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Like their American counterparts, British rappers are frequently eager to chase credibility by claiming to be heavily involved in day-to-day lives of drug hustling, gun crime and casual violence. By these dubious criteria, it is impossible to deny that Potter Payper is the real deal.
Born Jamel Bousbaa, the 33-year-old from Barking, east London, has served multiple jail terms since his early teens. His most severe incarceration was a five-year sentence for running a county lines scheme in 2018, of which he served half. In an unwanted affirmation of his then-gangster lifestyle, his song lyrics were used in evidence against him at his trial.
These legal travails have not damaged Payper’s commercial success and, indeed, are more likely to have increased it. Last year his debut album Real Back in Style went to number two in the UK charts. Its follow-up, a full-length mixtape called Thanks For Hating, is currently in the top five.
On his Filthy Free tour to promote that recording, Payper initially appeared with a four-piece band and eight backing singers. A bulky figure sporting the Harry Potter-style specs that lend him his nickname, his other main distinguishing feature is the name of the grandmother who raised him tattooed on his face.
The supplementary musicians soon vanished as Payper spent most of the evening prowling the stage alone, often in front of grim projections of the Gascoigne Estate in Barking, where he plied his youthful trade. His raps detailed the idiosyncrasies of his addict client base: “They’re injecting their toes and their necks in my workplace,” he rued, on “Topshottas Freestyle”.
Over pulverising, uncompromising road rap beats, Payper spat out brutal words like bullets. His main lyrical shtick was marvelling at how his previous gangster life has led to his present stardom. It’s easy to see how his candid lyrics led to his downfall in court: “I cook crack cocaine by the wash basin,” he reminisced on “Corner Boy”.
His rhymes were undoubtedly sharp and dexterous and there was pitch-black humour among the bleakness. On “Blame Brexit” he recalled using Britain’s exit from the EU as an excuse to charge more for cocaine and “add a quid on a brick”. “Midas Touch” brought the knowing boast: “It’s like my life’s like The Wire, but it’s season six.”
Payper does not so much regret his previous life of crime as see it as an inevitable result of a deeply underprivileged upbringing. Joined on stage by a cellist for “Gangsteritus”, the hit single that soundtracked the closing sequence of the TV drama series Top Boy, he admitted to missing the days when “I used to mix the coke, not mix the tape”.
The sold-out Roundhouse was a sea of twinkling mobile-phone lights for the closing “Purple Rain” (very much not the Prince song), in which Payper listed the young offender institutions and prisons he once called home: “Feltham, Chelmsford, Avebury, Parva”. He’s a bad boy made good by celebrating being bad: a very modern morality tale.
★★★☆☆
