In his Great American Poem "Song of Myself," the 19th-century writer Walt Whitman tapped into the complexities of the human condition in three lines:The video sees shots of Big Mike stunting amid some fake snow and an icy-looking light show interspersed with shots of black and brown children acting out different professions (doctor, footballer, important-looking person at desk), presumably and admirably intended to expand positive representation for BME kids, and to show them that the multitudes that they contain are just as important as those of their white counterparts.This lifting up of BME youth is reflected in the lyrics to the song (sample bars: "a young black boy made a milli off grime" / "all my young black kings rise up man, this is our year / and my young black queens right there / It's been a long time coming, I swear"), and it's also clearly an issue close to Stormzy's heart, as he recently told the Observer:
Through a 21st-century lens we can kind of translate this as: "be chill to people because everyone is, in fact, multi-faceted! Don't make judgements based on surface level superficialities!" And that's actually pretty much the message that the UK's favourite rapper Stormzy shares with his new music video for "Cold," a cut from his debut album Gang Signs and Prayer – an album which, you may or may not have heard, recently went to number one in the UK.Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
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Watch the video below, and feel your heart grow a few sizes:Follow Lauren on Twitter.(Image via YouTube)I need to talk to my young black kings, because I'm one of you, we who are always last. And I say to them, "You are sick, you're nang, you can do this. You're better than anything anyone's ever told you that you are. You're just as powerful as me. You're just as sick as me. You are just as ambitious, and you can be just as creative and as incredible and as amazing as me, Kanye West, Drake, Frank Ocean, all these people that you see. You can do that."