Back in 2016, Stormzy commemorated his 23rd birthday in truly ridiculous style, inviting a bunch of his fans to party with him Thorpe Park, where some 200-odd competition winners were treated to a free day at the theme park with the grime MC and his mates. It’s probably just as well that he didn’t try to do the same thing for his 25th birthday yesterday, given a power cut at the park left hundreds of people stuck on the rides on the hottest day of the year. Instead, Stormzy had a far more audacious plan: hire a party villa in Spain, charter a plane, and take his fans out there with him.

Thanks to Spotify Premium, whose largesse allowed for this logistical nightmare to actually happen at all, there was hard data to prove that these fans were true Stormzy heads – only his top streamers on the platform were sent invites. They were joined by about one hundred of Stormzy’s close friends, which included his girlfriend, radio DJ and presenter Maya Jama; fellow MCs like AJ Tracey, Avelino, and Ms Banks; and actor/rapper/comedian Michael Dapaah, aka “Man’s Not Hot” hitmaker Big Shaq.

Onboard the plane, Stormzy walked through the cabin to cheers and spontaneous outbursts of “Happy Birthday”. iPads provided in front of everybody’s seats showed a safety video starring Stormzy himself. Tunes blasted out of bluetooth speakers and Stormzy took over the flight PA. In Menorca, the weather reached a sweltering 32 degrees celsius, which was somehow actually colder than back in the UK. Still, everybody made the most of our planet’s impending climate apocalypse by basking in the heat by the pool in the copious amounts of #MerkyAirways-branded swag they’d been handed and listening to DJs like Manny Norte. “Don’t worry about your phones, don’t worry about what’s home, let’s just use these couple of hours to get fucked up and have a good time,” Stormzy said in a speech by the pool. Then an airhorn blasted and a DJ started playing.

A couple of hours in, everybody gathered at the villa to see Stormzy cut his birthday cake, a very meta reconstruction of the villa including an iced version of Stormzy lounging on a sunbed. He gave a speech bigging up his friends, his family, his fans, and God. Everyone, in return, thanked Stormzy: the MCs who hopped on the mic throughout the day bigged him up, and fans posed for photos. “Barking” rapper Ramz told me a story about how even his mum became starstruck by Stormzy, chasing him down for a photo (“But he didn’t know it was my mum, so he ran off,” Ramz added).

Later, artists like Avelino, Krept and Konan, Not3s, and Big Shaq all performed some of their songs by the pool. Stormzy, having previously said he didn’t want to be playing on his own birthday, ended up performing tracks like “Cold”. And then, almost as soon as everyone had settled into their groove, the villa had to start packing up. Short but sweet, the fans seemed to have had a good time, too. One woman gave her phone number before hugging goodbye to another new friend she’d met earlier. More than one person made a comparison to Love Island. A topless man loudly declared to two women that this was “the best day of my life”.

As the sun started to set, the fans all boarded buses back to the airport together to catch the somewhat more subdued #MerkyAirways flight back home.