He nods to his late nan who has been an ever-present mention in his music having grown up with her – touching on her “looking down proud” on ‘What They Ain’t’. He implores how he has turned his pain into something. It closed out with a snippet talking on quite simply taking life for what it is. Here are the best photos from the winners’ room at the Rolling Stone UK Awards in collaboration with Rémy Martin

I’m all good brother. Happy to be finished with my album – happy with my album. Happy for my music to just be out, I haven’t been outside for some time, basically. I’m excited to start dropping again and excited about what’s to come. I don’t want to give away too much, but yeah, I’m not dropping an album and going quiet again – I’m not in jail anymore.

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Here’s what went down at the after party of the Rolling Stone UK Awards in collaboration with Rémy Martin You said in a previous interview that you wanted your debut album to reach the same cinematic and musical value as your record “Gangsteritus.” Would you say you’ve achieved that? One million percent. I would say I’m an older, but not the oldest. I had this conversation with Giggs, he called to congratulate me about Thanks For Waiting hitting number eight in the charts and I said that chart positioning wasn’t great – a lot of negativity. I said I had been doing it for ages and Giggs told me that he had been doing it for longer! Following Stormzy’s shoutout, Potter Payper began writing rigorously from his cell. Telling stories about life confined within his four walls – and the occasional free time in the yard – Payper was telling real-life stories, tales riddled with trauma, anxiety, and hope that his life would be granted a second chance to put things right. Your Training Day 3 mixtape went to number three in the charts, did you make that project with chart success in mind?

There are a lot of rappers that are now achieving real success commercially, and I believe that they can only do that now because of me, and I can only do it now because of the people that came before me.” a b Kenneally, Cerys (17 March 2023). "Potter Payper unveils new single "Corner Boy" ". The Line of Best Fit . Retrieved 14 May 2023. Having launched his own imprint, 36 the Label, and signed veteran south Londoner Fee Gonzalez, Bousbaa says he wants to try his hand at talent-spotting as an A&R. Throughout our interview, in the room next door, Blade Brown has been working on a verse for a song also featuring Skrapz – both top-tier UK rappers – that will contribute towards Bousbaa’s next project. This time, he explains, it will be full of features, demonstrating the breadth and variety of his artistic network. Going forward, he is passionate about helping the UK rap scene edge closer to breaking America.I’m never looking for the next hit. It’s always just my expression, and I don’t like to waste it,” says Potter Payper, real name Jamel Bousbaa. We meet at a recording studio in Camden Town, north London, where he arrives with a younger sibling who has just received their GCSE results. He tells me proudly about how well they’ve done as we take our seats in the kitchen.

This is different from every other project because I put myself in shoes that I had thought I took off a long time ago – the smelly, old ones.”

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The mixtape’s title referenced the 2001 film in which Denzel Washington’s corrupt detective takes Ethan Hawke’s young recruit under his wing. “In the film, my man [the recruit] is naive,” Bousbaa says. “He wants to be the hero. But then he sees that everything he believed wasn’t what it was. It’s ruthless, people are out here for themselves, it’s dangerous. It’ll be the person you’re supposed to trust the most, your partner, who in the end could be your downfall. That was me in the beginning of that street journey. I was just out here on the roads, a little kid, and as it went on I got more and more entrenched in a life that was never really for me. I’m a better musician and asset to the music industry than I ever was a drug dealer.” The message of it all, I would say, is who’s the biggest exports from our country musically? Yeah, are that in terms of rap music – they are not who they are off of that camera. They have manufactured images, maybe by themselves, or maybe with help from industry. But, either way, they are not themselves in any way, shape, or form. My whole journey has been that I’m unapologetically myself. And I stay true to my craft, the sound of who I am as a person at different points in times in my life. Sometimes I’m flush, sometimes I’m high, and sometimes I’m low and that reflects in my music heavily. As opposed to like literally any project I’ve ever done is like this is obviously coming from a different time and space in my life. But very, my music is always reflective of my life or my day-to-day life. This is different from every other project because I put myself in shoes that I had thought I took off a long time ago – the smelly, old ones. Coming out and being here now … it’s underwhelming, in reality. I understand that I’ve been making mistakes all my life, and it’s been costing me all my life. Without getting too emotional about it, I missed a massive moment,” he says. “Forget the success of it. Forget how it was received. My debut album release … I wanted to be a part of that, to feel it.”