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At his studio on the outskirts of east London, Ghetts is working on new music.

Given his latest album, On Purpose, With Purpose, was introduced to the world just a few days before we meet it seems unusual, but when the ideas don’t stop there is no time for rest.

Ghetts describes his working days “as pretty much Groundhog Day”, with a gym workout at 9.30am then straight to the studio. But this is his sanctuary. “It’s like therapy almost. I’m happy when I’m here.”

One of the UK’s most influential rap artists, Ghetts, real name Justin Clarke, was a teenager when grime emerged in the UK in the early 2000s. He has been in the business for half his life and hailed a trailblazer in the genre, with the mainstream catching up in recent years; in 2019, he received an Ivor Novello nomination, followed by a number two chart position and Mercury Prize nomination for third album, Conflict Of Interest, in 2021.

Ghetts at his studio in east London
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Ghetts says working in his studio is like ‘therapy’

At this year’s MOBOs he received the pioneer award, a “crazy” moment that saw him joined on stage by his parents, who have supported him since the start. “I feel like that’s not just a ‘me’ moment, that’s quite an ‘us’ moment, you know, the culture,” he says of the award. “That meant a lot.”

Ghetts is known for delivering sharp, social commentary through his lyrics, and as something of a veteran now he feels more comfortable than ever getting his message across. In On Purpose, With Purpose, he features collaborations with musicians including Kano, Wretch 32 and Sampha, and touches on everything from politics, war, and knife and gun crime, to parenting, abortion laws and postnatal depression. However, he dismisses the idea of it as political commentary.

“I guess it’s just a reflection of the times,” the rapper says. “I don’t think it’s anything political just to state facts… Some of [the songs] are not as controversial as others, but like I said, it’s a reflection of the world, seeing these things happening. I wouldn’t necessarily say I was calling them out. I’m an artist and I’m painting pictures with words.”

Ghetts picked up the pioneer award at the 2024 MOBOs. Pic: PA/ Danny Lawson
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Ghetts picked up the pioneer award at the 2024 MOBOs earlier this year. Pic: PA/ Danny Lawson

Postnatal depression and knife crime

In Jonah’s Safety, Ghetts raps: “I know this lady/ Diagnosed with postnatal depression/ She don’t wan hold her baby… Nobody knew that’s how she felt/ She had the smile that concealed it.” It’s an issue discussed openly much more than it was even just 10 years ago, but by women. It is refreshing to hear a male rapper taking it on.

“I heard the beat and the first two lines just came into my head almost instantly,” he tells us. It was a “massive” subject for a man to take on, he adds, “one that deserves research other than just my perspective”.

In Street Politics, he aims to give “a different perspective” to the headlines on youth knife crime, showing “somebody that was a straight-A student fall into a certain way of protecting himself due to fear… I believe it gives a different kind of understanding of why, maybe.”

Having spent time in prison as a teenager, he is aware things could have turned out differently in his own life. “Yeah, sometimes,” he responds, when asked how much he thinks about life’s turning points. “But it’s just testament, you know, to having a vision and living that vision. And being convicted in that vision as well.”

In another album track, Double Standards, the rapper calls out the “structural imbalance” in everything from racism, the justice system and technology, to the different ways he believes the world has reacted to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Rapper Ghetts
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Pic: Darkside Media

‘We shouldn’t be scared to ask for peace’

It’s about “the yin and yang”, he says. “A double standard of how people of the world are living in different countries and the punishments that differ also, the treatment that differs also. It’s that left, that right, that light, that dark, and everything in between.”

In the track, he raps: “I was on the phone with a pal of mine / they asked me why they’re helping Ukraine and not Palestine / And I’ve replied brown skin we was so whitewashed.”

In person, he says. “I think that peace is not too much to ask for. That’s what I believe… I think everything plays a part within these things – rich, poor, and so on. Not just race… but I go back to saying peace aint too much to ask for. That’s a powerful statement… we shouldn’t be scared to ask for peace.”

So it does seem political, despite his saying otherwise. In 2019, Ghetts endorsed Jeremy Corbyn “because I believe he’s a genuine person that wants to make things better”, but he doesn’t feel the same way about current Labour leader Keir Starmer. Voting at this moment in time, he says, would be “like voting for a lesser evil, I suppose… I don’t know”.

He also laments cancel culture and “fake rage” in his final track. “I think sometimes that lacks a lot of critical thinking of how we may have got to that point,” he says. “You know, it’s just a million voices in one place and reiterating the same thing over and over again, making it spread.”

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With Ghetts and his team ready to get to work, we leave it there. Given he had about 50 tracks in the mix for Conflict Of Interest and more that didn’t make the cut for On Purpose, With Purpose, plus his current work, it feels as if there must be a big vault of Ghetts music still waiting to be heard.

“Even though some of these tracks are very good standalone tracks, when they’re together they don’t sound like it’s a journey, it sounds pretty random,” he says. “So that’s the only reason why they don’t make it sometimes.”

Will his fans ever hear them?

“One day I want to do a big release,” he teases. “One day.”

Ghetts is performing in Birmingham, Manchester and London between 22 and 27 March. On Purpose, With Purpose is out now

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Former BBC executive and presenter Alan Yentob dies

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Former BBC executive and presenter Alan Yentob dies

Alan Yentob, the former BBC presenter and executive, has died aged 78.

A statement from his family, shared by the BBC, said Yentob died on Saturday.

His wife Philippa Walker said: “For Jacob, Bella and I, every day with Alan held the promise of something unexpected. Our life was exciting, he was exciting.

“He was curious, funny, annoying, late, and creative in every cell of his body. But more than that, he was the kindest of men and a profoundly moral man. He leaves in his wake a trail of love a mile wide.”

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Yentob joined the BBC as a trainee in 1968 and held a number of positions – including controller of BBC One and BBC Two, director of television, and head of music and art.

He was also the director of BBC drama, entertainment, and children’s TV.

Yentob launched CBBC and CBeebies, and his drama commissions included Pride And Prejudice and Middlemarch.

Alan Yentob with former BBC director general Tony Hall in 2012. Pic: Reuters.
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Alan Yentob (left) with former BBC director general Tony Hall in 2012. Pic: Reuters.

The TV executive was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by the King in 2024 for services to the arts and media.

In a tribute, the BBC’s director-general Tim Davie said: “Alan Yentob was a towering figure in British broadcasting and the arts. A creative force and a cultural visionary, he shaped decades of programming at the BBC and beyond, with a passion for storytelling and public service that leave a lasting legacy.

“Above all, Alan was a true original. His passion wasn’t performative – it was personal. He believed in the power of culture to enrich, challenge and connect us.”

BBC Radio 4 presenter Amol Rajan described him on Instagram as “such a unique and kind man: an improbable impresario from unlikely origins who became a towering figure in the culture of post-war Britain.

“I commend his spirit to the living.”

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Gillian Anderson warns UK homelessness ‘will only get worse’

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Gillian Anderson warns UK homelessness 'will only get worse'

Gillian Anderson has warned homelessness is a growing problem in the UK – one that will only get worse if we enter a recession.

The award-winning actress, who is playing a woman facing homelessness along with her husband in her latest film, The Salt Path, told Sky News: “It’s interesting because I feel like it’s even changed in the UK in the last little while.”

Born in Chicago, and now living in London, she explained: “I’m used to seeing it so much in Vancouver and California and other areas that I spent time. You don’t often see it as much in the UK.”

Her co-star in the film, White Lotus actor Jason Isaacs, chips in: “You do now.”

“It’s now becoming more and more prevalent since COVID,” said Anderson, “and the current financial situation in the country and around the world.

“It’s a topic that I think will be more and more in the forefront of people’s minds, particularly if we end up going into a recession.”

Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear
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Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs in The Salt Path. Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear

The film is based on Raynor Winn’s 2018 memoir, which depicts her and her husband’s 630-mile trek along the Cornish, Devon and Dorset coastline, walking from Minehead, Somerset to Land’s End.

Written from her notes on the journey, The Salt Path went on to sell over a million copies worldwide and spent nearly two years in The Sunday Times bestseller list. Winn’s since written two more memoirs.

Isaacs, who plays her husband Moth Winn in the movie, told Sky News that Winn told him she “hopes [the film] makes people look at homeless people when they walk by in a different light, give them a second look and maybe talk to them”.

With record levels of homelessness in the UK, with a recent Financial Times analysis showing one in every 200 households in the UK is experiencing homelessness, the cost of living crisis is worsening an already serious problem.

Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear
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Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear

The film sees Ray and Winn let down by the system, first by the court which evicts them from their home, then by the council which tells them despite a terminal diagnosis they don’t qualify for emergency housing.

Following the loss of their family farm shortly after Moth’s shock terminal diagnosis with rare neurological condition Corticobasal Degeneration (CBD), the couple find solace in nature.

They set off with just a tent and two backpacks to walk the coastal path.

Isaacs says living in a transient way comes naturally to actors, admitting like his character, he too “lives out of a suitcase” and is “away on jobs often”.

Read more:
Is this every actor’s bucket list job?

Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear
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Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear

Shot in 2023 across Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and Wales, Anderson says as a city-dweller, the locations had an impact on her.

Anderson reveals: “As I’ve gotten older, I have become more aware of nature than […] when I was younger, and certainly in filming this film and being outside and so much of nature being a third character, it did shift my thinking around it.”

Meanwhile, Isaacs says he discovered a “third character” leading the film just the day before our interview, when speaking to Winn on the phone.

Isaacs says the author told him: “I feel like there’s three characters in the film,” going on, “I thought she was going to say nature, but she said, ‘No, that path'”.

Isaacs elaborates: “Not just nature, but that path where the various biblical landscapes you get and the animals, they matter.

“The things that happen on that path were a huge part of their own personal story and hopefully the audience’s journey as well.”

The Salt Path comes to UK cinemas on Friday 30 May.

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Hannah Gutierrez-Reed: Weapons supervisor convicted in fatal shooting on Alec Baldwin film set freed from jail

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Hannah Gutierrez-Reed: Weapons supervisor convicted in fatal shooting on Alec Baldwin film set freed from jail

A weapons supervisor who was jailed for involuntary manslaughter over the fatal shooting of Halyna Hutchins on the set of the Alec Baldwin movie, Rust, has been freed.

Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was released on parole from the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility in Grants on Friday, after serving her 18-month sentence, NBC News, Sky’s US partner said, quoting New Mexico Corrections Department spokesperson, Brittany Roembach.

Gutierrez-Reed was released to return home to Bullhead City, Arizona, where she will be on parole for a year for the manslaughter case.

RUST armourer Hannah Gutierrez Reed jailed for involuntary manslaughter of Halyna Hutchins, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA - 15 Apr 2024
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed in court today as she is jailed 18 months for the involuntary manslaughter on the set of the Rust movie on October 21, 2021 over the fatal shooting of the movie's cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins.

15 Apr 2024
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Hannah Gutierrez-Reed in court as she was jailed for 18 months for involuntary manslaughter. Pic: Rex/Shutterstock

Halyna Hutchins pictured in 2017 at an Artists for Peace and Justice party, 70th Cannes Film Festival, France
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Halyna Hutchins pictured in 2017. Pic: Rex/Shutterstock

She was in charge of weapons during the production of the Western film in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in October 2021, when a prop gun held by star and co-producer Alec Baldwin went off during a rehearsal.

Cinematographer Hutchins died following the incident, while director Joel Souza was injured.

Gutierrez-Reed was acquitted of charges of tampering with evidence in the investigation, but will be on probation over a separate conviction for unlawfully carrying a gun into a Santa Fe bar where firearms are banned weeks before Rust began filming.

Actor Alec Baldwin reacts after the judge threw out the involuntary manslaughter case for the 2021 fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during filming of the Western movie "Rust," Friday, July 12, 2024, at Santa Fe County District Court in Santa Fe, N.M. (Pool Video via AP)
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Alec Baldwin reacts after the judge threw out the involuntary manslaughter case against him. Pic: AP

Involuntary manslaughter means causing someone’s death due to negligence, without intending to.

At her 10-day trial in New Mexico in March last year, prosecutors blamed Gutierrez-Reed for unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the set of Rust and for failing to follow basic gun safety protocols.

The 18-month sentence she was given was the maximum available for the offence.

Baldwin, 67, was also charged with involuntary manslaughter, but the case was dramatically dismissed by the judge during his trial last July over mistakes made by police and prosecutors, including allegations of withholding ammunition evidence from the defence.

The actor had always denied the charge, maintaining he did not pull the gun’s trigger and that others on the set were responsible for safety checks on the weapon.

Rust was finished in Montana and released earlier this month, minus the scene they were working on when Hutchins was shot, Souza, speaking at November’s premiere in Poland, said.

Rust is billed as the story of a 13-year-old boy who, left to fend for himself and his younger brother following their parents’ deaths in 1880s Wyoming, goes on the run with his long-estranged grandfather after being sentenced to hang for the accidental killing of a local rancher.

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