Supreme Love: Berwyn Speaks the Truth

July 15, 2024

“You“Nepologizing love”: that’s what got Berwyn through his darkest times. Growing up as an illegal immigrant in Britain was a complex and traumatic experience for the singer, rapper, producer and instrumentalist, who was born in Trinidad and grew up in Romford. To this day, anger at the architects of British environmental policy, at the racists and fanatics who targeted him as a child, still courses through his veins. All this suffering could have broken even the strongest spirit, but Berwyn Du Bois managed to carry on.

Berwyn on the cover of NME (2024), photo by Tamiym — Berwyn on the cover of NME. Image credit: Tamiym for NME

“There’s something about what I’ve experienced through love, both romantic and otherwise, that has given me strength in this shit,” he says. “In (the song) ‘Neighbours,’ when I say ‘Fuck the neighbors, turn up the music“I block out the noise and enjoy my experience to the fullest through the lens of love. I experience that liberation and carefreeness that only comes through love.”

When NME Meeting Berwyn on a drizzly summer morning in north London, that energy is clear to see. He lifts the mood as he enters the room, smiling broadly and joking that he’d rather be in the studio. An unsurprising attitude for this serious worker. After releasing his Mercury Prize-nominated debut mixtape, Demotape/Vega, in 2021, he wasted no time fleshing out his raw, confessional brand of hip-hop with follow-up project, Tape 2/Fomalhaut. The strength of those early efforts earned him a Best New Act award at the 2022 BandLab NME Awards, and he’s been prepping a debut album ever since – one that expresses his belief in the power of love.

Given the circumstances he’s been dealt in life, that perspective is admirable. In his 28 years, Berwyn has experienced homelessness, poverty and state persecution and has come out the other side. His debut album, “Who Am I,” released last Friday (July 12), documents those ups and downs with heart, nuance and creative flair.

“There’s something about what I experienced through love that gave me strength in this shit”

As the title suggests, the album is an unfiltered and deeply introspective analysis of his identity and the forces that shaped it. The 12 songs are vibrant and alive, from the frequent mic tussles and background noise to the recordings of his parents’ voices that provide context for his upbringing and family dynamics. These raw, unpolished moments are woven into a soundscape that is his attempt to “understand the evolution of hip-hop and take it to more electronic, futuristic places.” The result is a record that clearly expresses the essence of Berwyn as a person and as an artist.

A common thread running through Who Am I is Berwyn’s perception that he is shaped by hostile immigration policies. Since moving to the UK at the age of nine, his life has been constantly unstable, one of the few constants being the loss of opportunities due to his immigration status. From the inability to visit New York and take part in a youth production of the musical, The Lion Kinghad to turn down unconditional university offers and excuse himself to lecturers by saying that he did not have the right documents. He repeatedly encountered obstacles on his path to excellence.

Berwyn (2024), photo by Tamiym — Photo credit: Tamiym for NME

“I always tried to do the right thing,” says Berwyn. “I was just a kid with dreams and excelled at everything I did and it didn’t matter. My music teacher wanted me to go to the BRIT School but I couldn’t go because of my papers so I had to tell them, ‘I woke up too late’ or ‘I didn’t do that’. That person never looked at me the same way again! And that’s what’s happening to good kids right now and you’re going to make monsters out of them. It’s evil.”

Today, Berwyn has discretionary leave to remain in the UK after being placed in an immigration category designed to “cover exceptional and compassionate circumstances” when people “fail to meet the requirements of the immigration rules.” In reality, the category has become a way to extract money from vulnerable people while depriving them of certain civil rights, Berwyn argues.

“You have the right to work and live in the country, but you are not entitled to any benefits from the state and you have to pay £3,000 every three years and have your case reviewed,” he says. “This is fraud. One day ITV or Channel 4 will make a documentary about it, but by then they have already extorted hundreds of millions from vulnerable people around the world from colonies that Britain itself destabilised.”

“I was just a kid with dreams. I excelled at everything I did and it didn’t matter.”

‘Who Am I’ rails against this kind of inequality and oppression. In ‘I Am Black’ Berwyn raps “How come my brother and I were born in the gutter? How come everyone there had the same skin color? Do you fight for one side and not the other?” On “Mama,” a poignant melodic hip-hop tribute to his mother, he unravels the complexity of the shared experience of love and suffering. Lines like “being chased by the cops while you play with my hair“ captures the dualities that shaped his youth.

Perhaps the most haunting track on the album is “Dear Immigration,” a two-and-a-half minute a cappella track in which Berwyn reads a poetic letter describing the pain and troubles he has been put through by the Home Office. He describes the many difficulties and humiliations he and his family have endured since moving to the UK, and vents his anger: “Today my little brother said he wants to sell drugs and I hate you for that, I really blame you for that. How can he be born in this country and still need papers and stuff?”

Berwyn posted an emotional black-and-white video of himself reading the letter, and the YouTube comments underscore the profound impact “Dear Immigration” has had on people with similar experiences. One fan writes, “Damn I wish these verses were around 20 years ago when I was an undocumented kid.” How do Berwyn’s comments like these make you feel?

“I did it for the Mandem and Galdem who are going through this,” he says. “We’re living in a really tense environment in the UK right now, probably the tensest since Brexit, both racially and class-wise… I’ve experienced a lot of irrational hate, even in response to tracks like ‘Neighbours’, from vocal nationalist individuals, so I didn’t read the comments because that’s not why I did it. I was doing this therapy for myself and giving it to the world for someone else.”

This is an example of the unabashed love that Du Bois considers “one of my tools to get through it.” There are other tools in “Who Am I,” such as the reactionary anger and spite expressed in the atmospheric, soulful “Hate”: “I hate the government, I hate the police / Because they hate me“There is as much negativity as there is positivity in this work,” he explains. “There is a lot of hate, disappointment and aggression. It is a natural aggression and it comes from my body developing strategies without conscious thought.”

Titles like “Hate” and “Dear Immigration” reflect Berwyn’s strong political awareness, which was evident in his conversations with NMENot only does he express a deep understanding of the suffering caused by right-wing government policies, but he also looks at nearly every aspect of pop culture through the prism of politics.

“There’s always going to be a right-wing view and a left-wing view,” he says. “That’s how culture works, and it was perfectly expressed recently in the Kendrick vs. Drake case. Hip-hop is the biggest genre in the world, and it’s completely divided. The left-of-center people were pro-Kendrick, while all the right-of-center, misogynistic blog sites are pro-Drake. No matter what happens, culture will always dissect itself, and I’m not going to miss that.”

“I bring black music into the future”

That perspective has influenced Berwyn’s recent trips to Trinidad. Today, he tries to visit his birth country at least once a year to see his family and connect with local artists like Brooklyn Decent, who contributed to “Who Am I.”

“I worked with Brooklyn because I want to develop this left-leaning market in Trinidad,” he says. “I miss the heyday of black culture – I think we won our fight and then stopped fighting. There’s a huge left-leaning gap in all of black culture, and there was once, with Lauryn Hill and Erykah Badu… it’s important to me and the culture to develop that, and nobody’s doing it.

“In Trinidad, people are fed up with the commercialisation of soca and don’t want their children listening to Trinibad,” says Berwyn, referring to the controversy surrounding the country’s indigenous dancehall style, which has been condemned by some for its lyrical content and “immorality”. “Bringing black music culture back to more feeling and depth, which it has strayed from over the last decade – that gives me a purpose.”

It’s impressive how far-reaching Berwyn’s ambitions are. But given the difficulties he’s overcome, it’s not surprising that he’s full of confidence in what he can achieve. His debut album has brought him closer to understanding who he is, but what can he give to the world? He’s only just beginning to answer that question.