The past five years have been punishing for Isaac Borquaye, AKA the British rapper Guvna B. In 2021, he was left without sight in one eye for several months after being targeted in an unprovoked racist attack at his local coffee shop in east London. It left him shaken, but also motivated him to write his searing 2023 album The Village Is on Fire, which questioned structural racism. The album\u2019s cover featured a closeup image of his bloodied eye.<\/p>\n
In the opening track, the 36-year-old musician intersperses his own words \u2013 \u201cCoffee in his hand and he dashed it in my face \/ Five seconds later, right hook to my socket\u201d \u2013 with voice notes his cousin, the actor and writer Michaela Coel, left him in the days after the attack. The record immediately became one of his most streamed, with listeners drawn not only to his frank recounting of the attack but also to his thoughts on youth violence and gentrification, and his grief at the death of his father in 2017. His new, equally confessional album \u2013 more on which shortly \u2013 tackles even more thorny themes.<\/p>\n
Starting his career making gospel-influenced rap during the early 00s explosion of grime music, Borquaye has long been an introspective outlier in a genre better known for its bravado and excess. While Wiley\u2019s 2008 party-focused Wearing My Rolex saw grime enter the mainstream and reach No 2 in the UK Charts, Borquaye released Pray As You Go<\/a> the same year, exhorting listeners to \u201cgive praise to the Lord every day\u201d, since \u201cthe future ain\u2019t Orange \/ the future is heaven\u201d. He won best gospel act at the Mobo awards in 2010 and in 2016, and was nominated again in 2020<\/a>. Clean-cut and careful not to spend too much time cussing on record, Borquaye developed a grounded and uncontroversial public persona as a man of faith, happily raising his two young children.<\/p>\n \u2018Music is usually my method of getting my thoughts out \u2026\u2019 Photograph: Jamie Salmons\/The Guardian<\/p>\n His trouble-free brand made the anger and desire for revenge expressed on The Village Is on Fire all the more shocking. \u201cI was five minutes from my house getting a coffee and when I came back to my car, these two white guys were standing by the driver\u2019s side, blocking my way in. When I asked them to move, they threw the coffee in my face and punched me. They were clearly looking for a fight,\u201d he says, sitting in a dark central London basement studio. Although he reported it, the Metropolitan police closed its investigation after six months owing to a lack of leads.<\/p>\n Thankfully, Borquaye\u2019s physical injuries healed, but the attack triggered a wider moment of self-reflection. \u201cIt\u2019s returned me to this kind of streetwise nature that I developed growing up on a council estate in east London,\u201d he says. \u201cFrom as young as I can remember, I\u2019ve always had my head on a swivel and even though I thought I\u2019d done well and moved to a nicer area, I\u2019m still on the lookout. It\u2019s exhausting.\u201d<\/p>\n Writing about it was, he says, \u201cthe only way I thought I could get a sense of closure because the perpetrators weren\u2019t going to be found. Albums are like chapters in the book of my life and I can\u2019t move on until I document and communicate.\u201d<\/p>\n Guvna B collecting his award for best gospel act at the 2010 Mobo awards in Liverpool. In the years that followed, his personal life became increasingly fraught. In 2023 he separated from the mother of his two children and confronted an addiction to pornography, which he describes as \u201ca battle I\u2019ve had for most of my life\u201d. That same year he entered rehab. \u201cIt\u2019s been frantic and I\u2019ve had whiplash from it all,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I have to address it and music is usually my method of getting my thoughts out to find some catharsis.\u201d<\/p>\n Borquaye\u2019s new, tenth studio album, This Bed I Made, explores the shame and secrecy of this journey to recovery. Full of jazz-influenced instrumentation, the record\u2019s 11 tracks cover everything from the psychological imprisonment of addiction on To Be Free, to the possibility of relapsing on What Now, and the humiliation of admitting your secrets on Shameless, all punctuated by clips of lectures from the physician, author and addiction specialist Gabor Mat\u00e9.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery time I think the next album is gonna be a happy one, something happens in my life that makes it take a different course,\u201d Borquaye says. \u201cWith The Village Is on Fire, it was vulnerable but racism and the attack is something that happened to me. It wasn\u2019t my fault.\u201d But his latest album is different. It is, he says, \u201call stuff that I\u2019ve done to myself. I was hiding things and wearing a mask and it\u2019s harder to talk about because I\u2019ve actually contributed a lot to what\u2019s happened.\u201d<\/p>\n Borquaye cuts a relaxed figure, stretched out in a leather jacket and crisp white T-shirt, but when it comes to speaking about his addiction and relatively nascent recovery, it\u2019s clearly an uncomfortable topic. \u201cI don\u2019t want to be a poster boy for recovery but it felt strange not to address it in the music when I\u2019ve put so much of my life into it over the years,\u201d he says. He wants to be as open as possible: \u201cThat\u2019s the only way to break the stigma and let others who might be struggling know there is no shame in getting help.\u201d<\/p>\n That stigma, he says, \u201ccomes when people pretend that something isn\u2019t a problem and they don\u2019t want to talk about it\u201d. So, in part for the sake of the many other men struggling with pornography addiction \u2013 according to more than half of therapists recently surveyed<\/a> by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, it has been on the rise among British men over the past year \u2013 he\u2019s talking about it.<\/p>\n \u2018We keep secrets because we\u2019re scared what people will think.\u2019 Photograph: Jamie Salmons\/The Guardian<\/p>\n While he doesn\u2019t feel comfortable delving into the why or how of his compulsion, shame, he says, was a key factor that led to him hiding his behaviour for so long. \u201cCulturally, I grew up in a family that didn\u2019t talk and faith was also a big part of my life. In those environments, everyone seems perfect \u2026 if you have got anything shameful that you\u2019re battling, it\u2019s hard to be honest about it,\u201d he says. Also, he says, \u201cI was in denial and probably felt like it\u2019s not that deep \u2013 it isn\u2019t the same as a drug or alcohol addiction.\u201d This isn\u2019t just Borquaye\u2019s opinion: according to the World Health Organization, it is registered as an impulse control disorder rather than an addiction, while the American Psychiatric Association has no formal diagnosis.<\/p>\n Still, Borquaye explains, it leads to the same kind of dependency. \u201cYou might be enjoying something but you can\u2019t stop and it starts to be detrimental in other areas of your life,\u201d he says. \u201cI ended up getting divorced and I wasn\u2019t as much of a present father as I\u2019d like to be. All the relationships in my life were suffering and I thought, I could either stick at rock bottom or be forced to rebuild.\u201d<\/p>\n It was only after those closest to him uncovered the secret of his addiction that he was prompted to seek help. \u201cPeople were shocked at how I could function at a relatively high level while I was hiding all this stuff,\u201d he says. There was catharsis in finally being honest. \u201cWe keep secrets because we\u2019re scared what people will think,\u201d he says, but when he puts into words, \u201cany shame that I\u2019m feeling, it\u2019s quite a freeing thing\u201d.<\/p>\n
Photograph: PA Images\/Alamy<\/p>\n