大象传媒 Scotland - 大象传媒 Scotland - Prize-winning, rapping author Loki: talking openly about poverty and addiction 鈥榞ave my life currency鈥� (and fans like J.K. Rowling!)

Prize-winning, rapping author Loki: talking openly about poverty and addiction 鈥榞ave my life currency鈥� (and fans like J.K. Rowling!)

28 June 2018

Darren McGarvey is a prize-winning Scottish author, better known to hip hop fans as Loki.

He started out as a rapper in the deprived Pollok area of Glasgow, but won a prestigious literary prize in June 2018 and even appeared on Question Time. Taking a varied approach to his career is something Darren feels has benefited him greatly:

“Telling my story, in the ways that I’ve told it, has given my life currency.”

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Feeling isolated and culturally alienated in Pollok, Darren said that the only two things that resonated with him growing up were “Batman and American hip hop.”

I want to be there when someone looks out into Scottish culture for a reflection of themself

Darren 鈥楲oki鈥� McGarvey

Rap, he felt, was people talking about the things he was experiencing as a young man in Scotland — so he began rapping as a means of expressing his own feelings.

Darren has been open about his own history of poverty, addiction and mental health issues. Those subjects helped form the lyrics for his songs, but since then he has taken that openness into the literary realm with his book, Poverty Safari.

“My life has been enriched and empowered”

Talking about his background and expressing his opinions openly led Loki to realise that the issues he discusses are more common than people would think — and they’re not just working class problems.

Going to a school in the affluent area of Bearsden – as part of his work as the rapper in residence for the Violence Reduction Unit – changed his perceptions on class.

“People might feel as if I’m making a lot of class-based arguments and that I’ve got a bee in my bunnet, but my life has been enriched and empowered by people who come from upper-middle class backgrounds.

“At all junctures of my life they’ve set me straight, listening to my story without trying to tell me how to articulate it.”

I know politicians have got to have a kind of practiced reverence for the audience, but ah鈥檓 one ay you, so I don鈥檛.

Darren McGarvey

His appearance on Question Time further indicated how Darren McGarvey is seen as a legitimate voice in Scottish culture; his articulate, no-nonsense manner made him a crowd favourite on the night.

Holding his own alongside politicians, an entrepreneur and presenter David Dimbleby, Darren was asked his views on subjects as varied as abortion in Northern Ireland, Scottish independence and minimum alcohol pricing & addiction.