KSI: 'At 25, I realised if I retired I would be so bored'
KSI is the subject of a forthcoming documentary on Amazon Prime. Picture: Ian West/PA
Since signing up to a fledgling platform called YouTube in 2009 and beginning his remarkable journey towards 24 million subscribers, KSI has had creative control of his videos. But that all changed in 2021 when he agreed to take part in an intimate Amazon documentary about his life.
Suddenly the camera turned on him and he had nowhere to hide. The result is a searingly honest portrait of a young man at the height of success yet teetering on the edge in his personal life.
“If I’m being honest, especially at the beginning I hated it,” he says of letting the team from Mindhouse, the production company co-founded by Louis Theroux, into his life. “It was quite annoying. I felt it was quite intrusive. It was a bit too much.”
Olajide Olatunji, known to friends as JJ, gained fame posting videos on YouTube, mainly of his friends playing video games and pranks on each other.
But in recent years he has branched out, becoming a chart-topping rapper (his album All Over The Place went to number one in July 2021) and a boxer whose fights attract millions of online viewers. Among the most lucrative of these were two bouts with American YouTuber Logan Paul (one draw, one narrow win).
KSI has more than 16 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, and business sidelines such as an energy drink and a restaurant chain. His tracks Lighter, Don’t Play and Holiday have each scored him nominations at the Brit Awards. But his new documentary, titled In Real Life, reveals a different side.
“I’m quite introverted so I love my alone time,” he says a few weeks before release date. “Before I didn’t really understand that. But when I’m in public for a good amount of time I need time off, as in I need time to be in the house alone.
“Not even doing much. Just either playing games or scrolling on my phone, where it’s just me just being me. I definitely didn’t have a lot of that in previous years, and over time it started to really be quite destructive for me.”
In Real Life shows KSI on the eve of the release of his second album, All Over The Place, in July 2021. That record would go to number one and he would embark on a sell-out tour.
But that period would also see his relationship with his parents and brother start to degrade as the strains of living in the spotlight took their toll.
“I didn’t want it to be a fluff piece,” he explains. “I didn’t want it to just be like, ‘Oh, look how great I am’. I wanted to be open, to show that I am human.”
In Real Life revisits his childhood in Watford, his struggles at school, the development of his online persona and the emergence of his steely determination to succeed.
This drive has been his biggest gift, but has also come with pitfalls. “I told myself that when I was 25 I would retire,” he says with a booming laugh. “I got to 25 and I realised that if I retired now I would be so bored. I would just be doing nothing.” Aged 29, KSI has already achieved so much. But what if he had been born 10 years earlier, before YouTube offered him a route to success?
“I would probably be working at McDonald’s or something like that,” he says with a laugh. “I don’t know, honestly I have no idea.” KSI describes himself as an obsessive worker.
“I really believe in manifestation,” he says. “If you manifest that you are going to be whatever success you want.
“Let’s say if you want to be a millionaire. If you kept saying, ‘I’m going to be a millionaire, I’m going to be a millionaire’ eventually you are going to reach that point where you’re going to be a millionaire.” The documentary also addresses the abuse he has received online throughout his career, some of it racial. Surprisingly, he is sanguine.
“It’s very hard to avoid. It’s just part of the internet culture,” he offers. “You can turn it off completely and not go on social media, and then you’ll avoid it to a certain degree. Obviously you might see racism in real life.
“I know that after a while I kind of just got used to it. And not that that’s a good thing but it’s one of the things that helped me get through it.
“I just stopped caring what people would say when they were being racist to me, or this and that. I wouldn’t care. I would just continue doing my thing. And I would just let my successes piss them off more.
“I don’t let it get to me. I like not giving people that power, power over words.” The documentary also played a role in improving his relationship with his family. When we speak his parents have watched the film, in which he speaks frankly about his regrets.
“It was, I guess, heartbreaking for my parents, to see I got upset in the film. And to see that, I know that definitely broke their heart. But I think they are happy now that everything is so much better than it was before the doc.
“It’s crazy. I could argue the doc helped me really open up my mind and made me go, ‘Oh, I need to sort this out’.
“Because it asked the crucial questions where I was like, ‘You know what, I’m not in the best place that I thought I was’.
“I’ve got all these successes but what does that mean if I’m not happy within.” This all resulted in KSI having a heart-to-heart with his father.
“I definitely wasn’t expecting it,” he says. “At the start of the doc when I said yes to Amazon filming me I just went with the flow. I just went, ‘Okay, let’s just go with it’ and then it got deeper and deeper and deeper.” He says that after director Wes Pollitt became a friend, he was able to ask the difficult questions.
“I’m always going to be open and say how I truly feel, because it feels better for the soul and it just feels better in general.
“Throughout the time I realised that I’m broken. There’s a lot of things I need to fix. I’m not happy with myself, my situation, me and my family wasn’t great. Especially my parents, even my brother, we are still going through a few things.” But KSI says he is a much better place now and that therapy has helped him “tremendously”.
Going into the future, he feels optimistic and ready.
“I definitely had to go back and repair,” he says. “I had to go back and help fix that.”
- KSI: In Real Life launches on Prime Video on January 26
