Dave: My rap success has given mum ‘bragging rights’

Rapper Dave has told how his success has given his mother “bragging rights”.

Dave’s debut album Psychodrama went straight to number one in March after he was dubbed the “British Kendrick Lamar”.

The 21-year-old from Streatham said his mother worked long hours as a nurse and missed much of his childhood in what was a tough period for them both, saying she felt “stigma” after his two brothers were jailed. One is still serving a life sentence.

Dave told ES Magazine: “She left at 5am every day, I went to school, she came back at 10pm or 11pm. The scenarios and circumstances I was in, my mum would never have seen me laughing, smiling and happy, it wouldn’t have made sense.”

The rapper added: “A lot of the time when my mum was going into rooms when I was younger, it was this thing about her — ‘That woman there, her sons are in prison’. My mum definitely felt the stigma. As I speak to my mum more I realise that when I was younger, how not there I was. It was tough for her and for me. I was a kid, 13, I don’t know much about life, there wasn’t much for mum to talk about to me. Now, from 18 to 21, I’ve had her advice, I level with her.

“I’ve given her bragging rights. That’s something my mum’s definitely big on, like any African parent. Like any parent.”

Dave will later this year appear in Netflix’s revival of Top Boy, the hit Ashley Walters drama set on a Hackney estate. He said he wanted “to have first-hand input into showing what life in London looks like for the world”.

The rapper will play Glastonbury this weekend.

​Read the full interview in ES Magazine – free every Thursday and Friday.