Rapman on Supacell, his Jay-Z approved superhero series: ‘I can tell when a black TV show has a white creator’

Rapman is talking about heroes. Andrew Onwubolu, the rapper and filmmaker with his own superhero-style nickname, believes who gets to be a hero is finally changing.

From the Black Panther movies to Miss Marvel and now his new Netflix show Supacell – about a group of Black south Londoners who suddenly gain superpowers – to Disney princesses, following the recent live action film of The Little Mermaid, starring Halle Bailey as Ariel.

“My daughter thinks the Little Mermaid is Black,” he says. “The Little Mermaid that I knew growing up was white, she had red hair. So to say that steps are not getting made, you would be lying, you’d just be shoutin’,” .

Over the past few years, Rapman has been working on Supacell, his highly-anticipated first project since Blue Story, starring Micheal Ward, which was released in 2019. Back then, Blue Story was Onwubolu’s highly-anticipated first project since Shiro’s Story, the YouTube short film series which he created, directed and narrated through rap lyrics, catapulting him onto the film scene. Basically, everything Onwubolu touches is laced with anticipation.

Like Supacell, Blue Story was also set in Peckham, revolving around the relationship between two best friends which is torn apart by gang violence amid a brutal postcode war.

Even though it was primarily set in Peckham and Deptford, many of Blue Story’s scenes had to be filmed in Enfield, due to instructions from the Mayor’s Office to withhold support from projects depicting knife and gun crime.

“We didn’t get the same pushback on Supacell,” Onwubolu says. “Blue Story was a gang movie, and it was advertised as a gang movie. Even though Supacell has got elements of gang violence, it’s not the main thread.”

The element he’s referencing is the storyline of one teenage character, Tazer, who uses his superpower to gain dominance against rival gangs. It was important for Onwubolu to put gang culture in Supacell, because, as he puts it: “It’s the story of people from south London, and I didn’t know a south Londoner that wasn’t in that world until I got into my 20s.”

And London’s gang violence isn’t exactly going away. Just 14 hours before our chat, a drive-by shooting in Dalston put four people in hospital, including a nine-year-old girl caught in the crossfire. “It’s not gonna go away,” Onwubolu says, “so hiding it and not putting it on screen isn’t going to make it any better.”

Rapman almost had to relocate the filming of one scene on an estate where the character Krazy, played by rapper Ghetts, pulls out a gun, because of a murder that happened down the road from the location the week before.

“I was like ‘Fine, we can leave and try and find somewhere else’, but [the council] said ‘Look, we can make it work if you come and do a talk on the estate and talk about things like this.” So he did. “I was just talking about my journey to try and inspire them, because I came from that gang background and now I’m doing what I’m doing now.”

This isn’t the first time his professional life has been rocked by violence or disorder outside of his control. When Blue Story hit cinemas, there was an incident in Birmingham where more than 100 young people descended on the Star City multiplex in Birmingham, some armed with machetes, and footage from inside appeared to show fights. It led the cinema chains Vue and Showcase to ban the film, though Showcase later reinstated screenings.

Five years on, when I ask Rapman about it, he does not mince his words. “I honestly believe they just didn’t want that many black people in the cinema,” he says, “I 100 per cent believe it was racially motivated. It wasn’t ever a question for me. Because how much violence do we see in movies? But my movie is the one that we should ban?”

Onwubolu attributes young peoples’ excitement around the film to long-awaited representation, and recalls hearing stories of kids as young as 13 trying to get in to see Blue Story using fake IDs. “You gotta remember Black young people and Asian young people, they don’t go to the cinema, they just don’t go. There’s nothing for them there. They might go to a Marvel movie, but otherwise they don’t go.”

Luckily, half a decade has lent some perspective, and Rapman now believes the machete incident was a good thing. “That could have been the best thing that ever happened to that movie,” he says, “Not the crime, because I hope nobody got hurt, but that publicity made the movie go crazy.”

For Supacell, which is poised for release on June 27, Rapman doesn’t need any added drama to ramp up publicity – it's all already there. The trailer has amassed nearly 800,000 views on YouTube – more than the trailer for the first season of Top Boy. Speaking of which, Rap Man has some opinions about that show, a stablemate on Netflix.

“I can always tell when an all-black show is made by a white person,” he says. “It's a lot to do with the language, how they speak, how certain scenes are played out. You can always tell when it's not authentic.”

I ask him how he feels about Top Boy’s depiction of Black British culture. “[Ronan Bennett] has done a great job in terms of entertainment purposes, but obviously there’s certain things I can look at and go ‘Okay, that’s not exactly how it would go down, but it’s entertaining.’”

However, he notes that Bennett making the show did a lot for Black British TV, despite him being white. “It would have been ideal if someone of colour could have been a part of it, but the fact that he got it opened doors for shows like Supacell. If he didn't get that commission back in 2011, if people didn’t see how popular a show can be with a majority black cast, I don't think Supacell would be here today.”

Between the already existing hype, the Netflix stamp of approval and a series of exciting cast members sure to boost the show’s reach – including Ghetts and fellow rapper Digga D – Supacell looks set for success.

And if that doesn’t sell it to you, maybe Jay-Z, Rapman’s manager, will. “He's watched it,” Onwubolu confirms. “He saw the first two episodes very early on, last year. He really liked it. I saw him in February and he said he really enjoyed it, and well done.”

Supacell is available to stream on Netflix from June 27