11. StormzyHeavy Is The Head
”Heavy is the head that wears the crown”, this is great mix of melancholy melody and rap, a more gentle side of Stormzy. I love ‘Superheroes’. Thinking of my experience as a child, the Kaiso man would come and give a message you would never read in the newspaper. You’d say, ‘dat happening in Trinidad?’, you’d learn about what was happening all over the world. This album reminds me of the rhythms of the Kaiso man, it’s full of cool compassion and uplifting care for Black youth. It’s such a tender album with gentle rhythms in the background. Like calypso and soca from Trinidad and mento and reggae in Jamaica, you can hear Stormzy’s black roots in ‘The Crown’, you can hear the Kaiso West African and the London roots. Stormzy has his own take on that tradition of narrative storytelling for the poor and oppressed, “if it’s for my people, I’ll do anything to help”, he says. Heaven and hell are here on earth, “long time coming but we have to prevail, I guess a little heaven has to come with the hell”. The cries are still the same and the struggle continues. It’s all one family and Stormzy is part of the family of street poets and messengers of the Black world.
