The 26-year-old rapper has admitted the ‘Empire State of Mind’ hitmaker was lined up to appear on his and Ed Sheeran’s track ‘Take Me Back To London’ after a suggestion from the ‘Shape of You’ star, but Stormzy rejected the opportunity because it was “not the right song” for them to work together on.<\/p>\n
He explains: “We were all in the studio. In my Glasto performance, there was a video [of me and Jay-Z].<\/p>\n
“We went to the studio, we all went to make a song and the song was ‘Take Me Back to London’. We were all in the studio writing, me, Ed Sheeran and Jay Z.<\/p>\n
“Before that I loved ‘Take Me Back To London’ because I thought it was just going to be me and Ed and then Ed was like, ‘Jay is getting on it.’<\/p>\n
“It blew my mind. Jay-Z is my number one hero inspiration. We got into the studio and we were writing for this song and then he just stops the music and he said, ‘Tell me about London, I need some inspiration.’<\/p>\n
“Me and my manager were telling him about London and we had this powerful, beautiful, greatest conversation of my entire life so that\u2019s where that footage [at Glastonbury] came from.<\/p>\n
“We were talking about everything from black culture, community, music, his journey, my journey, it was the greatest conversation of my life.<\/p>\n
“At the end he\u2019s smiling, we were probably talking for an hour and he goes, ‘So what do you think of the song?’<\/p>\n
“I had verbal diarrhoea. I was like, ‘I love this song but you being on the song changes everything.’<\/p>\n
“‘Take Me Back to London’ with me and Ed is one thing, but now that Jay-Z is on it … This is Jay-Z and Stormzy, what he means to culture, what I mean to culture … I said, ‘Is this the song?’<\/p>\n
“I didn\u2019t think it was the song \u2026 in my heart, in my soul musically, I just had verbal diarrhoea.<\/p>\n
“I felt proper bad because I was like, ‘You\u2019re saying no to Jay-Z.’ ”<\/p>\n
Stormzy admits Jay was “shocked” to be snubbed from the song, but he “fully understood” the reasoning behind the decision.<\/p>\n
Speaking on Saturday night’s (30.11.19) ‘The Jonathan Ross Show’, he adds: “I was like, ‘If you didn\u2019t ask me this, I would have just written my verse and we would have done it and I would have never questioned it but now that you\u2019ve asked me, no.’<\/p>\n
“I was like, ‘I know how it goes, Mr Z. You are the most brilliant, busy man and I will probably never get this opportunity ever again but hand on my heart, I don\u2019t think this is the right song for us. I don\u2019t know why I\u2019m saying this to you but this is not the song.’<\/p>\n
“It is the greatest story of life. But put it this way, Jay-Z was super proud and super shocked and taken aback by the fact that this kid told him.<\/p>\n
“He fully understood. We spoke and he made me feel [proud of what I did.] I left there thinking [I was an idiot] but then I had the honour of seeing him again and having the conversation and he let me know to my face that, what I did [was courageous] he couldn\u2019t believe that I did it.”<\/p>\n
‘The Jonathan Ross Show’ airs Saturday at 10.10pm on ITV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The 26-year-old rapper has admitted the ‘Empire State of Mind’ hitmaker was lined up to appear on his and Ed Sheeran’s track ‘Take Me Back To London’ after a suggestion from the ‘Shape of You’ star, but Stormzy rejected the opportunity because it was “not the right song” for them to work together on. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":16127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6573,8590,3513,5901,2589,7187,746,8834,8762,10623,119,3684,6220,12791,5058,1993,11973,428,4709,1728,7858,6348,8033,3954,10415],"class_list":["post-16126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-black","tag-conversation","tag-culture","tag-diarrhoea","tag-ed-sheeran","tag-empire-state-of-mind","tag-feel","tag-glastonbury","tag-idiot","tag-itv","tag-jay-z","tag-london","tag-love","tag-manager","tag-music","tag-my-life","tag-one","tag-rapper","tag-stormyz","tag-stormzy","tag-tell-me","tag-us","tag-video","tag-will","tag-work"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}