Every episode of Sounds Like Change opens with a song chosen in answer to one question: what song most faithfully captures the future you'd love to build, and why? This week's guest picked 'Love Yourz' by J. Cole.

He first felt its healing power while he was sectioned for the third time, on a ward where one of the younger nurses used to take him to the local park for an hour a day and let him choose what to listen to. Years later, it's still tied to the memory of being handed a small, ordinary kindness at the lowest point of his life.

Our guest is Shocka, one of the UK's leading voices on mental health in music.

He first rose to fame as part of the grime collective Marvell, and after being dropped by his label he went through multiple mental health episodes that led to him being sectioned, eventually diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and manic depression. He talks us through what that actually looked like: the private ward he ended up on because every other hospital was full, the strange, unexpected solidarity he felt with strangers going through the same thing regardless of background, and the moment he realised his music had to speak to something universal rather than the version of himself he used to rap about.

He's just as candid about what came after. He's an ambassador for Rethink Mental Illness, and his work has included a TEDx talk and an ITV documentary, for which he asked his auntie to take part, well aware that meant her story would reach millions too.

He tells us about writing his book, 'A Section of My Life', which he started while in a suicidal phase and finished because he refused to let other people tell his story for him. He talks about losing his mum to cancer in 2022, and how something as small as a letter telling her she no longer had a job compounded her fear while she was ill. And partway through the conversation comes our minute breather, a spoken word moment that says more about what he's trying to do than any interview answer could.

Zooming out, we talk about why sectioning still carries so much shame, particularly within his own community, and why he thinks cultural beliefs need to be revisited every so often rather than treated as fixed. He's frank about the gap between how comfortable his generation was talking about feelings and how open the next one seems to be, and about why he thinks vulnerability, not toughness, is what actually protects people. His album 'Vulnerability Is the New Cool' is medicine track by track, he says, written to heal himself first and everyone else after.

We end, as we always do, by asking what message our guest hopes reaches our collective descendants in a hundred years. His answer is simple: nothing new, just the old one, properly done. Self-love, he says, unlocks almost everything else. It's a fitting note to close out our first season on, and this episode marks the Season 1 finale of Sounds Like Change. Thank you for building this with us from episode one. We'll be back with more soon.

Recorded at Shure.

Links: Shocka is an ambassador for Rethink Mental Illness. His TEDx talk, 'Self love is the glue that puts us back together', is on TED.com. His book, 'A Section of My Life', is available via Waterstones. His album 'Vulnerability Is the New Cool' is on all streaming platforms. He also featured in ITV's documentary Black Boys Can Cry with Alex Beresford, watch it on ITVX.

Shocka on Instagram Shocka's Linktree

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Sounds Like Change is part of the Drowned in Sound Podcast Network, an independent media production company built for social impact.

Edited by: tell.studio (Phil, Louisa, Owen, Matt)