When I meet Rapman on a sun-kissed Thursday morning in central London, he’s amidst the definitive moment of his career — so far at least. “It’s not even debatable,” he says on the matter, lounging on a couch in the back room of a comprehensively Metropolitan hotel in Soho, a far cry from his roots. “Going from an indie that did really well to your own Netflix show; I can name the people that’s happened to on one hand. If you narrow it down to a Black person, you might not need a hand.”
Rapman is a paradigm of polymathy. From humble beginnings as a storytelling MC who grew popularity on Youtube platforms like Link Up TV to a Netflix and Roc Nation signed director, writer and filmmaker, it’s a rags-to-riches odyssey, set against the backdrop of South London impoverishment, community, gentrification, and evolution. Now, a much travelled and respected pillar of the UK screen industry and rap community alike, the 35-year-old is enjoying his coronation into the big leagues. Supacell, his new TV show and first with Netflix, cements him as one of the most exciting and epochal British filmmakers of his generation.
“The step up hasn’t been hard, but it’s been different,” he analyses on the jump from self-budgeted independent Youtube shorts like viral hit “Shiro’s Story” to his glossy, conglomerate-backed new series. “You get people to help with your vision, departments doing different things. But that’s also the difficult part because I’m so used to doing everything myself. After a while you have to start delegating, but because I’ve come from independent filmmaking where you have to do it all yourself, it’s hard to allow someone else to do what you usually do. I’ve had to learn how to do it in the right way.”
Rapman – aka Andrew Onwubolu – is infallibly self-made. Raised in South East London’s Deptford, “around a lot of violence, a lot of poverty,” where “the only people we saw with money were footballers and drug dealers,” the natural story-teller was surrounded by crime and gang culture but never fell into its trap, rather observing his scenarios and schooling himself in his own urban realty. “It gave me character,” he says of his upbringing. “All these stories that I write, they came from everything I saw growing up in Deptford. I feel like that was my university of life. I’ve seen a lot of violence but I’ve also worked at a bank. I’ve worked in cinemas then I’ve been hanging out on the streets every day. I’ve seen so many characters, personalities, and experiences. I feel like it was a fuel for me to get to this stage in my life where I can sit down and have a conversation with you, and I can sit down and have a conversation with someone who’s just spent 20 years in prison.”
Following internet success and etching his name into UK rap lineage, Rapman’s major breakthrough came with Blue Story, the 2019 feature length phenomenon. Starring Michael Ward at the height of Top Boy hype, the film captured the raw realities of contemporary London in a way unparalleled since scene classics like Bullet and Kidulthood. Rapman, aside from directing and writing duties, provides an invaluable rapped Greek chorus, a unique and profound reflection of the picture’s arc and deeper message. It’s safe to say the country noticed. “It was crazy,” he reflects on the period around the film’s release when the poster was seemingly plastered on every billboard and bus stop. “I remember Netflix came to take me to dinner – this was before Supacell when they were trying to woo me – two weeks before the film came out and they were like, ‘on the way here we saw Blue Story everywhere’, like it was insane. I remember seeing interviews from people saying they’ve never seen anything like this before. Coming from YouTube I just didn’t think something like that could happen. I felt like we shut down the UK for a short period of time.”
Blue Story was marred with controversy due to its subject matters of gang warfare and crime, and could easily have tarnished its legacy after a violent incident occurred at a Cineworld showing in Nottingham and the film was banned from many cinemas. If anything though, the opposite happened. “Even though that was such a stressful period when they pulled the movie, it made it go from the rap community to national, because then everyone wanted to see this movie that’s so dangerous that you can’t watch it in the cinema no more, so then people rushed to the cinemas where they were playing it. It was a massive moment and that was just the start of it, so yeah I’d always look back at Blue Story with a smile on my face because it helped me get to this position I’m in now.”
Blue Story shot Rapman into a whole new threshold of legitimacy. Already signed to Roc Nation as of 2018 — the first director to be championed by Jay Z’s label — the success of the film secured a home for his immediate ventures in 2020, signing with Netflix to begin the development of Supacell. The process proved somewhat tedious, a lesson in the inner workings of the TV industry for an experienced yet unseasoned Rapman. “I signed on in summer 2020 thinking the show would be out in like 9 months. I didn’t know how TV works, I didn’t know it takes 100 years of your life,” he laughs. “The development process was crazy. While [Netflix] do give you free reign, they don’t allow the show to get green light until it’s more than one good episode, you need to have a whole show that is going to engage people from beginning to end. The development took 18 months to 2 years. I had 50 drafts of the pilot. When I did get the green light, it did so to shoot a year from then. But at least I had a date to get into.”
After two failed attempts to source writers for the show, whose outside perspectives couldn’t grasp the intricacies of the world that Rapman knew and the world he wanted to create, he took on the daunting, oft thankless but ultimately rewarding task himself. “The writing part was really hard. The world that I was creating in South London, no one really understood it. [After the writing failures] I remember going to the meeting with [Netflix] and saying I’ll just write myself, and I thought they were going to shut me down but they were like ‘yeah that’s great.’ I’ve just come from independent and you’re making me write every single episode — where’s the mercy? I remember coming off my social media for like a year. I lost like 50,000 followers; social media is fickle, you don’t post and they disappear.”
Now though, Rapman is reaping the fruits of his labour. Supacell, released a few weeks before the time of writing, has been a resounding hit, well received critically and with online buzz aplenty. It’s with good reason too; set against a backdrop that visually and tonally captures South London whilst offering colour-laden and vibrant cinematography, the show is crisply written, an interesting hybrid of genre, and constructs its narrative and its characters in a refined and visceral manner.
There’s plenty of strong performances from the cast too. Tosin Cole is charismatic in his breakthrough role, whilst there’s roles for drill star Digga D, who “came on set with no ego,” and Ghetts, who flaunts his polymathy with terrifying and dominant execution. The MOBO award winning rapper committed to his character fully, taking months of acting lessons. “He’s very much a learner,” Rapman offers. UK rap heritage flows through the show with its soundtrack rooted in classics from the scene both old and new. Giggs’s “Talkin the Hardest”, South London’s unequivocal anthem, is a centric sonic pulling point and the epitome of such. “I wanted people in America, Australia, Nigeria, all over Europe to know this is a song that people sing along to in the club. South London is like the hidden character of the show so all the music is a reflection of that. I just wanted it to feel authentic to the world.”
“It just came from me being such a nerd for the superhero genre,” the creator says of the concept of the show, a sprawling tale of five Black South Londoner’s who suddenly develop super powers. “I loved the idea of having powers but it never felt realistic. Like who first decided to write a comic book and to say that when someone gets powers, they get a really tight spandex suit, cover their face and go out and save the world? When (2007 cult classic TV fantasy drama) Heroes came out, it was massive and was the closest thing to what I thought was actually realistic, but it still wasn’t quite [relatable] coming from South London. So that idea always sat in the back of my head, a show with people from where I am from who would get powers, and explore what they would actually do — you’re not going to think about saving the world, you’re going to think about sorting your situation and your own life.”
Although sprinkled with fantastical details and extravagant visual effects, at its core Supacell is a love letter to humanity, to Rapman’s younger self, and to South London. “You can watch it without the powers and still be entertained because you’re just there for the characters really, the powers are a secondary thing. You’re really there to see how these people are going to navigate it all. It was important for it to be grounded; people first, powers later. I feel like love is the crux of it; even when you get extraordinary powers, what would you do when your one’s in danger? God willing I get the next two seasons that I need to finish the story then I could probably go more into it.”
So, climbing the industry ladder at a startling pace, and in a way unique to his own journey, where’s next for the multi-faceted maverick who is growing in stature and self-belief. Will he be making his way to the Hollywood hills? With a Russell Crowe-starring film unluckily cancelled due to COVID, it’s clear such accolades are within his grasp. Rapman is, after all, just getting started. “I want to do some movies,” he muses conclusively. “I’ve got some stories I want to tell. The good thing about the game that I’m in, it’s not like an athlete when the older you get, the worse you get at your sport. In my field you get better with age. I can’t wait to reach Scorsese’s age with 20 movies and 5 TV shows in the bank.”