Craig David Opens Up About His Painful Rise, Fall & Redemption | E135

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Making moves, yeah, on the dance floor. Re-ewind. When the crowd say who? Craig David. This means so, so much to me. Everything I touched was turning to gold. Everyone wanted a piece of me and...

How does an 18, 19-year-old deal with that?

The height of success when it is like, whoa, there's so much of the, the human part that's being unmet. I felt like I was starting to make music to tick boxes. When I started to do Abandon Myself and I started to do things that just weren't in alignment, it was a point where I had dark thoughts. I was just like, "I can't live my life like this." What people enjoyed from me was music, and I realized that from when I came back to London. I feel like the kid again. And trust me, the crowd are gonna go off when they hear something soon, okay?

So 22 years later, if you could whisper in the ear of your 14-year-old self, what would you whisper?

Listen, Craig.

Without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. Craig, I've got some lyrics that I wanted to recite to you, okay?

Okay.

It's another day at school. And he's just walking out the door. Got his rucksack on his back and his feet dragging on the floor. Always late. But when he's questioned, he can't think of what to say. Hides the bruises from the teachers, hoping that they'd go away. Even though his mum and dad, they've both got problems of their own, caught in a catch-22, but he'd still rather be at home. Cries himself to sleep and prays when he wakes up things might have changed, but everything's the same. That's from your record Johnny from 2006.

Yeah. That was a, that was a, that was a song that I had to... It was the first time I think kinda opening up and, and expressing a experience that I felt that I had maybe on a lesser degree to a lot of other people in my school. I think at school, like, in my, my secondary school, I've had a, a very... I had a beautiful upbringing. I, I enjoyed life. I was a playful kid and I loved music. Um, but secondary school, all-boys school. Went to Bellmore in Southampton. And for the majority of it, it was, it was great times, but when you come in in your early years and you've got the older, the older boys in there and they're like, "Yo, you got two pound on you," "No, I haven't got two pound," and push you up against the wall, "You got two pound on you." Like, and then it's not a case of, like, have you got the money, it's like, "Let me check in your pockets, let me try and pull out the pockets." So, as a less degree of the bullying, I was like, I was experiencing it physically in the corridors. So I kinda... So when I was starting to write that song, I was drawing from... I had to go to how did it feel when that was happening? And it only happened with one, one, one guy in, in, at one period in the school. So I understood what bullying was. I mean, that was... I was, I was felt helpless, I couldn't... He was two years older, stronger, could rough me up if he really wanted to. But then also I was seeing other people who were getting the, a real... I was getting the psychological element, but there was a deeper side of that psychology of when they say, "Tell the teacher. They'll, they'll deal with it." This is the thing with bullying, is that I agree with... It, it needs to be spoken to someone you can confide in. But sometimes that kind of very rush in, you've told the teacher, they rush in, they... It's all out in the open. I was seeing kids who would then have a kid waiting outside of school for them. Or it might be that they, they're, they're being bullied by someone from a different school, even. So they'd be coming out to the school gates, thinking, "Okay, well, I'm on my way home." No, it's about to start when you get on the bus to go home.