Stormzy has revealed that he is coming back stronger after being “crippled by sadness” in 2025, and hit back at claims of him “selling out” after collaborating with McDonald’s.
READ MORE: Stormzy – ‘This Is What I Mean’ review: levelling up on his own terms
The team up was first announced at the start of last year, when the UK rapper teamed up with the fast food chain for the UK and Ireland’s first Famous Order meal. It let fans order his favourite meal, and a range of merch was also made available via the McDonald’s app.
Some found the partnership to be controversial given McDonald’s perceived support of Israel, and highlighted how it seemed to stand in conflict with Stormzy’s apparent beliefs. The artist (real name Michael Ebenezer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr.) has previously been vocal in his support for Palestine, playing at a benefit concert to raise funds for aid in January 2024.
The Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement previously supported a global boycott of McDonald’s, after franchises in Israel gave out thousands of free meals to Israeli forces following Hamas’ attack on the country on October 7.
Around that same time of the collaboration being announced, fans noticed that the rapper had removed a social media post from October 2023 that outlined his support of Palestine.
Stormzy would later speak out against the “twisted narrative” that he took down the post due to the partnership with McDonald’s, and explain that he removed it, as well as many other posts, as part of a ‘clean-up’ of his page.
“In that post I spoke about #FreePalestine, oppression and injustice and my stance on this has not changed,” he wrote at the time. “The brands I work with can’t tell me what to do and don’t tell me what to do otherwise I wouldn’t work with them.”
Stormzy has released a statement to address the ‘twisted narrative’ following backlash over his deal with McDonalds pic.twitter.com/tgczLIJSPs
— Melissa Sigodo (@melissasigodo) February 21, 2025
Now, Stormzy has made another insightful post to mark the start of 2026, and explain how the past 12 months have been a transformational period for him, and have seen him strive to overcome the feeling of being “crippled by sadness”.
Beginning the lengthy post, Stormzy explained how he faced “a few unexpected twists and turns” at the start of 2025, which “made me more resilient and put the final nail in the coffin of my desire to be understood”.
Adding how the McDonald’s deal led to “a lot of you [questioning] both my character and my integrity,” he said that his younger self would have felt “compelled to quickly explain himself, and let you know that there is no world in which he would ever trade his humanity for cash”.
Now though, he “couldn’t give a single fuck to explain that fact” as he doesn’t “need to explain anything to anybody”.
Shedding light on the tough times he has faced over the year, the ‘Hide & Seek’ rapper said that he was determined not to let “2025 have me on the backfoot, so I came out the first quarter with one hand down my trousers and my middle finger up.”
“Then towards the end of the summer I found myself crippled by sadness and I was struggling again,” he added, also sharing that he was able to persevere thanks to his faith and his close friends.
“I was tested physically, spiritually, professionally and creatively. I had no choice but to reassess every detail of my life,” the post later shared. “So yes it’s been painful and at times I hated it but as the year ends and I reflect I can say that I am so so so so grateful for it.”
Going forward, he concluded, he has “gained a lot of clarity around who I am as a man and who I am as an artist, and in 2026 I want to honour that clarity with execution”.
He wrapped up by sharing how he would be distancing himself from social media going forward, and is currently still underway with work on his fourth album.
Around the time of the controversial deal with McDonald’s, the company’s CEO Chris Kempczinski denied that the company has taken sides in the conflict, calling the boycotts “disheartening and ill-founded” and saying they are a result of “misinformation”.
In other Stormzy news, last summer saw the London rapper awarded an honorary Cambridge University doctorate thanks to his Stormzy Scholarship to Cambridge.
The initiative was launched in 2018, and promised to fund two Black British students to attend the university each year. This expanded to 10 students annually when HSBC UK agreed to support the initiative, and as a result, 56 students have attended the university with the tuition fees and maintenance costs covered.
The post Stormzy responds to claims of “selling out” over McDonald’s deal as he opens up about being “crippled by sadness” in 2025 appeared first on NME.