“It’s an amazing thing that I found music, man…”
Following on from Ne-Yo’s talk on the therapeutic power of music, chart-topping British rapper Wretch 32 sits down with SoulCulture and reveals how he uses music as a portal to express himself, for our #OKNotToBeOk mental health campaign.
“When I was a young teenager something would tick me off and my only frustration was to want to fight or to want to hit or to want to argue. You just get so angry and you’re just in your room just angry; everything that’s coming out of you is anger because there is no outlet and you don’t know how to be able to communicate exactly what’s wrong with you because you might not know. You’re just mad at the world.”
“I see what it is with the kids because the world’s against you and you don’t know why you’re frustrated. You want more but you don’t know exactly what and you don’t know how to get it. Being able to just write a record, or write a verse or write something and put it on paper and feel like that frustration had left me was the best thing that’s ever happened to me in my life.”
“Had I not found that I don’t know what the hell I would be doing and just the same as everybody else I’m one of them that talk about it the least because I’m not particularly proud of it. Music was the best thing that happened to me. It was the outlet. I can actually write a song and that frustration can leave me and being able to do that is good,” he explains.
“Sometimes I don’t know if something’s affected me until I go to the studio and I just start writing about that particular thing. Once I’ve pressed full stop on the last word – it’s gone. It’s all out. I’m no longer angry. I’m laughing.”
“This actually is my stress relief… To be able to get paid for it, I don’t know how I have managed to make that work but that’s another blessing in disguise. I’m just happy that people wanna hear my problems!”
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