About Wiley
Richard Kylea Cowie Jr. , better known by his stage name Wiley , is a British grime MC, rapper, songwriter, DJ and record producer from Bow, London.
Wiley is considered a key figure in the creation of grime music and often labelled the "Godfather of Grime". In the early 2000s, he independently released a series of highly influential eskibeat instrumentals on white label vinyl, such as the first in the series "Eskimo" and is known as a grime MC both for his solo work and for material released with his crew Roll Deep.
Wiley first tasted success as a member of UK garage crew Pay As U Go, with whom he had a top 40 hit, "Champagne Dance" in 2001. Wiley has continued to make grime music while also releasing mainstream singles, such as the UK Singles Chart top 10 hits "Wearing My Rolex", "Never Be Your Woman", and his UK number-one "Heatwave". Wiley's eleventh album, Godfather , peaked at number nine on the UK Albums Chart, becoming his highest-charting album of his career, and also won an "Outstanding Contribution to Music" award by NME.
Regarded as a pioneer in the British underground music scene with a prolific work rate and a versatile music artist with many crossover hits. Wiley has been stabbed on several occasions. In 2008, a stabbing left him with a visible scar on the left side of his face.
On 24 July 2020, Wiley made a series of posts and videos on social media, widely condemned as anti-semitic. Having been appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2018 New Year Honours for services to music, in February 2024 Charles III formally stripped Wiley of his honour due to the anti-semitic social media posts.
Richard Kylea Cowie Jr. was born on 19 January 1979 in Bow, East London. He is of Trinidadian and Antiguan descent. Cowie's father, Richard Cowie Senior was a reggae artist during Cowie's youth in the 1980s and introduced Cowie to early hip-hop such as The Sugarhill Gang. Cowie's interest in music began when his father introduced him to the drums. Cowie moved around London a lot as a child with his father before moving to Chatham, Kent to live with his grandmother when he was ten. Cowie spent a year in Chatham and described it as a bad time, saying "I just wanted to go and live with my dad. I felt abandoned." Cowie eventually moved back to Bow to live with his father when he was eleven years old.
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