PLTFRM: Windowkid – clashmusic.com

The Nottingham rapper made a name for himself with tunes about pints and packet. Nine months sober, he’s selling out venues and getting DMs from Robbie Williams.
—
—
“Cause it’s not all fun and games when it comes to my cardi / And one of my best mates is sat inside the pocket and his name’s Charlie,” raps Window Kid on ‘Cardigan’, one of the Nottingham native’s most well-known tunes. His lyrics sit atop a garage-stroke-dubstep beat created by producer BVNQUET. I actually bumped into BVNQUET at an event for KiLLOWEN a few weeks earlier (all these lot know each other) and he tells me that while he definitely loves ‘Cardigan’, he’s surprised by its reception — it’s racked up just under 1.5 million streams on Spotify. Chances are you’ll have seen YouTuber MashtagBrady miming along to it too. Filled to the brim with silly lyrics and references to pints and packet, “Cardigan” is the kind of song that goes down well at the more lively part of an afters. That’s how my interview with Greg came about actually. I popped it on at about three in the morning (slightly ill-timed, to be honest), my friend piped up that she’s a fan of Window Kid, and I took it upon myself to fire off an email to his PR there and then. A couple of months later, and here we are — always send the email.
The Window Kid that sits across from me now, however, isn’t really the same Window Kid that raps about knitwear and puts out songs like ‘Boozy’ — that one’s hit 7.5 million streams, even earning itself a remix with a verse from Big Zuu. Greg, because of pancreatitis (“I was in the hospital two days ago. They wanted to keep me in and I said I can’t, I need to go tour”) is now sober, doing his sold-out UK tour sans everything that’s become such a big part of the Window Kid persona. I’m grabbing fifteen minutes with him on the first night, at London’s Camden Assembly, just after he’s signed a load of merch for his legion of fans, most of whom are wearing hats reading “where’s that?” That’s one of Greg’s catchphrases, along with “John”, which the crowd shout every one to two minutes that he’s on stage. I am one of maybe five women in the audience. At one point, one of those women gets me to hold her vodka redbull while she gets someone else to take pictures of her wearing one of those “twat” bucket hats you can buy at Camden market. She requests the flash. She’s taking it on Snapchat.
—
—
Greg came up in the Nottingham grime scene. Go into the archives and you’ll find him rapping on a cypher for Don’t Flop, looking a fair bit younger, his flow more within the realm of classic rap than the hype-y bassline numbers he’s known for. But his connection to that world is deeper than just popping up in old videos. “I put so much graft into that scene,” he tells me. “I ran an underground radio station, I was producing beats for everyone, and I was putting on events.” So, when it came to him releasing his own music (Greg’s first single ‘TBH’, a collab with bassline DJ Champion, came out in 2019) his involvement in the scene gave him that little push. “They felt like I deserved a little push because I put in so much graft […] Not saying I didn’t get the push ’cause I wasn’t good — I must’ve been all right as well. I remember a lot of people giving me the microphone when I was DJing, being like, you spit.”
‘Alright’ he certainly is. As well as the ostensible “big” tunes he’s got under his belt – the likes of ‘Cardigan’, ‘Boozy’ and ‘Runny Egg’ – he’s got a healthy discography. One that features not just tracks you envisage a group of lads blasting in their Corsa as they drive down the M6, but more subdued numbers. Take ‘Fight Juice’, where he raps over a beat from Zoutr. The bars are still classically Window Kid (“What you think I’m gonna take your girl tonight? / Fuck off am I fuck”), but they’re allowed to breathe a bit more thanks to production that’s not about getting a mosh pit going. Essentially, Greg’s carved himself out a niche by not having one. He traverses the whole spectrum of UK rap, and that’s owed to the fact that he’ll jump on a track with just about anyone. One of his most popular songs even comes in the form of a remix of ‘Playing Out’ with MashtagBrady. “I fucked a fat girl in a cubicle / Now her poo particles in my cuticles,” raps the Derby YouTuber. You’ve got to respect it.
—
—
Call that a bit all over the place, but what unifies everything is the lyricism — Greg will always keep it true to his reality. “I don’t know if it’s breeding it or if there’s just a few of us knocking about and we’re shining through because people like it,” he offers when I ask about his place amongst the UK’s other “semi-ironic” rappers — Niko B, for instance. “I’m not deliberately, like, I wanna write funny bars,” he continues. “I think people like the lighthearted side ’cause they get sick of all the other shit. It’s a lot more relatable, isn’t it? People want to chat about having a pint and fucking having a laugh. I don’t know about you, but when I listen to songs, I always imagine it to be myself doing it.” Could he be considered as one of the pioneers of this genre of bars? “Nowadays everyone’s breaking Gs and mentioning Guinness in bars and spat / Who do you think started that?” is the opener to his appearance on Charlie Sloth’s Fire in the Booth series. In other words: yeah.
Really, it’s the Fire in the Booth video that’s the best illustration of Greg’s commitment to authenticity. It’s introspective, reflecting what life’s really like for the rapper these days, but it’s all wrapped-up in what makes Window Kid, Window Kid. It’s musing on sobriety and addiction, yet still manages to be hilarious. “But on a real one my bank account’s looking way healthier now Window’s clean / And to be fair the tax man did ask me how often do you get your windows cleaned?” He was actually in hospital as the video came out, waking up from surgery to find that it was trending on YouTube. “Does it feel like there’s a bit of a disconnect with the older stuff?” I ask. “I still wake up every day and wanna have a fucking beer, even I can’t,” he replies.
“Sometimes it feels weird that I’ve got lyrics that are completely about drinking and taking drugs and I’m stood there thinking I don’t do any of this. Sometimes I feel like I’m faking, but it’s part of the journey.”
—
—
It’s a weird one, being sober. I did it for five months back in 2023 and, as I offered to Greg, it was a bit boring. “Yeah, you have to break that stage. I think what it is, is you can’t switch off,” he tells me. “I’ve just had to live with myself for fucking nine months. I’m still getting to know myself but I’m alright. I’m pretty safe.” But as he points out, we’re now a whole nine months in. When he first went sober it was more challenging. “I thought that I’d lost my whole thing — lost my whole image,” he says. I guess there’s still a hint of the Window Kid of yesteryear — even at this very gig. Jakkob, the Welsh DJ and producer, is sitting in the green room, part of Greg’s ostensible entourage — his whole schtick is, in essence, absolutely caning it. Is Greg living vicariously through him a bit? I dunno. It’s complex, isn’t it? One thing’s for sure, and that’s that all those complexities have been funnelled into ‘Lost Myself’, Greg’s single with Nathan Dawe, which they put out in October of last year.
“Look I don’t even know where I’m going right now / And I don’t even mean which pub,” raps Greg. “Everyones my best mate but / Unfortunately I don’t trust no one,” he continues. ‘Lost Myself’ is, I guess, a kind of transitional record, created by Greg half in the pits of addiction, and half while sober. “I wrote some of the lyrics while I was drinking. My missus fucked me off and I was just a mess,” he tells me when I ask how the song came about. “I felt like I lost myself to drinking. And then I finished the song when I couldn’t drink anymore — and I felt like I lost myself because I couldn’t drink.” While putting out a song like ‘Lost Myself’ could have easily isolated his fanbase, miraculously it’s been the opposite. He’s not exactly eager to pop it on the setlist (“I was gonna play it at the end but the whole vibe in the room would’ve changed […] everyone would’ve stood still”), but Greg’s touched by how it’s been received. “Even just down there, one guy was, like, giving me a hug. He was like, your story means so much to me. I can’t remember how he worded it, but he was basically saying that someone’s being real for once.” According to Greg, he’s actually got “way more fucking fans” now he’s sober.
—
—
To be fair, the fans (predominantly young lads dressed fairly similar to Window Kid himself) have shown up in an abundance for the first night of his tour, which I’ll summarise with two words — fucking hilarious. There’s a lot of stopping and starting (“it’s nice to be a bit imperfect and have a laugh with the crowd”) and things reach their ostensible peak with a little mosh-pit for the chorus of ‘Cardigan’. It might have been ‘Boozy’. To be honest, I can’t exactly remember — the crowd will, at least attempt, to mosh to anything. One mosh-pit’s so mental that a girl runs out of the crowd and crouches down next to me, her boyfriend trying to cajole her into re-joining. “It’s too much,” she says. That woman’s taking another picture in the twat bucket hat. It’s a feast for the eyes. But no, sober or not, a Window Kid gig will be energetic, and his fans absolutely love it.
At least some of Greg’s fans have found their way to his music via his YouTube presence, where he’s become absorbed by this “laddy” set of other creators — the likes of MashtagBrady, RiskyRegg and Cole Anderson-James. Another disconnect, I wonder? One of Mashtag’s trademarks is projectile vomiting after taking a shot, so it seems like a valid question. I was also going to ask if Mashtag is a twat, but luckily his manager walks in just as I’m gearing up — probably for the best. “Nah, since I started it after I was sober, I can still roll with them lot. We went skiing and everyone’s drinking and it fucking is a bit of a nightmare, but I feel like it’s a nice difference,” he tells me. “I’ve seen comments saying that they love the other videos of everyone getting pissed, but then it’s nice to have a little change and go onto my channel where it’s not that.”
—
—
And if all is well and dandy, Window Kid’s YouTube should continue down that trajectory. It’s looking good for Greg, who’s just “focused on making sure [he’s] healthy” after years of “living like a fucking slob.” You might even say that everything’s coming full circle. As I write this, about a week after the London show, I’m gearing up to go to a private view of Robbie Williams’ latest art exhibition — Greg is coming along. It was back in March that he got the co-sign of all co-signs from Williams, taking to Instagram to show a message from the ‘Angels’ singer which said he was in a “window K rabbit hole.”
“I’ll tell you something I haven’t told anyone,” Greg confides. “I actually messaged [Robbie Williams]. I sent him a message at about six in the morning, maybe a year before, saying, ‘Rob, I’m really struggling with drinking. I’m in a hole. If you see this, please message me back.’ Off my tits, thinking he’s gonna reply! How jokes is that? When he finally did reply, I was thinking, I wonder if he read my message?”
With not just newfound vulnerability but a chinwag with Robbie Williams in his arsenal, what’s next? “There’s an album on the horizon,” he says. “Remember that OutKast album back in the day where it had the blue side and then the red side? I might do, like, a ‘me off my nut’ side, then a sober side.” There’ll be more shows too. But the main thing? “Just trying to stay healthy. A lot of people are like, I want to get there, I want to do this, I wanna do that — I’m not fucking bothered. I’ll carry on having a laugh.”
—
—
Words: Amber Rawlings 
Photography: Matt Moorhouse
—

Join us on WeAre8, as we get under the skin of global cultural happenings. Follow Clash Magazine HERE as we skip merrily between clubs, concerts, interviews and photo shoots. Get backstage sneak-peeks and a view into our world as the fun and games unfold.
 

source