The south London MC Stormzy, fresh from winning two of the biggest awards at the 2018 Brits, delivered a furious attack on Theresa May in a show-closing freestyle.
“Theresa May, where’s the money for Grenfell?” he asked the prime minister, adding that the government “just forgot about Grenfell, you criminals, and you got the cheek to call us savages, you should do some jail time, you should pay some damages, we should burn your house down and see if you can manage this.”
The MC was one of those featured on the charity single to raise money for the victims of the fire which killed 71 people in June 2017, when it broke out in the west London tower block. At Glastonbury festival that year, he called out the response to the tragedy, saying: “We urge the authorities to tell the fucking truth, first and foremost. We urge them to do something. We urge the fucking government to be held accountable for the fuckery, and we ain’t gonna stop until we get what we deserve.”
In his Brits freestyle he added that “MPs sniff coke, we just smoke a bit of cannabis, they’ll get me for this so be woke”, and castigated the Daily Mail, saying the newspaper could “suck my” – leaving little doubt over the next word. Paired with the line about cannabis, it continued his criticism of the newspaper – he previously wrote on Twitter “just admit you’re anti-black and fuck off you tramps” after the paper published a news story with the headline “Popular grime artists such as Stormzy are fuelling the use of ‘skunk’ by treating cannabis as ‘product placement’ in their chart-topping songs, researcher warns”, in December.
Elsewhere in his performance, he praised black British model Jourdan Dunn, Oscar-nominated black British actor Daniel Kaluuya, and celebrated the fact he was “raised up by black girl magic”, via his sisters and mother.
