The Saturday interview: Tinchy Stryder

Tinchy Stryder portrait
'No one I know would agree with anyone voting for this government. What’s to be happy about?' … Tinchy Stryder. Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian

At the back of a Baptist church in Lewisham, south London, a group of youngsters are quizzing pop star Tinchy Stryder.

"Before I start asking any questions," Josh Hayes says, "real talk. Real talk. I was watchin' a video on YouTube and you know those annoying adverts you can't dodge? It was you!" It's more an accusation than statement. Everybody in the room laughs and Stryder and Hayes bump fists.

The point he's making is that Stryder started out as an urban grime artist from east London and has evolved into a commercial pop star successfully collaborating on No 1 hits with N-Dubz (appropriately enough on a song called Number 1) and Sugababe Amelle Berrabah (Never Leave You), teaming up with Dionne Bromfield for the Olympics Torch Relay song (Spinnin' for 2012), and singing with Pixie Lott on his most recent hit, Bright Lights. While 20-year-old Josh doesn't approve of the YouTube advert, he makes it clear he does approve of Stryder. After all, what better story is there than a working-class boy made good?

Stryder, christened Kwasi Danquah III, always felt he'd make something of himself – either as a footballer (he was on Wimbledon's books), film-maker (he studied digital arts, moving image and animation for his degree) or rapper (while a student at the University of East London he had a No 3 hit with Take Me Back). His route to success was hardly conventional. He was spotted by a couple of students, Jack Foster and Archie Lamb, the latter being the son of Lib Dem MP Norman Lamb, who backed Stryder to the tune of £10,000.

Now 25, he could still pass for 15. He might not be as short as we are led to believe (around 5ft 6in, rather than the much-quoted 5ft 1in) but he is incredibly cute – lovely, optimistic face, perfectly formed, a super-ball of can-do spirit. He's dressed down today; just an understated diamond ring, no chains, and he doesn't even put on the regulation shades until the photo session.

Stryder was born in Ghana and moved to England when he was eight. There was never much money around, but somehow he always got by nicely – hand-me-downs from his brothers, saving the little he had (he managed to get himself free meals, despite the fact his parents gave him lunch money every week). For much of his life, he thought four of his seven siblings belonged to an older generation. "They were from different mums. When I was younger I used to call them aunt and uncle, but they were actually sister and brothers." He only recently moved out of the family home, and still turns up regularly for his mum's jollof rice.

We meet the week youth unemployment figures reach an all-time high. Stryder is an ambassador for the volunteering organisation vInspired, and it's in this capacity that he's here today at the youth group Vessel Works, which helps teens and young adults with music projects.

Today, Stryder, who looks younger than everyone else in the room, sits in the middle fielding questions. He tells the group about the pros and cons of fame. "When I was young, people said the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and I didn't know what they meant." But, he says, he does now. "A small example: I was going to a radio interview and the road was blocked off. They said you can't go this way, and we pulled the window down and when they saw me, they let me through. I guess if you're not famous you have to go round the road works." As for the cons, he says it's not always great going down the shops these days.

One young man asks who he's listening to these days and he gives a typically honest, uncool answer. "Coldplay. Their song Paradise, I can't get over it. Every time I hear it I think: Whoah! I want to do this one day."

Much of the conversation is about his evolution from the streety Stryder to the sanitised version. He says it would be strange, hypocritical even, if his lyrics hadn't changed. "I'm 25 now. When I first started spitting lyrics I was 12, so it's been a long while." In the early days, he rapped to impress people – particularly girls. "If I was still saying the same thing now, you'd feel you're not progressing. When you've gone through the struggle and you see a better life, you don't want to just lie to yourself and say you're still in the struggle, because if you ask for that it might come true. Anyone who's still in the struggle would love to be out of it."

His role model is the American billionaire rapper/businessman Jay-Z, now a friend and business partner. Stryder already has a successful clothes line Star in the Hood, record label Takeover Roc Nation (co-owned with Jay-Z) and is planning to expand the empire. I ask him how he would hope to describe himself in 10 years' time: musician or entrepreneur? "Entrepreneur sounds cool," he says.

The walls at Vessel Works are covered in handprints and messages of self-belief. One poster lists words beginning with C. "Courageous Calm Cheerful Capable Caring Confident." Everyone here says the youth group has given them a sense of purpose. "Music is an escape," says 18-year-old Charlie Nwaordu. "I'm not saying we're all like gangbangers, but when you live here in Lewisham there isn't much to do." She praises the Vessel Works founder, youth worker Ethan Bernard. "He gives everybody that opportunity. You can come here and use the facilities and learn … "

As she talks, a drum kit goes flying. Charlie bursts out laughing. " … And mash up the drum kit. That's Josh!"

Josh apologises. "Sorry, I'm just zoning out." He tells Stryder Charlie is right. "This place is decent. Ethan's a proper don. I won't lie – it's quite rough around here. And Ethan does his thing. I mean, he's hooked us up to see you in the flesh – it feels a bit like Madame Tussauds right now!" More laughter and fist bumps.

"So even if we're not on the street making trouble," Charlie says, "it gets us out of our houses. We're not just sitting on our beds or playing video games."

And have any of them been in trouble? They all look at each other.

"I'm not going to lie here," Josh says. "Ethan is helping me get on a lot more volunteer things to build up a better portfolio to make me look like a better person. At the moment I'm on bail for something quite serious, and there's a chance I could go to prison, but Ethan's helping me with building up a better image."

Stryder goes round the room asking everybody what they do. We hear from aspiring DJs, musicians, producers and film-makers before he reaches Josh.

"Straight verbalism," says Josh, who really does have a way with words. Stryder cracks up. "Straight verbalism! I'm going to say I spit verbalism!"

After they all have their pictures taken together, Stryder and I head off to a small studio to chat. He says he loves coming to places like this, mentoring. What's the most important thing he can tell the kids here? "That people can turn their life round. A lot of people just give up, thinking, 'OK, I make music just like him, why's my song not getting played on the TV?' So it's good to show them I am normal, I came from where you did, we all have different struggles and stresses, our own story. What I want to give them is the motivation." He says he can't show people how to do it, but he can show them that it's possible.

It's not easy to motivate today's youth, with 22% (1.042 million) of today's 16- to 24-year-olds unemployed, I say. He nods. "People don't get an opportunity to work now. You can't blame them for thinking, 'I'm trying to get a job, but there are none.' If people feel there's no one out there looking out for them, they feel it's hopeless." The thing is, he says, all the time we're hearing that the country's broke, and yet bankers are still handed huge bonuses, tens of millions are won on the lottery, and footballers get paid up to 250 grand a week. "So there's still a lot of money going around in some worlds."

According to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics, the youth unemployment rate for black people has increased at almost double the rate for white 16- to 24-year-olds since 2008. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for young black men has almost doubled to a horrifying 55.9% in that time. "Wow!" says Stryder, shocked.

Why does he think this is – a lack of role models, or simply racism? He probably comes as close as he ever does to bristling. "Why should it be down to role models? A lot of people go to uni, they pay so much to study and come out with a degree, and they still can't get a job. That's the bit people can't understand. They think, 'What was the point?'"

Can he understand why so many young people rioted last summer? "When you're destroying things around your own surroundings, and people in the same situation as you, there's no sense in that. But what I do understand is that there was a lot of people who weren't being heard before, and that was their way of getting attention. People felt the police spoke to them in wrong ways, did so much wrong to them – this was their way back. This was how they were going to be heard. In interviews afterwards, you could really hear their anger and frustration. They try to get jobs, but get nothing, so what are they supposed to do?" He pauses. "But that doesn't mean you've got to go and burn down people's houses."

He says he hated the way the riots were reported, as if it was simply an uprising of black youth. "Other areas, like Manchester, it was mostly white people … the bottom line is the majority of people just feel frustrated, and this was their way of speaking back."

He looks at the production desk in front of him in the studio, says this is great, and that the trouble is so few places have got facilities for kids. Does he think there will be more riots?

"Hopefully not." Is the government doing anything to prevent them? "That's what I would like to know. You might want to go to a youth club or a park with a football goal, facilities, music studios, but there's nothing there for a lot of people. Right now, no one I know would agree with anyone voting for this government. What are you happy about right now? The majority of people I speak to, the youth and unemployed, they're not happy, because they don't feel there are opportunities for them."

If you're looking for somebody to instil hope in today's lost generation, you could do plenty worse than Tinchy Stryder. His own faith, rooted in his Christianity, seems unbreakable. "To this day, when I go to sleep I pray." What does he say? "I thank the Lord for the day, and I hope tomorrow will bring the bread, and that everybody around is happy. And every time before I go on stage I have to have a quick pray."

Stryder has turned everything in his life into a positive. I ask him if he ever had a complex about his size. Complex? You've got to be joking. Look, he says, his smallness has defined him – in a good way. "I was always the smallest one, so I stood out. I was called Tinchy cos I'm small. Then after that I wanted a second name, and there was a game called Strider, and I thought, 'Stryder, I like that' – Tinchy taking big strides, that makes sense."

Tinchy Stryder is a supporter of vInspired which holds annual national awards to celebrate the achievements of young volunteers and youth workers. See