Those who cherish the notion that the current prime minister really is ‘electoral Viagra’ should have paid a visit to Brixton last Friday evening to see what actual young people think about him. Before Slowthai — the young rapper from Northampton who ignored complaints about the toxification of political discourse by brandishing a dummy of Johnson’s severed head at this year’s Mercury Prize ceremony — even took to the stage, the 5,000 or so kids took up a chant of their own volition: ‘Fuck Boris! Fuck Boris!’
The Britain of Slowthai and his fans is not one in which anything can be overcome with a bit of Dunkirk spirit. The smell of weed, that eternal signifier of boundless ambition, hung heavy over the stalls (he introduced ‘Drug Dealer’ by asking ‘Who knows a drug dealer?’ It sounded as though everyone present did), and the title of the album for which he was nominated for the Mercury, Nothing Great About Britain, doesn’t burst with optimism. But this wasn’t a show that held menace or threat, necessarily. Instead, there was a sense of celebration and joy, from star and crowd alike (the crowd, moshing from start to finish and from front to back, was the most febrile I’ve seen in an age). ‘Do you know why these mirrors are here?’ he asked, gesturing to the reflective box that was the stage set. ‘They’re to show you how cool I look from the back.’ He laughed. ‘No, they’re to show you there is something great about Britain.’ For all the despair of his lyrics, it was, as the hashtags say, inclusive and relatable.
And the lyrics are terrific. Slowthai is witty, clear-eyed, free of self-pity. ‘Northampton’s Child’, the most nakedly autobiographical of the songs performed, detailed his childhood as the son of a teenage mum, and how attractive criminality can be when opportunity never knocks: ‘Fell in love with a drug dealer/ Picked us up in a limousine/ I remember lights/ Like a movie scene/ Took mum to dazzling heights/ Where she deserves to be.
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