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Album: Speech Therapy (2009)
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Songfacts®:

  • This was the first single from British rapper Speech Debelle's Mercury Prize winning album, Speech Therapy.
  • Debelle was a heavy cannabis user in her teens, a dependency that contributed to her expulsion from Harris City Academy in Crystal Palace. The resulting strain on her relationship with her mother led to her moving out. She spent the next few years living in living in homeless hostels and "mistrustful of the idea of getting a 'proper' job." Debelle explained to The Sun September 4, 2009 that this song is "about needing to get away from the harshness surrounding me and contemplating how."
  • On this song the protagonist is struggling with the idea of sharing her accommodation with "cat-sized rats". Debelle told The London Times September 10, 2009: "I can pretty much pinpoint that lyric, That's Poynders [Estate] in Clapham. There was a crackhouse a couple of doors down, so you've got 'cat-sized rats,' but also 'cats the size of rats' - that's 'cats' as in people, who you could see physically wasting away because of what they were putting inside them."

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