Stormzy has confirmed that one of the lyrics in his new song, Please, is in reference to the Duchess of Sussex. The rapper, who has released his third album, This Is What I Mean, pleads for people to “leave Meghan alone” since she married Prince Harry.
During a chat with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, the 29-year-old explained that the song was inspired by Meghan’s famous interview with Oprah Winfrey back in March 2021.
“When I was in New York, I actually watched the Oprah [Winfrey] and Meghan interview and I must have made it maybe sometime after that time,” he shared. “Because it’s so funny because even when I said it, I didn’t know I wanted to say that.
“A lot of things on the album or even the whole album, I want to say this, I want to say that, it was just like, okay, as I said, let God in the room, invite him into the room and just feel and express that…
“A lot of the time, whenever I feel things, I feel it in the sincerest, genuine way. But then sometimes how people receive it, I forget that, oh, it means something for me to feel like this. Do you get what I mean?”
On how he thought about the backlash Meghan has received, he added: “So for a perfect example, the Meghan lyric, that is the most genuine, just ‘leave her alone’. It’s not political, it’s not rooted in that. It’s just a genuine ‘leave her alone’. Just leave her alone. If you were at a bar or you were at a party and you saw someone and it’s just like leave her alone.”
Asked if he has experienced that kind of scrutiny, Stormzy replied: “It’s intense. It’s super intense. And that’s where… I wanted to say that. I didn’t know I wanted to say that, but when I said it I was like, yeah, I want to say that … Just leave her alone, man.
“There’s been a few moments in my life, in my actual reality, where I’ve had to say, ‘Yo, leave him alone or leave her alone.’ And that was one of the moments, just on wax.”
The comments come shortly after it was revealed that police have investigated many “disgusting” threats aimed at Meghan. The former head of UK counter-terror policing revealed there had been a genuine threat to the 41-year-old’s life on multiple occasions, and people have been prosecuted as a result.
“If you’d seen the stuff that was written and you were receiving it… the kind of rhetoric that’s online, if you don’t know what I know, you would feel under threat all of the time,” Neil Basu, an assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan Police, told Channel 4 News, adding: “We had teams of people investigating it.”
