He moved from Trinidad to Romford and was almost lost in the drug trade. Now Mercury-nominated and on a major label, the musician explains the trauma of those years – and his anger at being demonised by the Tories
When Berwyn sat down to create his 2021 mixtape Demotape/Vega, he was at a nadir. He was living in a “shithole of an apartment” in Romford, Essex, with “some brother Alfred, a very depressed, lonely old man”.
With little funds and no equipment, Berwyn went halves on a computer with a friend, and put his “heart and soul” into making the tape in two weeks using a pair of broken headphones.