The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

NME Media

Grime artist Stormzy calls out NME for cover story about his depression: ‘You will make money from this’

Author

By John McCarthy, Opinion Editor

March 16, 2017 | 4 min read

Stormzy has attacked music magazine NME for using him to lead a cover about depression without his permission.

Stormzy

Stormzy - SHUT UP

Earlier this month the rapper shared with Channel 4 News (featured below) sensitive details about his battle with depression.

It was an interview the music mag was keen to leverage in its leader looking to discuss how the artists such as Stormzy, Lady Gaga and Bastille deal with mental health issues.

With comments from this interview, NME created a feature around depression.

However, the rapper has taken exception to his inclusion on the front page of this week’s mag in a series of tweets:

The publication issued an apology stating that it is a free magazine and was looking to discuss the issues.

The apology was not accepted with the artist reminding his followers that as a free publication, the NME is ad supported.

NME editor Mike Williams issued a statement to address the issue: "Hi Stormzy, Editor Mike here. I’m sorry that you didn’t know your image would be our cover. Our intentions were only positive. We were inspired by your words and wanted to use them as a springboard to talk about depression and how it shouldn’t be taboo.

"We spoke to CALM and YoungMinds in order to make sure the advice we were giving people was on message with how they advise and we spoke to other people with a profile to gather their stories and advice too.

"We used your image as we felt it would resonate most with our readers, and I can only apologise again that you didn’t know. Our only intention was to raise awareness of an issue that we’ve been inspired to talk about following your comments."

NME Media

More from NME

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +