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Stormzy reveals he was kicked out of school for 'putting chairs on another student' before building his music career

The rapper, 25, says he didn't mind getting expelled from school because he 'wanted music to be his life'

Clémence Michallon
Thursday 01 November 2018 21:01 EDT
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Stormzy tells Jonathan Ross he was kicked out of college for 'putting loads of chairs' on another student

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Stormzy has revealed he was once expelled from school after putting "loads of chairs on another student" in a "spontaneous attack".

The 25-year-old rapper, from Croydon, recounted on The Jonathan Ross Show how he was kicked out of school and later dropped out of college – but wasn't too concerned because he "wanted music to be his life".

"That was always the path that I was supposed to go on. I got kicked out (of school), not for anything crazy," he said. "It's going to sound way crazier than it was, I put loads of chairs on another student.

"It sounds mad but we were messing around, it was horseplay and I just put loads of chairs on the student so he was trapped. Enough to entrap the whole human body. It was a spontaneous attack actually.

"It was just some banter, as you do. It sounds crazy but it was just jokes."

Stormzy admitted that he had got in trouble prior to the chair incident, resulting in his removal from the school.

"It was like the 100th strike, you don't get kicked out for putting chairs on someone," he added.

The rapper referred to his younger self as "just a little s***" and said his mother was left "fuming".

"I got kicked out of college then I went to another college and I just walked out of that college because I didn't really like it," he said.

Stormzy, who earned a nomination for the 2017 Mercury Prize for his debut album Gang Signs & Prayer, urged other students not to follow in his footsteps.

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"Don't do this, by the way, it's not good, it's bad," he said.

"I went to college, walked out then went to my apprenticeship – then that's when my mum was really proud of me, because I'd failed at college and (then did an apprenticeship) in engineering."

Additional reporting by PA

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