Skepta Quotes

“If you don’t put your crew on your album, you’re a snake.”

― Skepta

“After touring so much, I was looking for some peace. I found Morocco, and it was perfect. Everything I wanted to feel about peace, I found it there.”

― Skepta

“When I do music videos, I like to do a take, then see how it looks, so I can correct it.”

― Skepta

“The star, the person who’s on the mic, always gets seen.”

― Skepta

“I am blessed to have been able to travel the world doing what I do.”

― Skepta

“Songwriting has really allowed me to enjoy life and look at it from an objective place.”

― Skepta

“’No fear’ is a mindset that I stand for. It’s the reason why I’ve got to where I am today.”

― Skepta

“All the other rappers around me aren’t saying anything worthwhile. They’re lost in rap: all they do is tell you they’re a sick MC and they’re better than you. I don’t want to look like all these other little punk, dress-up, fake, manufactured artists. I’m not a rapper. I’m an activist.”

― Skepta

“For a long time, men weren’t respecting women. They weren’t understanding Mother Earth, Mother Nature, the Motherland, all the motherly stuff. And now we are.”

― Skepta

“I was like, ‘I can’t do grime. That’s for kids.’ – I was 20 at the time, and I thought I was a gangsta, a proper rude boy.”

― Skepta

“I’m winning even if I have zero pence in my bank account, because my mind’s free.”

― Skepta

“Don’t compare me to Stormzy. Me and Stormzy are both legends in our own right.”

― Skepta

“I don’t know what I’m going to end up doing, but its definitely in the right direction for freedom and truth.”

― Skepta

“I feel like the Earth is a re-print of a re-print of a print of a re-print.”

― Skepta

“Adele texts me all the time and keeps me in check.”

― Skepta

“In school, I wasn’t like the cool guy who had all the new clothes and had all the girls. I felt like the world saw me as an idiot.”

― Skepta

“Getting in touch with your life purpose is important.”

― Skepta

“I am for feminism. I stand up for women standing up for themselves in the same way I stand up for being black.”

― Skepta

“Even with the ‘Top Boy’ series with Ashley Walters… I’ve been talking like on the creative direction wave with Drake about the series. Making greatness with it. The whole style of what’s going on in London, the sound, is real. It’s an actual thing that actually happened. So it deserves to be on the telly.”

― Skepta

“I used to think my accent was blocking me, and I hated it. Then I went to America, and every time someone said, ‘What? Can you say that again?’ I started liking it.”

― Skepta

“I’m paranoid of people hating on me.”

― Skepta

“I want to show the young generation that success is not something you search for externally: it is from within.”

― Skepta

“At every stage of my life, I’ve always wanted to do good for Earth.”

― Skepta

“Britain is just a melting pot for every culture. Like a pot for every culture around the world mixed into one. Artists over here understand that more.”

― Skepta

“Everyone knows their wrong from right, so when people are being racist, they know they’re being ignorant.”

― Skepta

“Now, I think you’ll find a lot of rappers and artists are getting girl managers. It just makes sense. The guys in my team have learnt a lot from bringing girls in.”

― Skepta

“I think about this every day. I wonder, ‘Is today the day where everybody stops lying to themselves and realises that the government is the enemy?’”

― Skepta

“I’ve realised that there’s art in everything we do in London. Suddenly, a photo of two boys sitting on a wall in tracksuits with a dog can go online and be considered a sick photo. That’s what we’ve done to London.”

― Skepta

“You have to understand, that’s all I’ve ever wanted: for London to have a credible musical voice. I will honestly, honestly die happy knowing that I saw it happen.”

― Skepta

“Every year, I always go abroad with dark music, and I’m going to these places, and I feel like I want a party rep – I want something that everyone is going to go crazy to and enjoy and have a good feeling.”

― Skepta

“A lot of us who’ve made grime might be in the chart, but that is because of the country we are in.”

― Skepta

“Becoming a commercial scene? I don’t think people in grime would be happy about that.”

― Skepta

“I’m not gonna ever announce that I’m going to do an album again. Waking up with that on your head almost doesn’t allow you to make the best album you can.”

― Skepta

“In this music industry, you’ll find the differences with artists. You get some people who really love music… and you get people who do this because they want to have money or want to be famous.”

― Skepta

“Pharrell loves music. When I’m with him, it’s like I’m working with someone that I’ve known all my life, and we’re both there to make the sickest track we can.”

― Skepta

“’Konnichiwa,’ to me, is a classic because I don’t make music for today where everyone is going to judge what I did in two years; they’re gonna tell me today.”

― Skepta

“When I was trying to make songs to go to America, to go to Japan, they’d never work.”

― Skepta

“With the music that I’ve put out, I realized that putting pressure on an album isn’t always the right thing to do for yourself.”

― Skepta

“I haven’t just come up with a hit – I’m not like a one-hit-wonder – I’ve been here for ages. No one is questioning my ability, so just enjoy the wave, spread the wave.”

― Skepta

“A good diss track needs to have some facts in it and definitely tell some truth.”

― Skepta

“I definitely think that my vibe has rubbed off on Drake a bit.”

― Skepta

“The thing about awards is that a lot of those moments are about the whole world telling you that you deserve it and rah, rah, rah. I’m very appreciative of that, but I love experiencing stuff by myself. Because it feels different. You know the truth, and you can hear what the voice in your head is saying properly.”

― Skepta

“It’s not just my music. Not everyone just listens to grime now ’cause of Skepta. They like how we speak. They like the slang. They like how we dress. They listen to the music. It’s everything.”

― Skepta

“Pirate radio is like street art.”

― Skepta

“Radio 1 doesn’t exist to me. I don’t judge my success by anything they say.”

― Skepta

“England is so black and white, so plain, like a burger with nothing on it. No salad, nothing. That’s why it’s so real.”

― Skepta

“When I was a youth, to be called ‘African’ was a diss. At school, the African kids used to lie and say they were Jamaican. So when I first came in the game, and I’m saying lyrics like, ‘I make Nigerians proud of their tribal scars/ My bars make you push up your chest like bras,’ that was a big deal for me.”

― Skepta

“All my early lyrics were about confidence.”

― Skepta

“Bullying is bullying, man. Even the biggest of the bullies got bullied. And what was happening in school comes from the media, innit? It comes from TV and society.”

― Skepta

“I don’t watch the news because I understand that I’m like a science lab. Whatever I take in is how I feel.”

― Skepta

“I think some things that are better for me are not good for other people, innit. They need to run theirself. Everybody should run theirself.”

― Skepta

“I’m from the street, but I’m not a street head. I’m not one of those guys who believe that life is about the street. I’m nerdy at heart, man.”

― Skepta

“I did drama at school, as a kid, but I ain’t been to, like, acting school or anything. I was in a couple of school plays.”

― Skepta

“I think ‘Inception’ was a sick idea, but they didn’t do it correctly.”

― Skepta

“I suppose when I was growing up, it was all about fitting into a box or fitting into a category. You know, looking like I listened to hip-hop, or looking like I listened to grime. You’d see someone and go, ‘Oh, look at that person. He’s wearing that or that; he listens to punk rock.’”

― Skepta

“There are different things to wear in different places, and if you want to fit in and show respect, you can dress to do that, or you can dress to show that you are foreign and not from there. That can work, too.”

― Skepta

“There would be weeks when I’d just go to Paris on a cheap ticket, sleep on my friend’s floor, and just do a show because I knew I was going to do a show. Do it, get home, see it on my timeline, and be happy that I was just working.”

― Skepta

“I was about 18 when I started making music, making beats. My mindset was totally different.”

― Skepta

“There are people who take on different objectives and missions in life. When you grow older, there’s a a void – and right now, I’m filling a space where a lot of old rock, grime, hip-hop, punk artists left a vacant space.”

― Skepta

“I’ve been trying to do this music stuff and work it out for so long… I was like, ‘Let’s do it for ourselves.’ All these songs, we’ve travelled the world – no record label, nothing. We just did this for us, but the love is very appreciated.”

― Skepta

“I was working so hard at music and trying to do this whole ‘industry’ thing and realised that it wasn’t for me.”

― Skepta

“I know that I’m in grime, but I had to separate myself and do things myself.”

― Skepta

“There is so much good music from our scene in the U.K., and I’m happy I’m part of that movement. For a long time, we were trying to do what the Americans were doing, we were trying to do what the pop stars from England were doing, and we just didn’t understand.”

― Skepta

“I go to award ceremonies, but I always like to be in my world. That’s the only place I can control where I won’t get upset.”

― Skepta

“Songs like ‘One Love’ by Bob Marley – they stand the test of time – it doesn’t matter – so anytime I write music, I try to write in tune with an emotion, and I hope there are more times like that for everyone.”

― Skepta

“I can’t make hard street music for the rest of my life. Your references change.”

― Skepta

“I hear all the big department stores like Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s in the U.S. playing hard hip-hop records to the shoppers, like Rick Ross at his gnarliest. That’s amazing. It makes me think grime can do a similar thing.”

― Skepta

“It took a long time for hip-hop to become commercial. Now there’s all these big black icons that came from nowhere to somewhere. Look at Jay-Z! People stopped being threatened by the music and just started to appreciate that it’s good.”

― Skepta

“We’ve been ahead for so long in the U.K., we’re so multicultural, and that’s the beauty. That’s why grime was formed, from this mix, this understanding of different people.”

― Skepta

“I feel like I’m the chosen one, but I chose myself.”

― Skepta

“When I finally got there, to where I thought was the top, I wasn’t doing what I was doing in the beginning. I was not happy.”

― Skepta

“Even though I played this role in ‘Anti-Social,’ you can see by the poster it’s not concentrating on some black rudeboy thing. This is a smash-and-grab movie!”

― Skepta

“I’ve been into clothes since I was a kid, going to garage raves and seeing all the Tottenham gangsters wearing Moschino and Versace; I just always had a passion for it.”

― Skepta

“’That’s Not Me’ video cost me 80 English pounds.”

― Skepta

“I have been wearing Air Max for so long, since I was seven playing around in the estate; I feel like I know my Air Max well.”

― Skepta

“Air Max is from when we were running the streets. It was comfortable to wear in London, whether you were going out to a club or kicking a ball in the streets. Those kinds of things stick in my mind from the young, magical, fantasy years of my life.”

― Skepta

“I don’t think grime has ever been respected; it’s not seen as a nice sound.”

― Skepta

“Being in an industry where money talks, everybody involved in the ‘Dare To Dream’ project came to a conclusion to sign it to Interscope.”

― Skepta

“It’s almost a blessing for a new generation to say somebody like myself went to their school. It helps kids dream, and now they’re getting into acting, football, whatever.”

― Skepta

“There’s a lot of oppressed people in Tottenham, but people in Tottenham also know how to turn pain into triumph.”

― Skepta

“It’s important for anybody who finds success to show other people where to find it.”

― Skepta

“I put three productions of my youngest brother Jason on my album, on ‘Konnichiwa,’ and that made me happy, to be able to do that for him.”

― Skepta

“You won’t feel inferior in my sportswear!”

― Skepta

“When I got ‘forever’ tattooed on my throat, it meant that my legacy was going to live forever. So anything that I create, I do it because I believe it will live on, forever.”

― Skepta

“When I was younger, I was very wild, and I didn’t really have my head screwed on properly.”

― Skepta

“Boy Better Know, when we die, people are going to realise that we are just seven guys who just, like, try to have fun.”

― Skepta

“That’s all that life is really about – setting up the party, talking to people who are like-minded, making something happen and keeping it moving, you know.”

― Skepta

“When I was a kid, I used to stop bullies. I’d get so angry when I saw people being bullied. I’d be like, ‘Stop doing that to him!’”

― Skepta

“Basically, a lot of people have asked to jump on ‘Shutdown’ remix, I’m not gonna front. But ’cause of quality control, we wanted to make it really big: it’s all about spreading the British sound and culture.”

― Skepta

“Thank you to everybody who was there for me when I was going through depressed times.”

― Skepta

“I think the grime scene is one of the sickest, most diverse scenes ever.”

― Skepta

“’Konnichiwa’ was made because I don’t like the industry. I really had to remove myself from it to understand myself.”

― Skepta

“The worst thing that happened to me at a gig was when the microphone wasn’t on one time, and for the three lines of the verse with Chipmunk, you couldn’t hear me.”

― Skepta

“Some artists are like ready-salted crisps and just do what they are supposed to do. But I’m every flavour in one. I’m one of those variety packs.”

― Skepta

“To be able to come back to Nigeria and get so much love for my work is my biggest life blessing. I’ve always hoped to never get lost in translation with me being British-born.”

― Skepta

“Everything makes sense to me in Lagos; I even understand myself.”

― Skepta

“When I was younger, I was an aggressive fighter but I’m growing into someone who understands we don’t have to answer things with violence.”

― Skepta

“They respect rappers in the U.S., but in England, it’s the Queen’s country. She’ll forever be putting out the message on these BBC networks that there’s no hood: it’s tea and red phoneboxes.”

― Skepta

“I’m happy that grime remains underground. A lot of people talk like it’s some underrated or ignored genre, but to me, that’s the beauty of it.”

― Skepta

“Beyonce’s ‘Bow Down,’ to me, that could be a grime tune. If it’s electronic and 140-ish bpm, and people go crazy to it, to me, that’s grime.”

― Skepta