Big Narstie, the grime artist and TV personality, pats his 84kg puppy. “He’s trained to find money and he’s trained to find weed,” he explains. We are sitting on a sofa in a nondescript flat in Essex – the “man-cave,” Narstie calls it. It’s a short walk away from the large, four-bedroom house in which he lives with his partner and two children. The puppy is wearing a rose-gold collar. Narstie is wearing a gigantic diamond pendant that involves an elaborate, custom-made, jewelled portrait of the puppy. “Daddy can’t shine if his boy don’t shine,” he says.
A moment ago, I had asked him, I think, about his Bafta-nominated TV programme, The Big Narstie Show, which returns for its third series soon. But this is how it is to be in Narstie’s presence. You don’t interview him. You spend time in his vicinity and listen gratefully as the soundbites spill out of his mouth, one after the other.
Here’s Narstie on his songwriting process: “All my best songs were written on the toilet. I take a cold drink in there. It’s where I flow.”
Here he is on his exercise regime: “I’ve been learning some acrobatical stuff for my fat size, cuz.”
And here he is on his rise to fame: “I came from fuck all. I’m the epitome of making it from the ground up.”
Narstie is a peculiar kind of celebrity. Born Tyrone Lindo to Jamaican parents, he grew up in Brixton and shot to notoriety as a rapper, first as part of the grime crew N-Double-A, and later as a solo artist. His early EPs were met with acclaim. When the Bassline Drops, his 2015 collaboration with Craig David, has been streamed 50m times on Spotify and Apple Music. His first full-length album, BDL Bipolar, which was released in 2018, features a rap verse by Ed Sheeran, who is godfather to Narstie’s daughter. Music is central to his personality, he says. He writes whenever and wherever he can.
But it his personality – his habit for unfiltered, free-wheeling, wildly meandering conversation – that has catapulted him to stardom. In 2017, Narstie made a guest appearance on Gogglebox, alongside Sheeran, and quickly became a viral sensation. (He may or may not have been high.) The same thing happened when he popped up on the The Great British Bake Off, last year, and when he had a stint presenting the weather on Good Morning Britain, in 2018. (“Is Big Narstie the best weather presenter ever?” the Radio Times asked. “Yes.”) For a time, audiences couldn’t escape his particular kind of upbeat high jinks, particularly on social media, across which he is terrifically active. Everything seemed entirely natural. Unscripted. Exciting. He has the rare and charming knack of making everything and everyone around him come alive.
In 2016, commissioning editors at Channel 4 spotted his star potential on a news segment in which he candidly lamented the lack of black UK artist nominees at that year’s Brit Awards, and suggested he might like to make his own chatshow. Narstie said he wanted to concentrate on music. But the producers chased for weeks and weeks and, in the end, Narstie relented – with stipulations. “They said: ‘We’re not doing it unless we do it our way,’” Jasmine Dotiwala, a Channel 4 broadcaster, recalls. Narstie’s team demanded full editorial control, complete rights ownership and a share of production revenue. “It is literally unheard of to negotiate with Channel 4 like this,” Dotiwala continues. “You can’t help but respect the hustle.”
The resulting series, The Big Narstie Show, is a chat-show in which Narstie and comedian Mo Gilligan use an unfiltered and comedically anarchic execution to turn the traditional format on its head. Narstie has always been keen to involve a diverse mash-up of guests, a mixture he is said to refer to as “patty and caviar”. The energy of the show is puerile and raucous, but it contains tender moments, too. On one episode, UK rapper Giggs told Hollywood actor David Schwimmer that he was a huge fan of Friends, and that the show helped him through his time in prison.
The Big Narstie Show hit a nerve with viewers and it resonated particularly with audiences Channel 4 had been struggling to reach: young viewers and black viewers. In its first season, it was the channel’s most popular programme among younger cohorts. Viewers aged 16-25 rose 94%. Black audiences rose 144% – a figure that’s a testament to the power of giving a prime-time television slot to a black lead. Series two aired last year. Channel 4 has invested heavily in Narstie, believing him to be a star. There’s a travel show coming, in which he journeys to Jamaica to trace his family’s roots. And he’s written a book – half memoir, half self-motivation guide – which will be published by Penguin in March. (It is titled: How to be Narstie.) We’re meeting, ostensibly, to talk about series three of the chatshow. But, like I said, you don’t interview Narstie.
Narstie is 34. He grew up poor and, as a teenager, was prone to running wild – his own admission. The odds were stacked against him. “The first part of the story is hard work, whoop dee do,” he says. “And the second part of the story is that, 10 years ago, two guys took me, a ghetto kid, off the street, signed me to their label, and gave me a chance.” The men he’s talking about are Nathan Brown and Obi Kevin Akudike, of record label Dice Recordings, who released Narstie’s first EPs and also put out Skepta’s early records. “Ten years ago, my mum phoned Kevin and Nathan and said: ‘You need to get him out of Brixton.’ And they moved me here, to Essex. If I’d stayed in Brixton, I’d have been dead or in prison – a young black kid who had a lot of potential. I always give God thanks for that. Because of that opportunity I ended up owning a third of the TV company that filmed the TV show, that got a Bafta nomination…”
His mother still lives in Brixton and remains a powerful influence in his life. Growing up, she supported her four children as an NHS nurse, but things were hard. “She worked with schizophrenic people,” Narstie says. “I used to eat breakfast at the hospital with a guy who thought he was Rambo, and then I’d jump on the No 322 bus to school.” He dissolves into giggles at the absurdity of the memory. “That was sick!”
I ask him if he’s always been able to see the funny side of the darkness of life. “Nah, I grew up quick due to the circumstances.”
Is that where his ambition comes from? “It’s about never going back to the shit-hole that is poverty. To living off £60 a month. Where existence is just survival. Now I’m a free man, I never want to go back.”
Narstie doesn’t think he was meant to be famous, and you couldn’t say he’s chased celebrity. His immediate circle is a tight group of old friends. He does not employ a publicist. “The key to my success is people power,” he says. “It’s nothing to do with the industry. I know that if 200,000 of my fans phone the establishment and say, ‘Play that fat cunt,’ they have to!”
Why do his shows strike such a chord? “Because it’s real-G shit,” he says. “There’s two types of England, innit! There’s the England they want to show to the rest of the world, and there’s the real England, the England that people actually live in.”
Talk diverts to… exercise. Narstie trains four times a week, he says – mostly martial arts. He hasn’t had a drop of alcohol since he started training two years ago.
“Truth be told, I’m a hippie more than a drinker,” he says. “I’m from the Rastafari faith. I believe that weed was found on King Solomon’s grave. Weed is the tree of knowledge. It’s a medicine that heals people. It helps me with my music and thoughts.”
The alcohol abstinence seems part of a deeper inner journey. “Since I’ve been training, I got the aggression out my system. Ultimately, love will bring your soul further than fear or aggressive power.” He adds: “People say, ‘You look like you’re enjoying life so much.’ But, like, how do they know? Because I lived on the wild side for so long I don’t take things for granted. I’ve got bare friends in prison, so I’m grateful to be walking around, being free, having the choice to eat Cheetos and my nice Calypso drink.” He points to a plastic bag full of snacks and drinks. “I appreciate everything, because I still remember what it means to have nothing.”
Later that evening, Narstie is due to appear on The Rob Rinder Verdict – “Rinderman is a rassclaat G!” – so we leave the man-cave and drive to the studio. Narstie is wearing Gucci sliders with socks and a Ralph Lauren polo shirt. As we drive he talks about the importance of maximising his opportunities while he has them. “I sell merchandise on my website,” he explains. “And I just bought a gym, which will have a CBD centre with a range of hemp and CBD products. And I’m about to open a music bar and a club in Tenerife, which will be called Base, like my grime crew, Base Defence League. I can hustle anything. I’m also investing in property. I want to be the fat, black Robbie Fowler” – he’s referring to the ex-Liverpool footballer who became one of Britain’s biggest private landlords after retiring from the game – “and I got series three of The Big Narstie Show coming up, and we’re filming other projects. Wherever man can fit in, I’m trying. Some might work. Some might not. I just don’t want to be old and upset that I didn’t try stuff. If it works, give God thanks. If it doesn’t, so be it, on to the other one.”
Narstie is keen to use his position to help others. “The little what I’ve got, man is trying to help. I like to give opportunities,” he says. He gives to charity. He is an ambassador for the Baked Bean Company, a south London school for people with learning disabilities, where he also regularly performs. Flamboyantly, he recently invested in a helicopter, which seems over-the-top, but everything counts. The helicopter is emblazoned with the Base Defence League logo. “I want to make BDL air cadets,” Narstie says. He is grinning. “Teach young kids from the ends to fly!”
Despite his public persona as a man laughing in the face of life, Narstie has talked openly in the press and at universities across the country about his struggles with mental health and he’s worked with the mental health charity Mind.
He raps about mental health on his album, which is a curious subject for a grime artist to broach. (On the track Help, from BDL Bipolar, he rapped: “Is it wrong to cry? / Is it wrong to feel to die?”) It is important to him that awareness spreads. “In the Afro-Caribbean community, talk of mental health is shunned,” he says. “If someone in the family had mental health issues, people would think there’s something wrong with the whole family. I always knew I ticked a few of the boxes of symptoms people talked about. Mood swings. Isolation. Being hyper. Being low. Before, I thought I was just being a rassclaat G. But then I realised there was a term for it.”
Despite his self-confessed introspection, Narstie is also a shining example of positive body image. “Man is sexual chocolate,” he says of himself, in the car, one of many pearls of self-love. “In the words of my mate Andy: you can only piss with the cock you’ve got. You’re the biggest advertisement of yourself. I’ve always embraced what I am.”
When we arrive at the studio, a bunch of people involved with the Rinder show come out to meet him, but Narstie stays outside to smoke. He prefers not to enter a building until the very last minute, until he really, really has to go in for hair and makeup, so he can smoke for longer. Everyone acquiesces. The show’s other celebrity guests are already inside – the comedian Katherine Ryan and Made in Chelsea’s Jamie Laing. But Narstie prefers it in the car park. “I need to be high for this shit,” he says. “That’s how you get the best of me on the show.”
The producer tells Narstie that the politician Anna Soubry will be a last-minute guest. “I don’t know none of these fuckers,” he says. “I just know they all get paid to talk shit.”
Narstie has an uneasy relationship with the television world, he says, despite it catapulting him to fame. “Do you think that five years ago it would have been acceptable for me to be smoking weed in a place like this?” he says. “I’m the only black person who’s high on national TV. I have clocked on to the simple fact that I am now relevant enough for them to overlook me smoking weed. I am me. I refuse to be anyone else. Give God thanks. Bit of hard work, a lot of luck, I’ve landed to get to a decent stature. I’m not all the way there. I’m not the captain of the ship, but I’m on the boat, you get me?”
Narstie goes inside and plays a game on his phone while he waits. As the show starts, he takes a seat off set and falls asleep. Five minutes later, someone gently nudges him awake and he walks on stage. Narstie promptly delivers everything the producers had invited him on to the show to deliver. Zest. Charm. Chaos. Mischief. Humour. His particular brand of streetwise insight flows.
“Giraffe neck man,” he says, halfway through the show, when a photo of Jacob Rees-Mogg is shown. He does not completely recognise him. “That man looks like he has zero vibes.” Later, when the show is on a break from airing, he shouts, “Snaaacks!” and someone brings him a bowl of crisps. He dissolves into giggles every now and then, and when he does, the other guests do, too. He makes the show come alive. He’s TV gold. A natural. “I treat shows like sex,” he says, midway through the actual show. “It cannot be forced.”
Series 3 of The Big Narstie Show starts on Channel 4 on Friday 7 February at 11pm
