Noel Gallagher has heaped praised on both Stormzy and Skepta, saying “it’s a great thing” that a grime act headlined the main stage at Glastonbury.
In a conversation with the Guardian published Monday (August 5), which ranged in topics from Liam to his forthcoming EP ‘This is the Place’ to Brexit, the older Gallagher touched on grime and its place in culture today.
Noel had watched Stormzy’s pivotal Glasto set in his hotel room in the Netherlands. “Oh, that’s what my two lads are on about,” he said, referring to his sons Donovan and Sonny, whom he claims love Stormzy’s recent single ‘Vossi Bop’.
“Because they’ll be doing these dances in the kitchen when they’re getting ready for school and I’ll be thinking: ‘What’s a vossi bop?’ I didn’t realise it was to do with grime,” he continued.
Grime is “as English as Pulp, or the Jam or the Kinks,” he said of the genre. “And it’s their own language, which is a great thing that something born on council estates out of poverty and street culture has got to the main stage at Glastonbury.”
Gallagher added, “Now, if I’m a 52-year-old father of three living in Maida Vale, then he’s talking street jive to me. He’s talking about some guy stabbing him in the back when he was a kid – I’m not humming along to that!”
Stormzy “is good, though, and Skepta is great”, he said. He recalled Skep’s 2017 performance of ‘Shutdown’ at the BRIT Awards, saying he thought at the time, “Wow, it’s fucking powerful, man.”
Source: NME