Guvna B is guided by God: ‘My whole life I wanted to be normal’

Not only is Guvna B not a gangsta rapper but he never got caught up in drug-fuelled gang warfare. He speaks to Andy Martin

Guvna B’s music combines grime, hip-hop and gospel (Guvna B)

I think I may have finally seen God, thanks to Guvna B. He is the young, black, British rapper and double Mobo award winner who specialises in poignant and often uplifting songs, with a sublime swerve. His music, a mix of grime and hip-hop and gospel, gets millions of streams and he has around 100,000 followers across social media.

But I’ve been reading his new book, Unspoken – written during the first lockdown and published this month – and it brought home to me how much we have in common. I remain hitherto undiscovered as a rapper but we are both West Ham fans, born in the East End of London, and we both survived going to school in Essex. And, I now realise, we both belong to the neo-existentialist church.

Isaac Borquaye (“it rhymes with ‘walkway’”) asked me to call him Isaac rather than Guvna – his schoolboy nickname. When I spoke to him down the line he was not wearing trainers. He took the trouble to show me that his feet were garbed only in white socks. But trainers have loomed large in his life. Growing up on a Docklands council estate, he hungered for years after the perfect Nike trainers – Air Max 97s. And they had to be black.