Still celebrating the huge success of his debut album Gang Signs & Prayer, Stormzy stopped by BBC Radio 1 Xtra’s Live Lounge earlier today to perform several tracks from the album. As is Live Lounge tradition, he also took a break from the original material to perform a cover of Frank Ocean’s “Godspeed.”
Stormzy kept the lyrics fully intact for his performance of the song, singing:
“Godspeed” is the penultimate track on Frank Ocean’s 2016 album Blonde, and features Yung Lean and Kim Burrell. “It’s basically a reimagined part of my boyhood,” Frank said about the song in his Boys Don’t Cry magazine. “Boys do cry, but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years. It’s surprisingly my favourite part of my life so far.”
For the rest of the performance, he ran through “Blinded By Your Grace,” “21 Gun Salute,” and “Bad Boys” with some help from Ghetts, J Hus, MNEK, and Wretch 32. All of these tracks appear on Gang Signs & Prayer, which earlier this month became the first independently released grime album in history to top the U.K. album charts. This was Stormzy’s second appearance on the program in 2017; back in February, he performed a cover of Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam.”
You can watch the performance above, and read all the lyrics to Frank Ocean’s “Godspeed” and Stormzy’s Gang Signs & Prayer on Genius now
