About Dizzee Rascal
Dylan Kwabena Mills MBE ), known professionally as Dizzee Rascal, is a British rapper and MC. He is often credited as a pioneer of British hip hop and grime music and was ranked by Complex as one of the greatest British rappers of all time. His work has also incorporated elements of UK garage, bassline and R&B. Dizzee Rascal's music is also often credited with bringing UK rap into the mainstream and became the country's first rapper to achieve international recognition.
After signing with independent label XL Recordings in 2002, the rapper released his self-produced debut album Boy in da Corner in 2003. which received widespread critical acclaim and earned him the Mercury Prize in 2003, eventually being certified platinum by the British Phonographic Industry. It is often regarded as the best British hip hop album of all time. It was followed up with the albums Showtime and Maths + English , which were also critically praised and were certified gold, both peaking within the top ten of the UK Albums Chart. His next album, Tongue n' Cheek saw a departure from grime for a more pop-oriented sound. It boasted four number one singles on the UK Singles Chart, which were "Dance wiv Me", "Bonkers", "Holiday" and "Dirtee Disco" and went platinum the following year.
His fifth album, The Fifth , continued his experimental commercial sound and although it received less favourable reviews than his previous albums, it still peaked in the top 10 of the UK Albums Chart. He returned to his grime roots with 2017's Raskit, and has since released E3 AF in 2020 and Don't Take It Personal in 2024. Throughout his career, Dizzee Rascal has worked with a number of notable artists including Arctic Monkeys, Calvin Harris, Florence + The Machine, Robbie Williams, Shakira, Ty Dolla Sign, UGK and will.i.am.
Dylan Kwabena Mills was born on 18 September 1984 in Bow, London. His Nigerian father died when Dizzee was young, and he was raised in Bow, in a single-parent family, by his Ghanaian mother Priscilla, about whom he says, "I had issues as a kid. I was violent and disruptive. The way my mum helped was by finding me a different school every time I got kicked out, always fighting to keep me in the school system."
He attended a series of schools in east London, including Langdon Park School, and was expelled from four of them, including St Paul's Way Community School. Reportedly, it was around this time that a teacher was the first to call him "Rascal". Cagey about exactly what Rascal's youthful "madnesses" entailed, in early interviews he mentioned fighting with teachers, stealing cars, and robbing pizza delivery men. In the fifth school, he was excluded from all classes except music. He also used to attend YATI . One of his teachers at school was the comedian Shazia Mirza, who taught him science.
He began making music on the school's computer, encouraged by his music teacher Joseph Robson, and during the summer holidays attended a music workshop organised by Tower Hamlets Summer University, of which he is now a patron. He was a childhood friend of footballer Danny Shittu, whom he described as "almost like a big brother", and at whose house he made his first mixtapes and tracks. Unusually among his friends, he read the heavy metal magazine Kerrang! and was a fan of the grunge band Nirvana.
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