'I would call myself the Wonder Man': Tinie Tempah on saving the club scene and his early career

It was while waiting to meet the King that Tom Hardy unknowingly sparked Tinie Tempah’s transformation into the Wonder Man. As King Charles III made his way down the handshake line at a King’s Trust event, Hardy leaned towards the rapper and suggested an unlikely new hobby: fighting.

“Everyone’s waiting to shake the King’s hand, and he was like, ‘Mate, have you ever tried Brazilian jiu-jitsu?’” Tempah recalls, lounging across a sofa at his London PR agency. Tempah hadn’t, but took Hardy up on an invitation to his Richmond gym to train in one of the most brutal martial arts. He said: “I absolutely fell in love with it. I love the fact that you’d go into the gym and no one would bat an eyelid that it was Tom Hardy or it was myself or there was another actor from Dune that used to go there. It would be more about your abilities and how much respect you had.”

Seven years later, Tempah is a purple belt and prize-winning jiu-juitsu battler. “To go down to a competition where there’s a risk of your arm being snapped or you being choked out and it being on someone’s camera reel was very humbling for me. I really needed it mentally. It gives me a peace.” He fights under the name of Emeka Okogwu. “But with choice, I would call myself the Wonder Man.” It’s just one of the many identities that the UK rap sensation behind such No 1 hits as Pass Out and Not Letting Go — and 2010’s triple-platinum debut album Disc-Overy — has adopted in the nine years since his last album Youth. He’s been an X Factor mentor. A fashion icon and agent, heading up his What We Wear brand. A devoted father. Even a guest Dragon.

King Charles III speaks with British rapper Tinie Tempah, during a visit to charity REORG at the Roger Gracie Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Academy in London on June 24, 2026

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Previewed on three EPs entitled 9PM, 12AM and 3AM, the album follows a full night out from dusk till dawn: the buzz on the bus, the bouncer stand-off, the dancefloor euphoria, the lost mates, the kebab-laden booty call, dawn-time liaison and long trip home sans keys, phone and mind.

“I see a good night out as a rite of passage”

The Night’s Not Dead doesn’t shy away from the darker side of the nightcrawling life. But it’s a record driven by Tempah’s desire for his children to enjoy the same sort of sticky-floored, 2-4-1-on-voddie-Cokes adventures he did.

“I see a good night out as a rite of passage,” he says. “If you haven’t done it, you definitely need to experience the euphoria and the joy and the connection and the randomness that it can bring to your life.” Opening track Don’t Ask Me About Last Night, for instance, harks back to Tempah’s carefree clubbing youth. “I thought about that youthful exuberance, that moment where you’ve left your house, you feel independent for the first time, but you’re also there to learn more about yourself. “Socialising, putting yourself in a zone where you don’t feel the most comfortable, you’re maybe flirting with a girl for the first time and it goes horribly wrong, but you come back stronger, you come back better.”

“At the moment clubs are on a decline — I’m praying this album will be one of many catalysts that will bring it back to life”

He also sees clubland as a vital platform for new artists and underground genres. “It’s a scary time for artists,” he says. “Even if you have a million streams per month for the whole year, after everything’s been divvied up you’re getting about 15 grand. “So to be able to do the circuit — go up and down the country, get cheered, get booed, get there and there’s 200 people there, get there and there’s 12 people there and you still have to win over the crowd — I think is very healthy. “If we lose these spaces, what is there for those artists? If they didn’t exist, I wouldn’t be here.”

Tinie Tempah

Are we losing the clubland lifestyle? “The pandemic was really traumatising for us as a whole population,” Tempah argues. “A generation is relearning their own way to live. “It’s great that people are more focused on health [but] life is about balance. At the moment [clubs] are on a decline, and I’m praying this album will be one of many catalysts that will bring it back to life.”

Fifteen years ago, Tempah was an early 2010s sensation. Just as grime’s second wave hit its Dizzee peak around 2009, he emerged from the underground scene of south-east London atop his own label, Disturbing London, built from cash spent selling second-hand cars. “I was just so determined, so tunnel-visioned, so fixated on achieving my dream,” he recalls. “I’d seen this explosion of underground UK music coming to the forefront that I felt like I could genuinely and authentically be a part of.”

Embodying the stylish party rap aesthetic in person and song, by 2010 he was a phenomenon, with his second single Pass Out topping the charts and arena success around the Disc-Overy album going hand-in-hand with instant — and intense — fame and pressure. “The attention was overwhelming,” he says. “I’d been through so many ups and downs… so when it happened it felt like, personally, I deserved it. But you very quickly realise that if you don’t keep up the workrate you’re gonna be a one-hit wonder… So that pressure kicked in.”

“I was manipulated into believing that you have to take this opportunity because it’s right now”

He recalls his major label insisting he miss his grandmother’s funeral to continue working. The rapper has come out fighting with a comeback album that’s poised to stoke flagging dancefloors — and his jiu-jitsu training with Tom Hardy can’t have done his mission any harm.

“Pass Out was on such fire,” he says. “There were so many opportunities. I’m not saying this to attack anyone, but I was manipulated into believing that you have to take this opportunity because it’s right now, and it’s unfortunate that you can’t go to Nigeria to bury your grandma. That mental pressure. Typically, when people explode into the pop sphere, they’re 18, 19, 20, 21. You feel like you’re an adult, but you’re still so immature and insecure, feeling like you have to please everyone.”

Tinie Tempah performs on stage at Hits Radio Live 2025

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He beams widely at fonder memories. Playing Glastonbury with Snoop Dogg: “Coming out to about 100,000 people, the biggest platform I’d ever been on in my life, at 21 years old with this legendary rapper.” Appearing at the 2012 Olympics closing ceremony at Danny Boyle’s personal request: “Brian May just walking past Ridiculous.” Touring with Rihanna and recording with the likes of Wiz Khalifa, Pusha T and Big Sean.

But factor in tabloid intrusion and cash-cow paranoia (“You’re here to be monetised’”), and by 2019 the pop star hamster wheel got too much. “Every day just started to feel monotonous and no longer exciting,” Tempah says. “I felt jaded, and I was getting to a space in my life where I wanted to try my hand at different things.”

“Grime always felt like a marginalised thing”

Was it strange to watch the likes of Stormzy and Skepta become superstars from the sidelines? “It wasn’t strange. It was, and it is beautiful. Grime always felt like a marginalised thing, and there were all these operations in place, [Operation] Trident, to kind of contain it and keep it marginalised. When I started my mum was like, ‘Why are you doing this? The rappers are in America. This is never going to happen in the UK’ — to it now being at the forefront of UK music.” An unenvious smile. “I was just proud.”

Tinie Tempah

Marco Grey

Having finally realised that music was his purest calling, Tempah now returns to a whole new landscape of TikTok hits, AI interlopers and overnight scandal (“For someone who was just trying to do one gig and move on to the next,” he says of Sheerangate, “I can’t help but feel for the guy”). But he sees it, too, as a brave new world of opportunity and longevity. “I see myself like a Van Gogh, like a Picasso,” he says. “All I’m gonna do is make my works, put them out into the world, and whether people embrace them now or long after I’m gone doesn’t make a difference to me.”

Tinie Tempah’s playlist

Shotgun — Reuben Aziz

“I saw his stuff online, and I was very impressed.”

Slick — Victony

“He sings in a bit of a falsetto tone. You’re like, ‘Am I listening to a man or a woman?’”

Composure — Max Tyler

“He’s a rare talent — he does the whole thing by himself. It’s lovely.”