especially if you're from a disadvantaged background because you don't have a fallback or a plan b or a grandparent that will die and leave you inherit and so as you said you don't have that security but at the same time you know i know a lot of people with that security who don't

push for anything and every time i talk to them they've got a different idea and a different business venture but they execute and achieve nothing because they don't have to yeah yeah yeah so yeah it does yeah i think there's there's there's two sides to that coin you know if you grow up entirely comfortable do you ever want to push that hard yeah to get to where you want to get to it's interesting isn't it because that hunger of not having it is is also an advantage as is the the the you know the privilege of having it you mentioned your dad there and i watched the documentary you made where you, I watched, I think it was two separate documentaries

that I saw about the topic. And you went on the journey of understanding him, the life he lived and why he made the choices he ultimately did. Can you tell me what you learned through that process? Yeah, quite concisely as well at the point I'm at now. And it's that i think the difference between someone who will take their own life and someone who won't is the ability to tolerate how you feel at any given time and i've had moments where i wanted to scratch my skin off

but i've never contemplated suicide you know i've never suffered suicidal ideation there's there's there's there's a big difference between lows. And also I think there's something that's quite scary is the hyper-awareness that people have now around everything. Everything has a tag. Everything has a name. Everything is a condition. And I think we're getting to a point now

where you need awareness before understanding, and then awareness, understanding, action. To me that's the the train of things whether it's you know let's keep the depression like i think now there's a conversation around it but how much is being actioned not enough yet but i do think it comes down to being able to tolerate how you feel because i've my very lowest lows i've come out by carrying on um and my dad got to a point where where he couldn't and there wasn't the support around him to to help him in those moments and sometimes i think even if the support is there that choice is is that person's it just seems so unthinkable to to i just but be lucky for that yeah you know you're right i've just spent the longest amount of so when i stuck first i'm hearing about mental

health which is probably about 10 years ago yeah when i was about i don't know 60 or 18 maybe the term started to emerge in our society yeah it wasn't just he's mental she's made it was you're crazy or whatever yeah and then it, the stigma has changed over time. And I just have always struggled to understand, and this is why it's almost become, it's strange to say, but a bit of an obsession of mine, to understand the position someone must be in to believe that that to feel that

that is a better outcome for them it's just and i and this is why it was so powerful watching your documentary because you know even when you were doing the role play with the the guy in the chair and you you're being the um the the friend and the guy was sat in the chair he was the you went to the clinic where they help people who have, who are having suicidal ideation. Yeah. And, and just even in the role play session, I was like,

Oh God, this is unthinkable. It's just something that I think someone who has had the privilege of good mental health will always struggle to understand. And that's a problem because if you can't empathize with it properly we can't i don't think address it properly you can i think you can empathize without understanding yeah that's true yeah you know and i think we all too often we we want to fix things soon as someone says they're sad you're like come on cheer up that's not helpful that's what i mean yeah i'm

like i'm like okay be upset what's you know let's go through this you have to kind of go through the upset rather than trying to suppress it yeah as you push things down they come at you sideways yeah um it's i i think you know when my dad took his own life one of the first things i wanted to do was understand how he was capable of doing that and i quite quickly realized the only way i will ever understand how he was able to do it is if I'm in that situation yeah which I'm never going to be yeah so I let that go quite quickly um and I don't think it's a good idea to try and I mean unless you're studying psychology and understanding the workings of the mind which would allow you to empathize I don't think it's good to try and understand you know if something seems irrational or uh and forgive me for using this word crazy to you you will drive yourself mad trying to understand it because they are not the workings

of your mind and that's not healthy either yeah but you know just going back to the hyper awareness thing i think people will find themselves in situations where they will call themselves depressed when actually they've had something traumatic happen or something sad happen. If something sad happens and your cat dies and you don't want to get out of bed for two days, that's not depression. You're upset. You're dealing with grief and loss.

That's normal. If nothing has happened in your life that's traumatic and everything seems great, but you feel horrendous or you can't feel anything, then that's something to be addressed. I think we need to be careful of everyone diagnosed, or not everyone, but people starting to diagnose themselves with conditions that they perhaps don't have.

I think that's a danger in everything having to have a tag now and everything needing a name and, you know, everyone needing to be put in a box. Yeah. And then the way that we treat people in those scenarios when we've misdiagnosed them or too quickly diagnosed them is also unhelpful, right? I've spent the last six months working pretty much full time

at a mental health company in London called Thai. And they're a psychedelics company. They're probably the biggest in Europe. Then one of the things that I came to learn from working there, they're the biggest in the world, not in europe um one thing i came from working there but also from reading one of my favorite books which is up there called lost connections by yohanahari was i used to think growing up that um because this is what i was told depression was a chemical imbalance in the brain because something was broken and no one ever

told me that trauma or what happened to you can cause depression. So I just, you know, you'd think, okay, well, and that makes you also almost blame the victim more so than saying, like, if it's like, what's wrong with you, then it's like, it's kind of, you know, you're broken. But if it's what's happened to you, it's a much more empathetic approach.

And also appreciate, you know, and that was the big shift that I've experienced in the last like three years was i used to think everything was just chemical imbalance broken yeah you know and then what comes with that is often how do you fix the chemical imbalance with chemicals yeah yeah exactly the best prescription in the beginning listen there are some people that will always need medical intervention it does help yes help some people it does but i also think that you know sayings you are what you eat you can eat yourself into depression you know and all of those things they kind of become part of a self-perpetuating cycle if i feel like shit i i don't move as much

and then i'll make bad decisions with food and then i feel worse god that's so true but it does and especially during this time when people aren't as active as they were they're not engaging socially as they would have otherwise um you know you the sales of alcohol went through the roof alcohol is a depressant the more you drink the lower you are you're you you know all of these contributing factors that can contribute to negative mental health you know and can negatively impact your mental well-being um and a great prescription sometimes is is you know eating better going for a walk you know exercise doesn't have to be a 45 minute HIIT class that leaves you wanting to not get out of bed for two

days because that's you putting your body through another stress on top of all the stress you're already going through um but just you know know, movement, eating well, good conversation. Something I found quite difficult but has become more apparent is my need to move away from certain people because they aren't moving in the same direction as me. And they encourage certain things that hinder my growth and stop me moving forward. My life has changed and I found that very hard.

When you talk about we when you talk about grief you instantly think someone's died but you you can grieve parts of your life you know parts of saying goodbye to certain things certain people in my life has felt like the same loss as yeah you know when i've actually lost someone who's passed away but you have to do those things in order to grow and to get where you want to to be and it's it sounds selfish that selfish has so many negative connotations attached to it but i think you know selfishness not at the detriment of others and selflessness not at the detriment of yourself is good because how else do you like you're no good to anyone if you're no good to

yourself and that was a huge huge learning curve for me and one that i found really really difficult to execute to start making decisions based upon what was right for me because i felt obliged to to be here for that person and then doing the same things as those people um and it wasn't help you know i mean and it weren't helping me it took me back to this time i met this monk world famous monk i said is it bad that i'm focusing on building my business and making money um right now is that like a selfish thing for me to be doing when i could be off in africa helping kids and his response to me was on stage he goes he goes you have to fill up your own bottle so you can pour it out for other people and and i always remember him saying that because it you know what

the crazy thing is when i was 18 i i wanted to i was sat in my moss side in this room and i was sat there thinking steve you're making a wrong life decision because you know you've got a brain and you know you can like affect change and the fact that you're trying to build this business and not in africa saving even just one life means that you're being terribly selfish and my the fact that you're trying to build this business and not in africa saving even just one life means that you're being terribly selfish and my the way that i rationalized myself out of that state of mind which is like stopping what i'm doing and flying to africa was this belief that if i was to be successful i would be able to help more people one day yeah and it's kind of links to what you said there about like selfishness in many cases is actually selflessness yeah uh yeah

especially if you you find yourself in a position later on where you can you know you you can affect change for the better on a much grander level you know you have a much bigger stage now i like i love a lot of the stuff that you say most of the stuff that you say and i generally don't like motivational speakers but i find when you speak it's motivational which is quite different yeah yeah yeah and it's weird because i don't i really don't endeavor to be motivated it's like most of the time i am in the gym and i write something on the notes of my phone and it ends up on the internet so it's like i'm not trying to be and also i'm not like but that's why it works but that's why it works and it's like whenever i did my documentaries i i didn't try and tell anyone else's story i was

just catalyst for them to exactly and it's your truth yeah and it's my opinions which were formed during the process of the the filming i didn't go into it with and if i went to it in sorry if i went into them with any idea it was often. And my opinion was shaped throughout the course of filming that documentary. I think all too often people think that by instructing people or telling them how they should live their lives, they're going to impact change. And I don't think that's the best way to engage people. I think people switch off. And I think the way in which you communicate is brilliant because you put stuff out there and people can take to it if they connect with it. And I think because of that, they do because it's natural and it's organic and it's brilliant because you put stuff out there and people can take to it if if they connect with it and i think because of that they do because it's natural and it's organic and it's not forced

and i think that's really really important and i think you know you talk about i don't think you have to go to africa in order to impact change because people will be inspired by watching what you do and are able to achieve and that in itself you almost don't have to you know you can just do and you will inspire yeah this is a this is a crazy thing and you know the thing we have in our society today with young people especially is they all want to change the world and they think and genuinely i get this all the time i'll be on stage somewhere and a kid will come up to me that looks like me like a young black kid and he'll be like i want to be a motivational speaker. How do I do? And I know what the right answer is because I know I look at this kid or, you know,

whether it's someone in my Instagram DMs that wants to change the world because they think, I think the way I've rationalized it is they want to change, they don't want to change the world, right? They want to be seen as someone that changed the world because of the admiration

that they believe they'll get from that because of the admiration that they saw me getting um so in fact they're not connected to the right thing if you want to seek invalidation exactly if they wanted to change the world if that was their objective they would actually just be in a lab somewhere working on cancer for example yeah they wouldn't be trying to get on the stage right but like you ending up on stage is a product of the work you've done you never worked to get onto that never wanted never thought about it it was a byproduct of working on myself and that's exactly yeah so thank you actually because i'd lost my train of thought there and you just picked

it back up that was what i'm saying i was like i got on stage because i was focused on something else right and um the way that people go on to change the world i think is because they work on themselves they fix themselves so that kid my advice proper to him probably would be like go and like pursue your passions and in fact all of my um idols are on stage because they didn't copy anybody else they thought they could make you know pocket computers and that black was equal to white in terms of racial relations martin luther king you know and they pursued their own thoughts and their own feelings they they didn't replicate um people but then that's the we live in an age where people live almost comparatively you know it's such a shame we have this incredible thing called the internet where we can communicate

with people in any corner of the world give or take, we use it to post Facetune pictures. We don't. But, you know, there's a brilliant tool there. And when harnessed and used correctly, it can bring about good things. And it's like anything, you know, like I was eating McDonald's in bed last night. I didn't see it on your Instagram. Really? It is on my Instagram. I was complaining about the absence of fries in my large fries. You're instagram really it is on my instagram i was complaining

about the absence of fries in my large fries it's on my instagram story last night yep last night i was like let's avoid the fact that i'm eating mcdonald's in bed and talk about where the rest of my fries are i was devastated why order a large fries if you're going to get delivered and then the next one's about gut health balance bro that's hilarious that's great balance is really i think balance is key and i think all too often like especially with and and kind of moving into this sector now anything that that involves nutrition or supplementing or i fucking hate hashtag wellness world man like the tone thankfully it's just like that that kind of the softness of that and the the the approach to life that just having a green juice is going to correct everything

it's going to save the world it's going to save you like fuck off do you know it's it's the wrong approach to everything and it i think everything is to um it becomes quite divisive you know i i i believe in wellness therefore i'm not gonna indulge in any of the things which i used to find fun because now i'm gonna take care of myself me taking care of myself involves me having a blowout once in a while on my friends and and suffering the hangover that comes with it to remind myself why i don't do it all the time and the waste of time afterwards because i can't function as as you know as highly as i would normally you know um but i just think there's there has to be a balance struck it's it's all too often people right if you want to you know you can't don't just cut back on me you have to be vegan you know there's so much instruction out

there whereas that's all contradictory as well so much so much it is man and it's like you know you've got vegans who will you know i mean is is cocaine vegan how many vegans do how many vegans that go out on a friday or when we could go out on a friday night and we'll do cocaine and you know there's not a gram of cocaine if it actually has cocaine in it that doesn't have a dead body attached to it yeah yeah yeah yeah where are your you know what where's your more where is your moral compass now virtue signaling to its finest um you talked about your documentary then and i one of the things that when i watched your documentary really stuck out to me was you recounted the last conversation you had with your dad and it um it stuck out to me because i reflect on my own relationships with my parents and i was it

made me think about the last conversation i had with my parents my parents are getting old especially my dad um can you talk a little bit about that and your feelings towards that conversation now yeah so my i'd opened i said i would never ever make myself vulnerable as far as my my dad again um and by that i mean i would never give him the opportunity to let me down um and then i did uh and it was just before christmas so we spoke and we agreed to meet up the day after boxing day um i was sat at the food court at the shopping center in Walthamstow. My then partner at the time, Tio, I can remember it so vividly. And I called him to make arrangements for the next day.

I wasn't driving. He had moved to Brentwood. He was driving. I said, so are you going to come and see me tomorrow? And he was like, oh, I mentioned the name of his uh wife um now we don't and said oh you know her and the kids would really love to see you there are stepchildren they have no relation to me um and i was like this ain't about and this is the first time that i ever i was always too scared to speak up to him about how i felt because i at times blamed myself or worried that i was the

reason that he would disappear for a year and a half two years at a time and not see me um so i would never speak up and tell him how much it hurt every time he did that and this time i went this is not about me coming to play happy families this is about and i was 18 like this is about you and i sitting down and having a conversation as adults and trying to see if there's a way in which we can move forward and forge some sort of relationship with trust um and he was like what actually you know what if you if i ever see you again i'm gonna knock you out um and i wouldn't i'd have bawled my eyes out and given him a hug um but i was right to feel that anger because he had hurt me so so so much so many times throughout my entire life um and that's what i meant about it being cumulative you know it was that constant it

was him being in and out my life him being the parent that i favored him being such a kind generous gorgeous man but being such a shit father and that was cumulative it wasn't any one moment it was all of the moments that he wasn't there that he missed that he let me down all the days spent looking out of my front room window which looked right at the bus stop that he should have got off of a bus at um to come and see me when he never showed up you know it was all of that that added up to that moment and people are like wow do you wish you could go back in time and change what your last words to him were? No, of course not.

Because that anger was just. How could I not be that angry? Why should I feel guilt over his actions or lack of actions? I can own that and I'm fine with it. And I don't feel like I should feel any which way about saying that to him because me being that angry was justified i mean like if i don't think a lot of people would have um even been trying to rectify the situation at that point right and a lot of my friends who won't even entertain a conversation

with their with their biological fathers or mothers because they were absent. I have the conversation though, get to a point where, where, where, where you can let go of and don't, but the, the problem is right. They have a narrative that they have to justify themselves.

And this is something that I've, I've learned. So, so they have a narrative that, and I still have this with members of my family. Now, if we get into that conversation about the past, they have a narrative which justifies their every

choice which makes it okay that they have to have to live with because i haven't dealt with their shit yet they're not going to deal with their shit you know if they were going to deal with their shit they would have done it the chances of me getting those people into you know through the door to see a therapist nil not happening um me taking that step and sorting my shit out doesn't mean that i can sort their shit out it doesn't mean that if i make the room and give them the forgiveness that they're going to be able to accept that forgiveness and be honest with me because they still have to hold on to that narrative to justify their decisions because they haven't made amends with their decisions and i can't expect them to yeah and you don't need that i can't and i can't but i can't need that because if i need that i'm always going to be underwhelmed offended upset let down and

bitter and i don't want to be any of those things not least of all now i have a child that i want you know the great thing is my child is born into a world where it's me and my partner and she's amazing she's incredible and has done you know a lot of the same work that i have in order to get to the place where she's at in her life and we have this peace because we're able to have open conversations we're able to discuss things rationally we're able to be wrong there's room we make room for each other to be wrong you know we make room for each other to be upset no matter how irrational we give each other room and space and time and we're considerate and we're kind and

we don't you know we we try our best not to to revert to a child and be defensive and offensive because of that um and you know it is why we've had a child because we feel safe with each other on that point of like moving on so people in our lives we all have to to move on from things whether it's a relationship whether it's trauma whether it's things that happened you know with our parents whatever um people tend to think that you know they use this phrase a lot one of my friends was saying it to me the other day i just need closure and i i just i remember thinking oh you're fucked then if you you're fucked because what is closure closure is insecurity about what happened and a lot of the time especially in romantic situations yeah basically someone has

walked out the door with your self-esteem and what you're saying is i can't move on until they come back and give it to me yeah until they justify why they cheated or they explain to me you know because it's all and it's a i was i think i wrote on my instagram i was like closure closure is a choice ultimately closure isn't you know what if you need closure close the door yeah you do yeah find closure in closing the door yeah it is because if you're constantly you're still giving over too much of yourself to someone else yeah they're they got keys right yeah like why are you doing that why are you handing over that power to someone who doesn't even want it anymore they've left yeah you know why are you but then it's also

you can people also find themselves in this situation where they try and take responsibility for other people's actions. It's good to take responsibility for your actions. If you've provoked something, then you can look at maybe being responsible for how someone's reacted because you've prompted that, you've provoked that. But trying to take responsibility for someone else's actions, you'll drive yourself crazy because you can't take responsibility for everything that everyone does.

We all make our own choices and that again is is not a good place to find yourself and always wanting to understand is like why why do we have to understand everything people make choices we're complex there are so many variables in our lives the only thing you can do is introduce less variables and that's been quite easy during the last year because you know i don't have to walk into crowded rooms full of people that i don't know so when i have socialized when it's been allowed it's been amongst people that i want to see therefore less variables the situation is more predictable you know i'm kind of more aware of the outcome yeah and if you you apply

that to life you know you if you we all too often though, we make excuses, not just for ourselves. And I hate excuses. It's why I don't like being late to anything. Even if there is a valid reason, you know, it makes me anxious. I hate excuses, but we all too often make excuses for other people. That's just Darren, you know, that's just darren you know that's just how darren is but there's going to come a point where darren just being darren is going to have you respond disproportionately because you've not made clear with darren that he's overstepping the line so he's got no idea

and then he oversteps the line the eighth time and you respond but you respond for all eight times at once and darren's yeah whoa whoa you could have told me the first time you know and we could have had a rational conversation but actually you've allowed it to escalate to a point where you've you know held on to this thing that darren's done every time he's done it and then exploded because you're not comfortable having awkward conversations because you find them awkward when actually if someone can't handle a direct and honest conversation and a rational conversation is that someone that encourages you to be your best self like i don't want to surround myself with yay sayers or people who deflect or who hide from things i in my life now cannot i don't have the

time for the bullshit i really don't it i like direct conversations i like friendships where we are able to be honest where if my friend you know i don't have a huge group of friends now i know a fuck ton of people but the people that i do like if i if someone online calls me a twat from i don't know greg from skegness i don't give a fuck he doesn't know me his opinion of me is made up of whatever he's read or seen and the dots that he's joined he's built the rest of his yeah and his own bullshit that he's projecting right but if my best friend felix says steven you need to check yourself i'm gonna check myself you know and it's important to have those people around you you need to be able to if you don't have honest relationships with people and open

dialogue they're not real relationships it's hard though when you've had some success right did you even find that in your own friendship circle i think i found that a little bit where because i i had success and some of my closest friends actually ended up they worked at my company and that's how they became some of my best friends yeah so i didn't know them before the company but like what you work with someone side by side for 10 years and they inevitably, yeah. Yeah. But I was always the boss.

So I've always, I've always worried that because I had that, like, I was like the pack leader in my little group of friends that they might not check me all the time when I needed to be checked. Right. So it's just because they feel like, you know, best,

you know, I know best. And because I've always been like the boss, I've always been like, I've always been the one in charge i've always been the one leading them as well so it's like so for for me stepping into business now it's really important for me to have um co-workers that will challenge me i don't want someone that just goes okay that's not working we'll stop that i want someone to go yes that that's not that is underperforming at the moment but given a chance in two months you're going to see results from that because you're going to build

and grow your audience. I need educating on that because that's not my forte. That's not my skill set. And so you need coworkers and friends that will challenge you. And I believe in challenge, healthy challenge, because an opinion is not an opinion. It's an idea until it's challenged. So if I say, you know,

I believe we should go this way and you say, do you really? And then I explain why. I've stood on the table for it. So now it's my opinion and I know it's my opinion. But up until that point, it was just an idea.

It was a belief, but not necessarily a correct one. And when you started to see success in your life, were there people in your circle that were friends, people you consider to be friends that were clearly not happy for you one of the best bits of advice i was ever given was by um a rapper but he was a friend of mine skinny man who said to me a real friend of yours will

never be of hindrance to you and there were definitely people who weren't as comfortable with me not being in the same situation that they were in doing the same things a lot of people deal with this i got a call yesterday from one of my best friends and he said one of my friends is just complete just unfollowed me on all the social platforms and i said why is that because well i think it's because i've started to do really well and he it's a reflection he thinks it's a reflection on him he thinks it means he's a piece of shit because i'm succeeding or an attack on yeah it's just and i this is a conversation i don't people don't have enough but at any point in your life when you when you divert from the like the path especially the path that you share with your closest friends quite often there will be some kind of force from

them to try and pull you back to them yep and say who the fuck do you think you are steven yeah get back in line and have you did you experience that at any point where especially when your music career started to really take off and it's difficult because you can't take everyone everywhere um and there's almost an expectation to and i i'm a firm believer in in opportunity like giving people opportunities and then beyond that it's up to them what they do with that like i i'm someone who's not i've had situations with people where i've seen them have opportunities but they've been too insecure to take them because they felt like they're putting themselves beneath someone else

i don't have that problem i want to learn from you if you're further along in your career and i'm trying to not mimic what you're doing but i want to be successful in the set so you're a musician that's ahead of me and you're willing to take me on tour with you i'm not going to say no to that because i'm insecure and i don't want to appear to i don't want to be the support act i'm going to say yes because i want to come along on that ride and i'm grateful for the opportunity that you're giving me some people don't have that mindset some people don't want to learn from other people. They think they know it all or they're ultimately scared and insecure.

They feel like they look smaller by putting themselves as a support or by having someone feature on a song or by accepting help. Whereas for me, it's always been a, you know, like when Mike Skinner signed me and I had the opportunity to go on tour with him and battle at every stop of his 12 rounds tour when he was at the height of his success you know i didn't

feel any which way about doing that i i was you know i was really really grateful for the opportunity to go along and learn in the same way that when lily said to me oh let me do the chorus on on just be good to green and we can perform it live at best of all in front of 60 000 people bro i was still selling cocaine you know i'd graduated from weed to coke at that point because i had all of a sudden after i signed to mike skinner's record label developed this circle of you know model bookers and musicians and you know who all took it and weed is large and smells a lot coke is quite easy to move around and you know i would never have got caught unless in transit so it became quite an obvious decision for me to make because those things were normalized where i grew up anyway

i never sold crack or smack because i don't believe in dealing with people in the most desperate situations they've ever been in day in day out when you think of shoreditch what do you think um people pissing at people's doorsteps interesting that's my home i was i was i was i was wondering if the just the term shoreditch alone would um would make you think about the scar you have oh yeah no you don't yeah you don't it's weird man there's there's like i got hit by a car in 2013 um yeah it was well i got squashed between two cars i managed to get myself up on the bonnet so it was only my left leg that got caught the bloke didn't realize his car was in eco because it was a new car so he'd had his foot on the brake which put the car in eco he took his foot off the brake because i was walking between two cars um and he felt the engine start so he panicked and slammed

his foot down but instead of hitting the brake he hit the accelerator um and that was a far more traumatic event for me um than being stabbed because that was really unpredictable nothing came before that that i contributed to um when I got stabbed look when I think I was eight when Chesty someone from my flats who he don't live in the country anymore um he got bottled and stabbed and one of my pals Jamal who's younger than me ran and I might have been nine because I think Jams was like seven and he ran and called the ambulance for chesty like this stuff happened you know um i didn't expect to get stabbed by someone i didn't know that i had no history with it was it didn't really feel like retribution for what had just happened there was a little bit of bickering he said i barged his mate it was proper stupid young bravado match up in a club shit yeah in Cargo and

I just stood my ground really it was all I did that was all I did wrong in that situation if you even think that's me doing wrong in hindsight

I could have just gone I didn't barge his mate I said excuse me and I moved past with an open hand in a crowded club I was as polite and as passive

as I could have been and always have been when they're drunk but he was just on one you get me so but then I did I stood my ground and always have been. When they're drunk. But he was just on one, you get me. but then I did, I stood my ground

and in hindsight, like now at the age I am and especially with, you know, having a child and just thinking about how I want him to grow up and what I want him to understand

being a man to be, you know, I could have just gone, you know what, sorry, bruv, I've been done with it. But I felt like he was threatening me

and I felt like I was right to stand my ground. I didn't expect that five minutes after that, he'd walk up behind me and put a broken bottle in my neck. But at least my mum and my nan started talking again. I heard you called your nan. Yeah. In that moment. Yeah.

So we were still fighting outside. So he stabbed me I managed to push him out of the way get out of the club holding my neck together obviously you've got all kinds of adrenaline running through your body

at that point so you're not really aware of the I mean I know I've been poked in the neck and it's not really if you're going to get poked you don't want it to be in your neck no fuck it doesn't you know

your chance of survival is not high and then we got the fight got broken up I think there was police outside the club don't want it to be in your neck no it doesn't you know your chance of survival is not high um and then we got the fight got broken up i think there was police outside the club i think it was broken up by a police the whole thing is a bit blurry to me and then i'm sat on there because i ended up getting arrested as well um but i'm sat on the curb my phone's come out my pocket um and i can see on everyone's faces you know this is not this ain't going well for me so i asked to pass my phone got my phone i called my nan and i just apologized for all the work she had put into me that this was how it was going to end um she just said you're going to be fine shut up

she did actually tell me to shut up and she's cockney yeah and she just said you're gonna be fine you're gonna be fine um and she came to the hospital as did my mom and they both started talking over my table that i was on um and it's kind of weird because when i went to hospital i was treated like i was some kind of notorious gang member that the hospital staff are not sympathetic to my situation whatsoever bearing in mind i've been stabbed i'd never say i'm a victim because i don't believe in approaching life as one um but in that situation i wasn't the what's the word perpetrator i wasn't the aggressor um so it was a bit weird the whole thing you know to just be it be presumed that i was just part of something that came out of nowhere had nothing to do with no gang nothing no dealing nothing no no historic problems from anywhere it was just something that happened randomly but no that's not even what i associate shoreditch with

um as well as pissing up doorsteps i think of new balance trainers and nears yeah do you know when i when i listened to that story about what happened with that guy in the club it brought me back to a time which i've never talked about before in my own life where i was in new york in a club and there was two tables in this nightclub and i was on one of them with a couple of my friends one of the guys that runs matri boxing and there was this table of guys from jersey next to us and the guys on my table were talking to the girls on their table oh dear and they became this occasion so i had i know the bouncers in this club because i get all the time so i said to the owner in the bounce i was like there's going to be a problem here if you don't move this table and as i'm speaking to the manager the guy from the table next to me picks up a three liter bottle

of vodka and hits me on the head with it. I am surrounded by, so the, the, the, I'm so good with these bouncers. Like I've sent the man United shirts and I'm like, I, these people know me.

I'm always in the club. I'm always on the same table, that kind of thing. The big bounce, the big bounce. It must be fucking seven foot, massive black guy. They're my boys.

We talk about United. Every time I come in there, like the mob, he reaches over the crowd of bouncers that I'm chatting to on my table. And he hits me with this bottle of and i go see because i was telling them to i was like there's gonna be if you don't move these two tables there's good i go see and as i'm looking blood because i'm wearing this cap blood just comes trickling down my face but again i did nothing to instigate this this situation and

i when i was reading about what happened to you and you ended up in hospital and it you know it risked your life i was thinking what's the lesson here how do you avoid these situations where variables you know and that's the thing i you you walk into a room like that and there there are many variables there's any anything can happen you know you know and for me i was always like i was always someone that scanned the room i always wanted to know i don't like sitting with my back to doors never have um i still have sleep but when I open it's why I've always suffered with sleep problems I think because of and that's my own doing to an extent you know because of some of the stuff that I used to do and I was by no means like heavy heavy heavy into things I just sold a bit of this and a bit of that because it enabled me to finance life while i worked

towards what i wanted to do if there was another commodity that i was aware of that i could have sold that wasn't illegal i would have done it um and that guy he got eight years right yeah that was a whole mad situation though because they moved the trial date to when I was on tour. So this was two years later that it went to court. I get a phone call on a Friday when I'm in Newcastle and they tell me when, from a police officer, and they tell me when the trial date is and I just said, you know what, I'm so far past that, you know, I really don't care. Like I'm not coming to court. And they said, well, we know where you are.

We know what your next two tour dates are. They were Brighton and London, I think. And we'll issue a summons. We'll arrest you. If you don't come to court. Yeah. And I cried, bro. I was in a conundrum because see this is where

I've never spoken about this this is where like my moral compass struggled because don't snitch you know they had four other witnesses

they had DNA they had CCTV the last thing they needed in court was me but what did they get from me being there they get press um and then i get told by my record label my tv plug on my radio plugger that i'll basically be looked at as an advocate for knife crime if i don't show up at court but that goes against everything that i stand for um in hindsight it's crazy because if

i didn't grow up where i grew up why would I care about that I didn't do anything wrong in that situation but I didn't want to be there didn't want to be there the whole thing like it still troubles me now you know because it's like you can't have one foot in one foot out it's like who are you and what do you stand for? Bro, I've been arrested before. I was looking at time when I was just before I signed to Mike Skinner's record label. And at that point, there were other people involved. If I was a snitch, I would have opened my mouth then.

But I found myself in an impossible situation. I'm like, I nearly lost my life. And now I'm being told that I'm going to lose everything that I've worked for. If I don't go to court when i got stabbed but then it's gonna and listen i've not lost a friend over it you know there are people i don't know that have made comments um never when i've seen them everyone's all cool bro um but it's weird you know it's even to this day, it doesn't sit well with me. I haven't, so for all the work that I have done and all the distance between me and certain things that I still wrestle with because I was leveraged. And it's kind of mad to think that, you know, in that situation, they would have, and I mean, you only have, it was crazy. They wouldn't even say even to just move the trial date to, or to, you know,

for the trial to just happen during my first headline tour. So I would have missed two gigs as well for which there was no insurance. And at that point, and you won't like to hear this, as good a business as you are, I was actually in two record deals and it was costing me about 10p to earn a pound. So it wasn't like I was, you know, I wasn't in a situation where I could weather that storm. And these weren't times where, you know, that sort of publicity was good publicity. There were no rappers on the radio by like me, Tiny, Chip and Tinchy. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't a given that you could be a successful

artist we were really just opening them doors so any negative attention was not not just hurting me but but shutting doors for other people as well but there we are you know i had to go to court and it's not you know i never imagined testifying to be something that i would ever do but in that situation you know i kind of used to see that as a black and white thing but I guess there's some shades of grey in between if someone stabs me in the neck I'm not caught 10 minutes early and that's how I should feel you know like it just but then I also think about all the other shit that I've had with the police and all this stuff that I've, you know, that friends have gone through. And look, some, if you bring it on

yourself and you put yourself in a situation and you've got police who abide by the laws that they enforce all well and good, that's what they believe, you know, but there's a lot of police that, that don't. Um, and I've had, you know, further troubles. I got nicked in 2013 and was re-bailed and re-bailed, lied to in part disclosure, lost over a million pound in endorsements because of one cop had a bin in his bonnet. And I was arrested for something I was never charged for. But that never made the papers.

Everything else did. So I don't really... Listen, I'm not saying all police are like that. Police have a purpose but when it's when they take it's when you know they start to act out personal grudges that you kind of question and the police police the police right yeah that's the problem that we have um but i don't want to i don't want to i don't want to don't want to be better yeah i remember listening to your music when i was in when i was in secondary

school a lot and i remember listening to a lot of your records more recently as well and even you know like as as when i know you were coming in today i started like going back through my old back catalogue of your music um at the time when you made it as you said then in the uk in the uk hip-hop scene as a white male, that's a fucking staggering accomplishment. Like, do you know, no, genuinely it is. I'm like, I know a lot, because you might not know this,

but you're from the jump off days. Yep. And I'm all the don't flop boys, they're all best friends of mine. Like, I don't know if you know, you know, unanimous. I don't know if you know who unanimous is. No. Okay.

He'll be offended. Do you know what, I kind of jumped out. Yeah, of course I know. So these are all my boys. Yeah, yeah I know these are all my boys yeah yeah yeah they used to come to my house sometimes for five days in a row and like stay at my house and they'd rap and stuff I used to write music back in those days as well but watching how talented a lot of these people are at what they do and still a lot of them haven't made it like you did yeah makes me beg the question it's like what were the factors that came to play to make sure that you as a white rapper in the uk scene got through um do you know what just persistence really persistence persistence i just didn't stop you know there were so many full starts as well starting to mike skinner's record label

me and him me being lazy not working as hard as i should have when um during the period when i signed to his label um and i can put my hands up and say that but us also biting heads and not agreeing on music up until a point and then just as we did and he sent a really kind email and he was like look i've been spending too long trying to make you into something that you're not rather than focusing on what you're good at let's go um and it was almost at that point when warner pulled the financing from his label, they were subsidizing his label. They moved everything in house apart from all of this,

the rest, sorry, I think it was 679 was the label they kept and they moved that in house. And then they pulled the financing from the rest of their subsidiaries because of Napster and LimeWire, the money they were seeing had fallen subsequently because of all the piracy. So the album never came out for two reasons, because the label lost their financing and because I never worked hard enough.

And then after that, I went back to what I knew and what facilitated me being able to continue my quest to become a successful musician, which, by the way, I thought would absolve me of everything in my past and just make me happy. What did you find out? That was bullshit, wasn't it? What a stupid fucking idea that was. So you thought that becoming a successful musician would put your past at ease, basically?

Yeah. or musician would make your part would put your past at ease basically yeah just you just you you and this is what's dangerous about pinning um your happiness or your your hopes of happiness on an ever-moving goalpost that quite often you move yourself if i sell this many records i'm going to be happy and then you sell that many records and then it's like okay if i get a number one single i'm going to be happy then you get the number one single and then it's like well what's next you talked about this earlier you said about how you've got to enjoy the moment more yeah else you'll never enjoy like yeah yeah how do you do that though in the moment um in the moment i don't like so for me i'm just it's just it's been a really really long journey towards not you know going back to the corners you can't see around this it's just taking it for what it is

it's like i'm here and i'm i'm entirely present my head is not worrying about the meeting that i've got to go to afterwards i'm aware of it because i've seen my schedule but i'm not thinking about it and i used to like i would lay in bed and my mind would be spinning spinning spinning about everything that i had coming up there's no like it's good to plan like and i find you worry more if you don't plan but i try and look at you know i don't look at my calendar too far ahead anymore because it doesn't help me you know i i want to be present i want to be able to be here and have a conversation with you to look you in the eye and talk to you without having another in my head you know an empty head and an open heart man that's that's how you're present and they're not the easiest things

to achieve when we all have so much going on in our lives and when we're always so like ambitious because when like as you say the moving goalpost and i really like because i will achieve something today but before the date of even achieving it i've already set the new goal do you know what i mean and so you never experience the achievement and i've i've actually since leaving my business one of my mentors said to me it's like you just need to he's that old and he's done it all and he's way more successful than i'll probably ever be and he was like the one advice i'll give to you steve is just like try your very best to enjoy it in the moment yeah because you look back on it with you know rose-tinted glasses and you know you wish you had just savored it more yeah but you can enjoy it in

hindsight and it is what i was saying earlier you look back on it and you go, wow, I did that. But actually, the accolades are not that important. The rewards, they're part of it if you're lucky enough to achieve. But the process is the part of it that you have to enjoy. And I think that's the struggle. That's why a lot of people don't necessarily find themselves that happy because they're not in situations where they're happy to be doing the work that they're doing to get to where they want to be and that's perhaps because they're in the wrong place where they want to be and what they're doing to get there don't you know they don't marry up and we're fortunate we do things we love we get to pick and choose that's that's uh you know i was gonna say it's lucky but

it's it's not it's hard work and perseverance what do you worry about then these days um i mean most recently in the last two weeks it's been like is that noise that my son's making in his sleep normal so for context uh steven's just had a new kid. Yeah. A new baby boy. Yeah. Which is amazing. My first child. And really, you know, just, I mean, yeah, just the things that I encounter day to day. I'm not really too, I don't know, man. Like it's weird to be at this point in my life, in my career,

about to sign a new record deal, to be putting music out but to not have that like my energy is different i'm just excited in being able to have a route to market i've had all this music that because of some stupid problems i had with uh the label i was with that i couldn't put out i wasn't able to to to exercise that part of you know what i did and and that i missed terribly because that's my output that's my creative output you know i enjoy working on all the other things i'm doing whether it's a gulp or giz and greens anything all the ideas that i have that i you know will hopefully come into fruition later on that i'm chipping away at behind the scenes but music is my output that's my hobby it always has been so when i get suppressed and i'm not able to to to work on music or release music and they kind of go hand in hand because it's kind of weird working on music that you know you can't release or that you know someone is standing in the way

you that you don't feel as motivated to get in the studio and work whereas now i'm like i don't know but i'm not worried about how it's received i'm just really happy to be able to put music out my worries are not not what they were all the things i used to worry about i you know i mean i don't have financial security yet and i'm in a much better place than than i could have been growing up where i grew up it wasn't what was expected um but you know i have to pay my mortgage i have things like that but there's you know they're not worries i have to work to pay you know that's again you know work can be a stress or it can just be work you know my mortgage can be a stressor it can just be a mortgage i just have to work there is there's quite simple things

that i have to do in order to pay my mortgage you know so i try and not get bogged down by by the everyday shit my worries uh uh just whatever pops up and you know are they worries you know and i get to to know a child like am i holding my child correctly things like that that they're they're my current concerns and your new record deal um i'm super intrigued to hear how different your music will be now that you've you're in a new phase of life right yeah and surely that'll be reflected in what you produce yeah i think there's a you know we've spoken about grief and loss and letting go of things throughout this whole conversation and i think there's part of professor green that still there, that still wants to be a lippy little shit that still has the poke and prod.

And I don't know, in the age of cancel culture, I probably need to watch my mouth, but it's not something I've ever been good at. Um, but then there's also the more mature side. And I think there'll, there will be a point between now and perhaps an album that I have in mind

that I've started working on that there's a bit in between where I need to just get a little bit of that angst out. And I think there is a transition to take place that will happen throughout the music because things are different. And when can we expect to hear this music? I'm having something out this summer, whether I can tour it or not due to COVID, who knows,

but amazing. How do you feel about that must be must be all kinds of feelings bro just happiness yeah yeah proper because i've been sitting on this music for ages and then having the conversations with the label that i may sign to they hear the music and they pull out the songs which i would have hoped they do you know nice and they're not necessarily the most obvious and it's kind of cool to have that or the beginnings of that working relationship um and it it makes me excited about the music that i've been making and i've been sitting on which sometimes you know these songs are not new to me but they will be to everyone else so to have someone kind of relight that fire it's amazing yeah and a gulp a gulp so i'm going to try this now explain to me what it is

while i try it okay so i have a whole lifetime of gut issues um most recently in 2017 i had an operation to repair a high-axe hernia sorry i should have done this a bit more professionally um and when i came out of hospital after the operation went well there's the gulp yep when I come out of the operation I come out of surgery and the surgery had went well but I had terrible complications I had distension ileus um collapsed lung pneumonia CRP which is an inflammation marker of 672 which is I understand the looks on the

surgeon's face and I nearly cropped it and then the alternative sorry the options that I had were more surgery

or leave hospital with a paralyzed stomach and just hope it got better over time and so I didn't want to chance more surgery

because I was more likely to have the same complications again so I started looking at ways I could treat myself more holistically and this was an education for me I found myself down at every rabbit hole you know I've been down every rabbit hole you could ever imagine and then and I'm continuously still researching actually what I found out is the more consistent I was with looking after my gut by the old McDonald's is that the the better my mood, the more consistent my mood was, the better I slept, the better I felt, the more consistent my energy was. And it's just, it's unbelievable how much your gut health contributes to every other pillar of your wellbeing and how much your gut health is

also impacted by them. So your sleep impacts your gut, your gut impacts your sleep. It's all interconnected. So, so what exactly? So I've just, I've just had one of these sachets that I've got here in front of me. And what is this going to do for me in like dumbass terms?

In dumbass terms. So that's feeding your gut bacteria, what it needs to thrive and it's also packed with vitamins that support your the healthy gut lining sure you know which help prevent or repair permeable gut and how often do i take one of these every day every day every one a day yep okay a lot of people have got gut issues and they don't understand why i'm one of them i've probably in the last increasingly over the last five six seven years i've got this sort of clear intolerance to something it's definitely like i can't eat bread pasta without feeling it for like two three days um and and i and it's weird because i just

kind of trundle through life feeling like shit sometimes and not really doing anything about it or getting tested or yeah that's the thing with like i think especially with gut health and there's just health problems in general like a lot of people go through life just feeling run down exactly because when i educate yeah and and it's it's just accepted and i think that's that's a real problem and i think there's a lack of of education and that's a really important part of a gulp you know it's not just us trying to sell these sachets it's the educational piece which is really important part of a gulp. You know, it's not just us trying to sell these sachets. It's the educational piece, which is really important because people should understand what they can do in order to thrive.

You know, you can live and be alive or, you know, you can optimize parts of your health and well-being so you don't have to have that trip to the doctors. Rather than, look, I'm all for proactivity, whether it's your mental health or your physical health. You said to me before we started recording that you um you spent your whole career like being the product yeah and now you're you're the guy in the boardroom yeah the proverbial boardroom on the other end of zoom um what's that change been like now you're an entrepreneur running a business um dealing with all of that bullshit i'm so happy you said it no i mean it is it's

bullshit right there's just like copious amounts of bullshit when you're running a company um how have you found that process business for me i think things are all too often over complicated um and i there will always be problems but it's like solutions i like solutions for me it's it's been a pretty steep learning curve but i enjoy learning i'm happiest when i'm learning and i'm learning an awful lot um and it's it's quite nice being in the engine room um it's nice to have ownership you know that's something that i haven't really had as an artist what parts do you hate what parts do i hate see i like problem solving but sometimes when problems present i don't like being presented with problems when there's not even an idea of a solution.

And I think there's, if you take half an hour between making, between finding out the problem and making me aware of the problem, you can probably have thought of something that can contribute to the solving of that problem. And the immediacy, the panic, I don't like panic.

I don't want to, you know, I don't want the culture in our firm to be, the panic. I don't like panic. I don't want to, you know, I don't want the culture in our firm to be one of panic. You know, I want people to take ownership. I think ownership's important. I think accountability is important and not to be punished, just so as you can own it,

put your hand up, I fucked it, but I fixed it and take some fucking pride in that. And there's a certain type, there's several types of people I'm sure you'll encounter in your business where you've got one type of person who i usually say to my business partner they will like solve the problem and handle it before they even come to me and they'll just come to me and say steve by the way this has happened but don't worry i'm on it

fix it don't worry i love that type of person i'm like promotion promotion promotion and then there's other type of person who'll be like steve the office is on fire the office is on fire i'm all gonna die and i'm and they're just screaming it like, Steve, the office is on fire. The office is on fire. I'm all going to die. And they're just screaming it in my face. Like the office is on fire and you're going to die and I'm going to die and it's all over. We're finished. We're fucked.

We're fucked. And that person can never be a manager because if they can't manage themselves, they can't manage anyone else here. And this is a hiring thing because I've seen both in my business and I will always promote the people who, they grab hold of problems extinguish them before i even realized it was a problem amazing amazing individuals

but then you also have i think there's a third person as well and and and that's where apathy comes into it and it's like they're the room's on fire and i'm watching it burn i don't really feel any need to leave or to tell you so we can just die here but you know we won't even worry about putting the fire out we'll just burn yeah yeah yeah that's the problem even worse i prefer the panic over the yeah it's like do be panicked yeah but please try and find a solution before you know not that i want to wash my hands of all of it i want to work i want to understand that that's one thing i've always been as meticulous with anything that i've done outside of music as i am with every word that i write i think you know i saw a post that you put up about

the details and you know that yeah and i i agree and you know this whole the devil's in the details and people get really annoyed with me or can get annoyed with me throughout my life in every aspect of it being really obsessive over the minutiae but that's that's fucking important those little things i agree wholeheartedly you know again cumulative all of those little things add up to make that one big thing and for me especially in brand comms like i want it to be communicated in a certain way because and our communication has been my thing i talk through my music and i want to talk through my product in the same way yeah i i was just very detail orientated my whole life but i think the problem i had is i never really explained to the

people that i was talking to why i cared so much about details so i'd say look that that's not right or that little thing there, is that symmetrical? And the amount of times that I've got a ruler out in social chain, my old company, and I'd measure something to check the millimeters on both sides of it. And those little things. And I think people think you're being anal or whatever, but it's,

it's a philosophy that if you have within yourself about high standards, being obsessive about detail, as I said in my post yesterday, it's those that those small details culminate to great things. Right. So just like these days i don't give a fuck like i i'm i want to be detail orientated i want people to feel that i'm so detail orientated that they won't show me something until they've been equally detailed or orientated and that's going to fault a culture and a philosophy if we're going to say that encourages the right type of culture it's caring yeah you know we're a very small team

you know we've been hitting some pretty punchy targets month on month since we launched in October you launched in October yeah ahead of our first race

oh wow in lockdown yeah big balls either that or I'm a fucking idiot I did wonder but it's that

that's the culture that I want to promote and it's like you have to I like what you said because I think it's important that's the culture that I want to promote and it's like you have to I like what you said because I think it's important you can't just keep pointing out what's wrong

you have to explain why it's important that it's right you know not just saying that's wrong fix it I think it's important

that if you know how to fix it you explain how to fix it but also why it needs fixing you know people should be learning on the job all the time

so as they can grow into roles that they may never have been employed for um you know i've grown into a position i don't think i was i was you know ever you know as a child probably looked at being destined to be you know not from where i was from um and i'm continuously growing into that role because i want to learn and I have to. I have to keep learning. Otherwise, I don't see the point in continuing. That to me is like, you know, people talk about death.

Death to me is losing that, I don't know, just not being curious, not wanting to learn, not wanting to understand. Yeah, it's something I've come to learn as well. You know, you talked about the goalposts moving and that and the importance of curiosity it's one of the things i talk about my book is like i came to realize at some point that my life the purpose of my life was probably just to keep myself in like forward motion of like chaos that's the way i describe it it's like i used to think stability was chaos and chaos is stability now i know that my stability is actually being in chaos which is exactly what you've said there like being curious

being challenged um until I die someday and like which happens to all of us yeah yeah some some sooner than others if they they don't get to ever really live that would look after their gut health yeah there you go well listen Stephen thank you so much for coming here today you know your story is remarkable because um you're someone that is like unashamed unashamedly honest about everything and that transparency and honesty has helped fucking i can't even imagine the amount of people it's helped even the the rawness and the openness of you doing that documentary i mean you see it on the documentary You see how being open and honest and expressing yourself can save people. And I know you, I know you've had me. I think of all the guests I've sat here with,

I think if there was one guest who I think has probably saved more people from themselves, from their thoughts, it's got to be you. So it's a great, tremendous service you've done. I get really awkward when people say kind things. No, but it is, bro. Like, for real.

If I could get in my belly button right now. No i was watching it and i was thinking do you know this is exactly what the world needs especially at the time when it came out and uh in terms of people that have the experience to say these things you know you're a rapper you know i mean do you know i mean it's a documentary you know what i mean exactly yeah there's so many tags now at that point you like the perception of you when you made that documentary was like this is a tough guy rapper that comes from you know the ends or whatever and for you to be talking about those things in the same way that ria ferdinand crying and crying right having the having the the i'd call it courage but you know it's a strange word to use but having the courage to be that vulnerable

i think is just such a tremendous service you've done. So thank you. Cause you know, I just think it's the most important thing is you've been part of a change. You've been part of this change over the last couple of years in mental health and men specifically talking about how they feel. And that is fucking hell. That is a moment. I think we'll look back on in history and say like, thank God we realized that, you know,

I hope so. I think we need to really encourage people to stop applying behaviors to genders. You know, I shouldn't have to be called a girl for being sensitive. Why should only women be afforded the right to be emotional or emotional beyond anger? Yeah.

Thank you, brother. I appreciate you. Thank you, bro. Been a pleasure. Thanks.