"But ain't council estates full of immigrants?"
"Oh, I could never go to that area." "That's SO edgy."
"Ah, must be hard coming from a broken home."
Chav. Chav stands for... Oh, yeah, council house and violent.
Council house and violent, yeah. I feel like it's such a dirty word.
It sounds like a good rap song, anyway. I think I look like a chav.
Back in the day when I was younger, I wore a few tracksuits.
I am a chav because of how I speak.
I'd feel a way if someone called me a chav
because I know what the stereotype of a chav is.
There's loads of people that are chavtastic.
It's seen as like a lower class kind of thing.
When you say chav you think Burberry...
Have your hair on the side in a flower bobble.
..benefits... You wear one of them tracksuit bottoms,
and they're velour tracksuits. ..uneducated... Or a Burberry bag.
Uggs going like that. Were they Uggs, though?
We both know you bought those from Shoe Zone,
don't even try and lie to me.
I was called that when I was like six or seven.
I says, "Mum," this was when I was at school,
"did someone just call me a chav?"
And she says, "There's no such thing as black chavs."
It's just demoralising, dehumanising.
It's one of those words that's associated to white people.
Like Vicky Pollard.
If you was to take Kidulthood - what are they, chavs, thugs?
Or like a roadman, stuff like that. 100%.
Hood rats. What if I take the programme People Just Do Nothing?
They're classed as what?
Chavs. Exactly. Why?
"But you have an iPhone so you can afford to pay rent."
For one, I'm an Android kind of guy. I don't even pay my phone bill.
I think that's bullshit. "Oh, you must have stolen it."
How am I going to steal?
I know a lot of people who pay monthly for their TV,
so they have it in a room but they don't actually own it.
It's like one of those things where your mum doesn't want you to
look like you come from here you come from. If it breaks, the stress.
When really it's like I'm working.
Did you wake up at five o'clock in the morning to go to work?
Yeah, to get that money, to graft. No, you didn't.
The comparison between, like, a monthly bill of £35
and buying a house. I'll have my nice phone.
I'll snap you with my iPhone 7, snap, snap, snap.
Scrounger! THEY LAUGH
What do you mean, scrounger?
They might put on, like, TV programmes that show
council estates and people just in their houses doing nothing.
They're sitting at home with their feet up, watching Jeremy Kyle.
If only you knew the amount of hard work that I put in.
The people I see leave early in the morning, their car's not there.
And people can have three jobs, two jobs.
And they come back late at night, and they're putting in every hour.
Most of the criminals who mess up, you know,
the tax system are the ones at the top.
Yeah, there are people that are like that,
but that's, like, the minority.
Yeah, small minority, very small. Exactly.
"Why do you always wear a tracksuit?"
THEY LAUGH
Cos it bangs. Like, if someone's wearing a hoodie,
don't mean he's a violent criminal.
Or if someone's wearing a tracksuit, they're scary, blah-blah-blah.
If you go to Stratford right now, put up your hood, someone's going
to come and ask you to take off your hood cos it looks threatening.
What do you want me to go out in, a polo neck?
I wear it for comfort, I might go for a jog,
I might go for a run, I might go to the gym.
Me and my friends, we got stop and searched by police
for wearing suspiciously warm clothing in the summer.
Like, what excuse is that?
I was wearing a jacket.
"Ew, I never go to that area."
They will think that, oh, it's full of, like, gangs and it's violent.
I'm not going to lie, I come from a dirty area.
I think people actually expect it to be like The Purge.
They're really surprised when they find out where you're from.
Full of prostitution, and that's what it's known for.
Who do you expect to see?
Do you want Mr T to come out with his chains?
I invited one particular friend to my house just for bantz
and she was like, "Oh, I don't really want to get stabbed today."
Doesn't matter what your area is, once you're in your home,
that's your little safe place.
That same day, I went home on my own, road was closed off,
someone was stabbed.
She didn't want to come because she looked at it
on Google Maps and stuff, heard about that place.
But there's so much beauty behind it.
And when she did come round, as soon as she came into my flat,
she looked round and she was like, "Wow."
Community, arts, there's so many young people
and old people there, so you get a lot of family ties in that area.
When I say Peckham, I think home.
That statement is so edgy.
I definitely think middle class people feel as if
living in a council estate is cool.
That's really edgy, that's urban, that's dangerous there.
You should say that when you go home, just, "That's so edgy."
That's so edgy! Look at that. Look at that empty syringe. So edgy.
Also, there's a lot of, like, middle class people that are, like,
doing a lot of, you know, photo exhibitions on council estates.
They're seeing shit on the wall like, "Ted was here 2015."
They look at it as it's really cool to film here and it's like,
it looks the part and you do music videos there.
Maybe the council come in and have a look, "Oh." "That's so edgy."
"This is a bit edgy. Oh." "I'll take a note of that."
It does make us look as if, like, we're sort of dogs in a cage.
Some posh people moved in and in the car park in the middle of
the estate in the summer, I remember they had a table, they had wine.
In terms of it being seen as something like,
"Oh, it's so cool," it wasn't always cool.
Anyway, as soon as the people round the corner,
who were just chilling on the block, started making noise and being loud,
they packed the stuff up so quick and they ran upstairs.
It's not like it's a cool place to be... But it's portrayed as cool.
It isn't a scary place to be, it's our place to be.