Kitchen Stove<\/a>, he\u2019s been keeping the tempo high, working through his neuroses and telling shockingly frank stories of street life in tracks that use the relentless rhythm of New Jersey club music \u2013 as displayed on his debut mixtape, Crossroads, out this week. That\u2019s an unusual rhythm for a British MC \u2013 but, he says, \u201cI always felt like I had to be different\u201d.<\/p>\nAs a child, \u201cI cried on my own a lot. I was sad about life for a long time. From, like, eight \u2019til really only the other day, just before I turned 23. Because I was alone, innit?\u201d He grew up in South Norwood, though he tends to say he\u2019s from Croydon, slightly farther south in London, \u201cbecause South Norwood is very political in terms of all the stuff that\u2019s happened, so I don\u2019t flag the area\u201d. Political how? He looks me in the eye from between his fine dreadlocks. \u201cA lot of people died. Some I was close with.\u201d What did he see? \u201cToo much. To the point now, they told me my dad had cancer, and I didn\u2019t give a shit. I\u2019m asking my gran: \u2018Why am I not bawling?\u2019 But I have lost people, and I never had core friends in school, so I had to grieve on my own. So I don\u2019t care: that\u2019s what it done to me, seeing all of that. I\u2019ve got trust issues. And because I\u2019ve never gone to therapy, I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m normal again or not. I like to keep things short and concise. I talk in riddles; I don\u2019t have normal conversations. The hood will do that to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pozer\u2019s lyrics are full of blades, guns and the drug trade, as poetic as they are wretchedly bleak and violent. They document a life he himself lived, leaving school in year nine to deal weed and steal bikes until he had a case file \u201cthis thick\u201d: he holds his hand out as if gripping a stacked hamburger.<\/p>\n
\u2018Because I\u2019ve never gone to therapy, I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m normal again or not\u2019 \u2026 Pozer. Photograph: Daniel Mburu<\/p>\n
The streets had made him grow up fast: \u201cI used to talk about sex when I was six. Vivid stuff. I was just desensitised to a lot.\u201d Though making sustained friendships was difficult, he\u2019d still \u201cgo link my little bredrins, I\u2019m like eight years old, rolling with people way older than me, like 11. You know when you get nail clippers, and it\u2019s come with a tiny knife? One kid is rolling around with that.\u201d<\/p>\n
As he reached his early teens, he intended to become a boxer, \u201cuntil I was like, this is killing me: I\u2019ve got no drip, no gal, I need some money!\u201d So he fell into crime. \u201cYou never knew it was bad. Teefing bikes, that was a little fun thing for my and my friends. You\u2019d get nicked for it, but you\u2019d be too young to go to jail. Instead, the YOT [Youth Offending Team] order would send you to a bike workshop to work on bikes, and the bike guys there will tell you how to go and nick bikes! That\u2019s how everyone was learning.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was soon surrounded by much worse than nail clippers. He raps about carrying rambo knives, pistols and revolvers, and on the track Jersey King he asserts that his lyrics are authentic: \u201cIf I said it, I did it, I mean it \/ Or if not, seen it \/ Why would I get up and fib?\u201d Was he threatening people? \u201cIn some cases. But I was playing with my conscience, because it was like: \u2018What are you doing?\u2019 You get that inner voice. You see the line: this is going to open the door to unlimited spiritual whoopings. There will be no bettering your life. That\u2019s you now, and there is no thinking about being a normal person after that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pozer performing in at Reading & Leeds festival in 2025. Photograph: Silas Atwal<\/p>\n
His father, who left prison for good in 2014, warded him off organised crime. \u201cHe\u2019d give man the bird\u2019s eye perspective. \u2018They will market it to you like you\u2019re going for a job. \u201cCome up here, three days\u201d \u2013 they\u2019ll say it so nice that you\u2019re just going to go there and you don\u2019t realise.\u2019 He showed man from young that it\u2019s mind games.\u201d For all that he was often alone and itinerant, Paul had other figures to look up to in his youth, such as his uncle, cousins and their friends, but he laments not having actual career guidance, and youth services that might have given him and his peers more opportunities to stay away from crime. \u201cGiving yutes an outlet, and not glamorising the fuckery, so people don\u2019t know it\u2019s an avenue to go down,\u201d he says. Instead, he saw peers \u201cgrow an iron mind. They forget there\u2019s a life outside the hood, they want to be in the low vibe all day long.\u201d He gives the borough of Lambeth as an example of cyclical violence: \u201cThe Yardies [gang] have been going crazy there since the 80s. But music and the culture will pump it \u2026 this is how it continues.\u201d<\/p>\n
Does he risk doing the same with his own music? \u201cWith the truths I put in there, I try not to glamorise it,\u201d he replies. \u201cThey get their mention. But it\u2019s literally just everything I\u2019ve grown up around. I don\u2019t know life that\u2019s not like the one I\u2019m talking about. If I went in the booth and tried to talk about a day at the pub, I wouldn\u2019t even know where to start.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Paul approached adulthood he realised he was caught in a \u201cnever-ending cycle that I\u2019ve been exposed to from young\u201d. So he moved out to Kent to live with his mum, from whom he had become estranged during his wayward teenage years: \u201cI had to rebuild my relationship with her.\u201d<\/p>\n
He had always played around with rap. \u201cI remember writing bars in primary school, foolish bars. It\u2019s a cultural thing: everyone wants to see who got bars.\u201d Originally, \u201cI was rapping like MF Doom,\u201d the masked US rapper he references in a song of the same name. \u201cAt 80 to 90 bpm; I was boom-bapping.\u201d But he started to ratchet the tempo upwards, a reflection of a life, and a mind, always on the move. \u201cI rap like I think,\u201d he says. \u201cThe music I\u2019m making now, it\u2019s like medicine. You\u2019re having a bad day? Bang this on. You\u2019re in the gym? Pump this.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was 18 when Covid hit, and lockdown gave him the space to write in a more sustained way. Seeing his rapper friends JS and YD blow up on TikTok with one single video, he realised he might also be able to make it, too. After chart success with Kitchen Stove, he had a multimillion-streaming follow-up, Malicious Intentions; appeared on Later \u2026 with Jools Holland and the BBC\u2019s Sound of 2025 poll; and has collaborated with AJ Tracey, Aitch, Chase & Status and MCs from across Europe.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy driving force with doing the music was getting the money to fix what I thought was the problem in my home life,\u201d he says. By the time he started releasing tracks, he was one of 11 half or full siblings thanks to his separated parents\u2019 subsequent relationships. \u201cWith doing all this I\u2019ve been able to piece [the family] back together again\u201d, he says, dragging his hands together, arms straining, \u201clike Spider-Man and that train. There\u2019s seven of them in one yard, so I\u2019ve got bare people to think about. I don\u2019t have to provide for them, but I want to help them out here and there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Overall, Paul says he\u2019s managed to get a measure of mental stability. \u201cI\u2019ve rebranded as a stoic. It\u2019s my ting now.\u201d Earlier in his life, \u201cwith the mandem, I\u2019d just punch you up, we\u2019re having fights, I\u2019m moving rowdy; and with the females, I\u2019m hurt. Now I don\u2019t really penny things like that, I\u2019m chilling. I used to hold on to every thought and dissect it, and stay in a loop,\u201d but now, with an outlet in music, \u201cI\u2019ve stopped that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ultimately, though, he still feels as if he\u2019s on his own. \u201cEven now, I\u2019m shook as shit,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t have no guidance, at all, in life, from a peer. My music is my inner voice. Selfishly, it\u2019s for me. Because I don\u2019t have nobody helping me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pozer self-releases the Crossroads EP on 29 May<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In one of Pozer\u2019s earliest memories, nearly two decades before he became one of the most talented rappers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-446371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}