Hey how you doing? I'm Jake Humphrey and this is High Performance Aggift to you for free every single week.

This is the podcast that reminds you that it's within your ambition, your purpose, your story.

It's within. We'll just help you unlock it by turning the lived experiences of the planet's highest performance into your life lessons.

So right now, allow myself and Professor Damien Hughes an expert in high performing team cultures to speak to the greatest leaders, think as sports stars, entrepreneurs and in this case entertainers on the planet so they can be your teacher.

Remember, this podcast is not about high achievement or high success. It's about high happiness, high self-worth and taking you closer to a life of fulfillment, empathy and understanding.

And those are the three perfect words to introduce today's guest. This is what's coming your way on today's high performance.

AJ for me personally is a stage show name and I'm saying it's me, it's me being a music artist but nothing much more than that, I'll be honest. It's just music.

Chairs, everything apart from music, chairs, caring about people, bringing my mom regularly and saying how are you cool, everything good.

How good are you as a musician? How good am I? Genuinely. On my mom's life, I think I'm the best rapper in the UK. Genuinely. For me, it's cool. If I make a few records, people like me,

I'm at my house and then I've disappeared from the face of the planet, I'm okay with that. Honestly, genuinely. Because I performed to the best of my ability, I gave it my all and achieved the main goal which was removing my mom from a dangerous situation and giving her a roof over her head that making sure that she's content.

We're here to talk about high performers. That is not high performers. That's me taking an easy way out and I hate taking an easy way out.

When I say the lazy way, it's not always the easy way. I'll be completely honest with you. Me being a black male from an improvised area, the target was on my back from the minute I was born. That's the truth. So I'm used to it. My dad told me as a black man, he's like, look, at the end of the day, you're going to do certain things that other people will do and you'll get more trouble just because you're black. That's how it goes.

And you've got to learn to like go around it, avoid it, you know, think smart and be careful with your moves.

So you may well have come to this conversation because you want to hear from AJ Tracey, the British musician, seeing a songwriter, record producer and one of the most exciting artists on the global music scene at the moment.

But you know what, this is not a conversation with AJ Tracey. Let me be clear about that. This is a conversation with Che Grant.

Because we talk about the fact that AJ Tracey is just the character. AJ Tracey is a mask that this guy puts on. AJ Tracey is a place that he goes to when he performs. But to really get to the heart of who he is and what he stands for and where he's going and where he's from.

You need to speak to Shagrant. You need to speak to the young guy named after Shagavara, the young guy who was born in Labyrinth Grove, the young guy who, as you're about to hear, had to fight and scrap for every single thing that he ever got.

And he will reveal to you why he's called his record label, Revenge Records. He will share with you why he believes that now is the most exciting time on the planet for you that there are more opportunities than ever before for you.

We talk about mindset. We talk about focus. We talk about hard work. This is an incredibly honest conversation. But look, I'm going to keep the introduction short because it's a long conversation as well. But it's one of my favorites.

And this was an especially important moment as well because it's the first interview that he's done since he played the pyramid stage at Glastonbury. In fact, this was two or three days later. You'll hear in the conversation. He says he's still buzzing from standing on stage in front of a hundred thousand people.

And we'll talk about why he was brave and bold and took a big risk with his Glastonbury set. And you're going to love the answer to that.

I'm so pleased you've come to this. And I just can't thank AJ Tracy or well, I can't thank Shay enough for sharing so much with us. He gave us two hours of his time. And we spoke about so much. So let's do it.

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