It’s been a year since I last spoke with the UK rapper Potter Payper. After conversing with him upon the release of his Training Day 3 mixtape—soon after his early release from prison—life for Potter has taken a quick, yet pleasant turn into a music-dominated one. It has seen the Barking native reach No. 3 in the UK albums chart, sign a record deal with hot-on-the-block label 0207 Def Jam, and become cemented as a staple figure in the British rap scene.
Having described himself as “the best rapper in the world” during our chat last year, Potter stands firm on that today, but with a newly realised regard for his peers. “I’m still very much confident in saying that I’m the best rapper in the world,” he tells me over Zoom, “but I do have a newfound respect for people’s talents and their artistry. I have a new and deeper understanding of the music business, and I’ve got this new understanding of myself in the music business. I also have a new reassurance that I’m cemented in UK rap culture on a bigger level than I was last year,” adding: “I shed a lot of dead weight and unlearned a lot of my own bad behaviours that have blocked my blessings in the past.”
New mixtape Thanks For Waiting shows a different side to wordsmith. He wasn’t big on having features all over his projects previously, but here he’s working with some of the best spitters in the country, experimenting with new flows and sonics while giving us that pain-fuelled rap that we all know and love him for. TFW suggests that Potter has more than one lane that he wants to dominate—and we’re ready for all of it.
We caught up with Potter Payper to go through each track on Thanks For Waiting, exploring more about the themes of each song, and the creative processes behind them. Take it in below and cop or stream the full album on iTunes or Spotify now.
