“White rockstars (and pop stars) have been sniffing coke and taking MDMA and singing about it since the beginning of music”

This morning (29 December), the Mail Online published an article “warning” that grime artists are glorifying the use of skunk. The piece went live an hour ago with the headline: “Popular grime artists such as Stormzy are fueling the use of ‘skunk’ by treating cannabis as ‘product placement’ in their chart-topping songs, researcher warns”. In it, Ian Hamilton, a cannabis researcher at York University, argues that grime music “‘brands itself quite well to promoting a product’ – whether that’s Nike, Adidas or even weed.”

Warming up to his subject, Hamilton also claims that grime music “acts as a gateway to tobacco exposure inadvertently” because “chances are they will try a spliff, which contains tobacco, not like an American kid who is more likely to just have cannabis”. The article – which name checks Kano, Stormzy and Wiley as the worst offenders – includes a box-out annotating Stormzy’s references to weed, with helpful translations of slang such as “wavy”.

Now, one of the artists named in the feature, Stormzy, has taken to social media to clap back, highlighting the double standard applied to black artists and white artists.

“White rockstars (and pop stars) have been sniffing coke and taking MDMA and singing about it since the beginning of music,” Stormzy responded via Twitter. “just admit you’re anti-black and fuck off you tramps”.

He also took aimed at the Daily Mail in general: “Imagine raising your child, loving and nurturing them. Sending them off to school and then uni for them to grow up and then get a job working for the fucking daily mail. Embarrassing”.

It isn’t the first time the Daily Mail has attacked Stormzy – he is regularly featured on the Mail Online, most notably for calling Theresa May a paigon at the GQ Awards. Nor is it the first time the Daily Mail has stoked moral panic in pop culture. Remember this?

Read Stormzy’s tweets below.

White rockstars (and pop stars) have been sniffing coke and taking MDMA and singing about it since the beginning of music just admit you’re anti-black and fuck off you tramps https://t.co/RfS9vZO8y3 — #GSAP (@Stormzy1) December 29, 2017