If you leave Dizzee Rascal alone for too long, he won’t just sit around binge-watching true crime and Googling weird conspiracy theories like the rest of us. He’ll do something useful. Lime retrain as a plasterer.
Speaking to Fix Radio (naturally), the Mercury Prize winner revealed that during the endless void that was the COVID-19 lockdown, he decided he “needed to learn to do stuff” and signed up for a proper construction course at Able Skills in Dartford. Like, with actual certificates and everything. “I did a plastering course for however long,” he said. “I forgot how to do it, I got the certificate and everything.”
It’s honestly the same energy as the rest of us trying to bake sourdough for three weeks before giving up and just buying it at Coles.
Apparently it took his fellow tradies a minute to clock who he was too. Dizzee said that right at the end of the course, someone finally twigged: “Hey man, he’s rich man, he’s famous man!” Imagine trowelling up next to the guy who literally invented grime and only realising once you’ve spent six weeks arguing about the best kind of joint compound.
Since putting the trowel down, Dizzee has since returned to his day job with a vengeance, releasing a surprise EP I Invented Grime late last year, just months after dropping his eighth album Don’t Take It Personal. In between, he also casually revealed he almost had the beat for Beyoncé’s Partition — until he admitted he “couldn’t come up with” anything good (It happens to the best of us, mate.)
Still though, if his day job falls through at least Dizzee can go to sleep with the knowledge that he has a viable fallback. And I guess we can all just hope that he works on one of our houses. I mean wouldn’t that be a funny anecdote. The guy that did your walls also sung ‘Bonkers’. Probably not though.
MORE IN Music
