In Grime, Wiley has always been my favourite character, and a character he is. Since the beginning of Grime’s inception there hasn’t been any one almost as interesting as Wiley.
In 2009/2010, Wiley’s Twitter handle was @VNeckJumper. He was Kanye West on Twitter before Kanye West was even on Twitter. Everyday using the medium to run riot and say whatever he liked. His tweets had made the news a number of times. As eccentric as his tweets were, they were never out of character for someone like Wiley.
By now we should all know that a Wiley biopic is in the works! In the UK there isn’t anyone more deserving of a film based on their life and times than Wiley. The Wiley Biopic was first mentioned during his NFTR interview which as expected was full of outrageous and hilarious real life stories from Wiley’s past. The hilarious hour long interview wasn’t enough and a new interview with TimeOut magazine tells us a little bit more about the life of Wiley.
Here’s two excerpts from the interview that we found most interesting.
When asked about…
The Truth behind the Aiya Napa incident
‘Okay, basically, me and Dizzee went out one night [in Ayia Napa] and there was some fighting with another crew – I won’t say who, but basically everyone knows. Then the next day, I decided to carry it on – I didn’t pull out a knife. I was just fighting. Me and another guy went looking for them again. Dizzee just rode off, because in his head, he’s probably thinking: “What the fuck are you doing? That was last night! It’s just gonna carry on!” Well, after we started it up again, those guys came looking for us. But the person they found was Dizzee. The thing we done the next morning led them to go looking for us, but see him and stab him.’
Wiley missing shows/bookings
‘People ask me: “Wiley, man, why do you miss so many shows?” You know why: it’s because when I started to come through, I had these gangsters – proper, heavy old-school English gangsters – going: “Send a couple of grand through or we’ll be at your show!” Now, I’m not a grass so I couldn’t go to the police. But how do you deal with a London underworld who can see your name on the flyers, know everything you’re doing and know that they want a piece of it? I tried to face it down, but they were there, waiting to kidnap me, do shit to me. Not long after Ayia Napa I went to the Palace Pavilion [in Hackney] and I got stabbed. I developed the mindset of not going to shows because I felt my life was in danger. I’d had so many threats to my life and so much fear put into my soul.’
Photo by Courtney Francis