So Stormzy and Wiley have been engaged in a good old-fashioned grime feud since New Year’s Day. It’s been great fun watching the duo be mean about each other’s mums, Stormzy calling Wiley a fuckboy, and Wiley pointing out that it was embarrassing to collaborate with Ed Sheeran. Stormzy’s a ‘weirdo’, Wiley’s a ‘dinosaur’. Etc, etc.
The conflict had rumbled along very pleasingly, in full view of the online public – one released a diss track, and then it was the other’s turn. Twitter blows were exchanged. How to resolve such a feud? Thank god, as they say, for Peter Andre. Diplomat extraordinaire, he leapt into the breach – the internet equivalent of someone’s dad stepping between two boys squaring up to each other outside a bar. Now now now: ‘If you don’t like each other take it to each other, don’t bring each other’s families into it man. C’mon you both know that ain’t right. You’re both incredible artists', wrote Andre. It’s hard to characterise his intervention as anything but baffling, with a touch of ‘sweet’ and also, ‘oh no’.
Predictably, Twitter thought this was very, very funny. It didn’t allay the cries of ‘alright, grandad’ that the tags for both Wiley and Stormzy were wrong (gah!), or that Peter Andre’s own musical stylings couldn’t feasibly be further from Grime if they were classical arias. Highlights from the internet commentary include suggestions that Andre scale up his mediation to tackle tensions between the US and Iran, or Jessica Davies’ observation that we can all learn a thing or two from a man with the confidence to think his ill-tagged subtweet might prompt anything but laughter. As Alex Shafiq says, ‘2020 has peaked 10 days in’.
To his credit, and most charming of all, Peter’s taken the giggly backlash like a champ. ‘Oh s**t. I asked for that. don’t mind me guys, that was pre coffee yesterday’, wrote Andre, before clarifying the mystery of his incorrect tagging: ‘The reason it tags wrong on Twitter is because I link it from my Instagram which uses the correct tags.’ He continued, like the loveable sport he’s proved himself to be, ‘I deserved it, I got battered. I’ll stick to singing under a waterfall yes yes yes :)’. Thanks Peter! Honestly, it was a pleasure.
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