When Jordan Stephens, of pop group Rizzle Kicks, shot to fame at 19, it wasn’t long before addiction and self-destruction followed. As his memoir comes out, he talks about love, loss and finding his way back
“The fuck up”, as Jordan Stephens refers to it – both in-person and on page – wasn’t his first experience of infidelity. “Yes, I had been unfaithful to girlfriends in the past,” he accepts, “I’d also been cheated on.” It’s just, what happened in that hotel bedroom five years ago, the night of a friend’s seaside wedding, played out differently. It triggered a breakup, a breakdown, a path to sobriety. “I’d had three, four other relationships before, but I’d never stopped afterwards. Oh, we’ve broken up? I’ll go on tour, sleep with whoever, do a bunch of cocaine, or drink loads. I’d numb myself to get through it, then make the same mistakes.” Not this time. “This one, however, was a pivotal point for me. I was in a relationship, I fucked it up, then everything crumbled. I was confronted by my own behaviour, and by grief, and was forced to make some major changes. That single moment changed my life’s trajectory.”
That’s a lot to share within five minutes of hellos and how-are-yous on a summer afternoon. For the former Rizzle Kicks singer turned actor, podcaster and now published author, it’s nothing unusual. Soul-baring honesty, it seems, is very much his MO. It’s there through every chapter of his new book, Avoidance, Drugs, Heartbreak & Dogs, a deeply personal account of his disloyalty, subsequent unravelling, and how he set out to rebuild. Now sprawled out on a sofa at a sunny canal-side café – pink T-shirt, shorts and baseball cap, hoop earring, gold teeth, and a dusting of tattoos – face to face he’s charismatic with his vulnerability.
