Living Their Truth

Grime artist Stormzy and DJ/ TV star Maya Jama are London’s coolest couple—and not just for their talent. Hadley Freeman meets a duo that has changed the conversation. 

Park Chinois, an absurdly over-the-top Chinese restaurant in Mayfair, London’s most chichi neighborhood, is exactly the kind of place you expect to find your average celebrities and wannabes. So it is very much not the kind of place true originals like grime superstar Stormzy, 24, and his girlfriend, Maya Jama, 23, a rising TV and radio presenter, usually hang out.

“No, not at all, man,”says Stormzy, known to his mother as Michael Ebenazer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr., surveying the restaurant’s purple, gold, and velvet decor when we meet in the downstairs bar. It is not, he says, their “kind of scene.”

The reason we’re here is that it is now almost impossible for the couple to go out in public in London, where they are harassed for selfies at every turn. Grime—which can, very roughly, be defined as British hip-hop—is still pretty niche in America, but in Britain it is absolutely huge, and this is in large part thanks to Stormzy. His astonishingly catchy and surprisingly beautiful album, Gang Signs & Prayer, released last year, was the first full-on grime album to reach number one in the British pop charts.

It’s lunchtime, but Stormzy and Jama ignore the dim sum and extensive tea selection on offer. “Nah, we’re all right,” Jama says, smiling up at the waiter so prettily, he barely notices the rejection. But aren’t they hungry? Jama has it sorted: On the way to our interview she ordered some pasta from a popular takeout chain, and it is now waiting for them upstairs, having been delivered to Park Chinois’s presumably somewhat surprised receptionist.