Ep.21 'We Became Victims Of Our Own Success': The Unheard Story Of Sudden Fame With Jordan Stephens
Working Hard with Grace Beverley
sophie@grace-beverley.com
4.2 • 904 Ratings
🗓️ 28 November 2022
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jordan Stephens is an English singer-songwriter, performer, and rapper, best known for being one-half of hip-hop duo Rizzle Kicks who dominated the charts for several years, with their music still being heard on mainstream radio today. However, despite enjoying the success, Jordan came into the limelight when he was just a teenager, putting him through the hardship of the music industry at an extremely vulnerable age. Unaware he was suffering; Jordan veiled his depression with a toxic combination of booze and drugs to cope, hitting rock bottom when he tragically lost two people close to him.
In writing his solo track ‘Whole’ about his depression, Jordan realised he needed help. After embarking on a long journey of self-discovery in intensive therapy, Jordan is driven to change the stigmas surrounding mental health and has launched his own mental health initiative -the ‘#IAMWHOLE’ campaign. Supported by fellow celebrities the campaign has had phenomenal exposure, reaching 120 million people in a day and even sparking conversation about mental health in government.
A insightful episode on everything from music-making, to mental health and 'A Missing Piece' - his new children's picture book
- Jordan's previous dreams of becoming a footballer
- How Jordan's music career began
- How the Rizzle Kicks single Down with the Trumpets blew up
- Being signed and the rise of Rizzle Kicks
- The highs and lows of rising to fame in your early twenties
- Jordan asks Grace some questions!
- The exploitation within the music industry
- Jordan finding out he had ADHD
- Fame and relationships
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | It's the first customer of the day. |
| 0:02.0 | The unexpected 20% tip and the 100% boost to your confidence. |
| 0:07.0 | Business is a numbers game and sum up has the tools you need to stay ahead. |
| 0:12.0 | With tap to pay, you can accept contactless payments using just your smartphone. |
| 0:17.0 | And with our free business account, you can manage all things money with zero hassle all in one place. |
| 0:23.6 | Make it count with SumUp. Download the app or find out more at someup.co. |
| 0:29.6 | We never even meant to be pop stars. Like we ended up becoming pop stars. That was never a plan. |
| 0:43.3 | I ended up turning to drug abuse a lot of the time because I was so fucking anxious going to these events. |
| 0:46.3 | I won 500 quid for one of these competitions |
| 0:48.3 | and that is literally how I began Rizzle kicks. |
| 0:50.3 | Imagine being a young man and suddenly have given money and notoriety. |
| 0:55.0 | I suddenly was appealing, for example, to women in a way that I hadn't felt before. |
| 1:00.0 | Like to be appealing to people based off whether it was power or not or fame or not, |
| 1:04.0 | it was definitely a rush. |
| 1:06.0 | We became victims of our own success in a way. |
| 1:09.0 | The pressure was pretty high. I was like, fuck, I think I need to speak to something. |
| 1:13.6 | Hey guys and welcome to another episode of working hard, hardly working. We have Jordan Stevens from Rizzle Kicks, which is very cool. A bit so cool for me. |
| 1:34.1 | And he talks super openly about the kind of reality of being in the music industry, getting famous quite young, what that does to your kind of self-esteem and your mental health and how he kind of |
| 1:45.3 | like honestly went through that, his struggles with addiction and how he's kind of come out the other |
| 1:50.2 | end and how he lives his life today. It was a really, really interesting conversation about not just |
| 1:55.3 | his career, but all of his kind of views around that. And the industry as a whole and social media |
| 2:00.3 | as a whole. And media as a whole and |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from sophie@grace-beverley.com, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of sophie@grace-beverley.com and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.