We meet Kneecap backstage at Kingston’s Circuit ahead of an intimate album launch show on St George’s Day (no reader, they do not celebrate). It’s been about a year and half since we last spoke. “A pretty uneventful few months I must say,” jokes Mo Chara, given the lifetime of headlines and controversy the Belfast rap trio have packed into that time, and the hours he spent in front of a judge for a now thrown-out terrorism charge at the hands of the UK government.

They fought the case with everything they had, and now again with their bold and ballsy new album ‘Fenian‘ – the term itself an act of defiance. “It originally came from Irish folklore,” Móglaí Bap offers. “It was a band of warriors in old Irish stories that date back 1,500 years. Then it was repurposed for several rebellions during the 18th and 19th Century, then in modern times it was used as a derogatory slur for Irish nationalists. When you call someone a ‘fenian’, you’re suggesting that they’re backwards or uncivilised. In the North or when Irish people came to London, they’d say ‘You Fenian…’.”

We assure Kneecap that swearing is acceptable on NME.

“C**t,” calmly offers the balaclava-clad DJ Próvaí. Fair enough. Now reclaiming ‘Fenian’ as a synonym for “the warrior”, Kneecap are once again showing that the most feared weapon in their arsenal is “the power of language,” as Móglaí Bap tells us, flipping how “certain language is used when you have a coloniser country and an oppressed people”.

Fresh from the hype around their stellar debut album ‘Fine Art‘ and acclaimed BAFTA-winning self-titled biopic, the band told us that they were making good progress with their sophomore record back in summer 2024, but it seems life had other plans. Their standard pro-Gaza rhetoric lead by the messaging of “Fuck Israel, Free Palestine” caught the attention of the wider world – and Sharon Osbourne – when they played Coachella 2025, causing one hell of a shit-storm and chain reaction that would lead to the terror charge from a past London gig and for the three trouble-starters to become a divisive talking point.

A whole album was scrapped, and they decamped to Streatham in London to spend two months on fresh material with “eccentric scientist” Dan Carey (Fontaines D.C., Wet Leg, Foals) to bring out “a musical complexity” to match the drama that was playing out in the headlines and the scale of attention the band were getting.

“Obviously we had the court case during all this and the Wembley Arena concert during the seven weeks we were in the studio,” recalls Móglaí Bap. “Dan was at the gig and trying to find sounds that would fill those rooms”.

“It hit that next level up as a more mature-sounding album, but still authentic to Kneecap,” Mo Chara continued. “Most artists when making an album maybe have most of it written or are able to go to the studio and lock themselves away for a few months, whereas we were getting dragged on the news to the magistrates court and had Wembley, which was a huge deal at the time. These things that should have been a hindrance on paper, it was more of an inspiration on the album.”

Watch our full interview with the band at the top of the page, or read on below as Kneecap open up about their battle with the government, the real issue of anti-Semitism, balancing their personal with the political on their best album yet, and who might play their pal Keir Starmer in the sequel to their movie.

NME: Hello Kneecap. The crosshairs really zoomed in on you after Coachella. How would you describe how things were going for you guys before and after that?

Mo Chara: “Things were obviously going very well. Things went well after Coachella as well. We never did anything different at Coachella – it’s the same gig we did all year. Obviously, we were in America, and there were thousands of young Americans shouting ‘Free Palestine’. The mainstream media in America have tried to hide away the Palestinian movement. There was no disguising the fact that there were young Americans in solidarity with Palestine, and that was something that the mainstream media could not handle.”

DJ Próvaí: “The people who were outside the court were the same people supporting Palestine Action. They saw censorship happening and abuses of power and went, ‘Right, if this is allowed to carry on, then who’s next?’ Not challenging those abuses of power would be a dereliction of their actions. As soon as you try to put a blockade on art and people expressing themselves, then it’s a slippery slope into fascism.”

Do you feel like the dialogue has moved on much? We just had The Strokes use their Coachella headline set to make a statement against the US government and the destruction of the last university in Gaza, and 1,000+ artists pushing to boycott Eurovision over Israel is no small thing…

Móglaí Bap: “The limitations of what bands think they can do has definitely shifted. Even at Coachella, there were other bands who spoke out for Palestine as well, but they weren’t in the news. There has been a shift because there’s more solidarity between the bands. It feels safer to put yourself out there. Before this, it was quite isolating if you spoke out for Palestine. That’s the whole reason for that: to make you feel more insecure in your job.”

As for the court case and the events that led to it: if there’s a potential would-be Kneecap fan out there who wants to be part of this but has a big question mark looming over what happened with the flag and the accusations, is there anything you’d like to say to put it in context?

Mo Chara: “We’ve spoken about this a million times and put out press statements. Let’s just say we don’t pick flags up anymore.”

And you said you don’t always know what’s going on when the lights are down?

Mo Chara: “Oh, Jesus, it’s impossible. It’s hard to even see what’s happening. A gig feels like it’s over before you know it; you fucking barely remember anything. I’m not going to get into it because we’ve talked about it already. Obviously, we won, and we expected to win. It just shows how ludicrous the whole case is. They threw millions of pounds at it, tried for an appeal and lost.

“When you take years and years of gigs and compact it into 20 seconds of a satirical band on stage… You can cut any comedian on Earth into a five-second clip, and they can look like the worst person in the world. You’ve got to put things in context. There’s never ever been an issue at a Kneecap gig, and a Kneecap member has never been convicted of any crime in any country ever, so we’ll start, surely but slowly, moving on.”

With the things you say at the gigs and the atmosphere there, combined with what’s really in the songs and the statements you put out, would you say you’re actually an anti-hate band?

Mo Chara: “Of course. We come from Belfast, we understand sectarian violence, we understand sectarianism, we understand that religious divide serves absolutely nobody. Anti-Semitism is a real issue, and it’s growing at the moment. It’s something that genuinely needs to be talked about and needs to be tackled, but what happens is when you have the Zionist lobby labelling bands and actors as anti-Semitic just because they speak out against Israel, you’re starting to water down that term. We need to be talking about that term a lot more because it’s on the rise all over the world.

“We are obviously not anti-Semitic. I think anyone with any right mind knows that. We don’t stand for any kind of hate at gigs or any kind of fascist ideologies. We’re from Belfast, we’re Irish, it’s not in our nature.”

Was it cool to be enemy of the state for a minute?

Mo Chara: “It’s [DJ Próvai’s] turn next.”

Móglaí Bap: “I think there’s a good tradition of English governments choosing Irish people as enemies, and there’s a good history there of Irish people being criminalised for crimes they never committed. So it’s pretty cool. We’re not the first Irish people to be called terrorists.”

Second albums are difficult enough as it is, but did the pressure enter your mind of all this going on and having to make a statement record that backed up your politics and the headlines?

Mo Chara: “I didn’t see it as pressure. Obviously, we do thrive in the chaos, and sometimes it’s easier to deal with things when it’s so chaotic, and you’re onto the next thing. We understood that there were a lot of eyes on this album. Second album syndrome is quite intense for a lot of bands.

“We knew if you were a Kneecap fan and had been watching what had been going on for the last year, you’d be very disappointed if there was no mention of it in the album. Of course there is, and we wouldn’t let you down.”

It’s an album that’s as political as it is personal. Let’s start with ‘An Ra’, where you thank the UK for their contributions to Irish life: “Jimmy Saville and HP Sauce, now that is a worthy cause”. That’s going to look good on a t-shirt…

Mo Chara: “We’re in enough trouble as it is.”

Móglaí Bap: “I love brown sauce, though, on sausages and stuff.”

Mo Chara: “Brown sauce and free healthcare. Other than that, that’s it. We’re keeping that.”

Mo Chara: “It was written as a piss-take about how much we’re going to miss the United Kingdom when we eventually get a United Ireland.”

Móglaí Bap: “The joke is that when colonising countries talk about ‘civilising’ other countries, like they did with Ireland or Kenya – so we’re playing with that idea that we were actually quite civilised before they got there.”

DJ Próvaí: “There’s nothing more civil than genocide.”

Mo Chara: “Jesus Christ, there’s our t-shirt. If you translate the UK into Irish, it’s ‘RA’, which looks like the ‘RA so it’s a play on words for The IRA. We’re expecting people who don’t speak Irish to become outraged, thinking it’s a song about the IRA, when we can actually explain to them that’s actually a love letter for the United Kingdom. We thought you’d like that!”

And with ‘Smugglers & Scholars’, what did you want to tell people about the real Ireland?

Mo Chara: “It’s this idea that Americans have of Ireland that it’s all poetry and clovers, and the line is that it’s actually raincoats and police Land Rovers. That’s the idea that we had of Ireland growing up in an urban setting.”

Móglaí Bap: “It’s a reply to those American movies and what their perception of Ireland is. Wild Mountain Thyme or something. The whole movie, she had dirt on her face.”

Mo Chara: “Christopher Walken is in that and doesn’t even try to do the accent. He knows how shit that film is. Irish Wish with Lindsay Lohan, did you watch that? It’s offensive.”

‘Carnival’ is banger, dealing with your trial and subsequent reaction from the government and media in a very head-on way…

Mo Chara: “The ‘carnival of distraction’ is the term that we ran with. It was unfortunate and against our will, but we became part of that. We became a cog in the wheel of that distraction. Talking about us in that court case did highlight Gaza slightly, but that time spent talking about us could have been spent doing actual journalism and talking about the actual genocide in Gaza.”

Why do you think politicians are so obsessed with artists saying things rather than the origins of what they’ve said?

Mo Chara: “It’s the same thing as why is it more controversial when a band goes on stage compared to a genocidal regime where the prime minister of that country has an arrest warrant against them? We’re not the only people calling it a genocide, the ICJ are. It’s always, ‘Do you condemn Hamas?’ They’re never asking politicians if they condemn the IDF.”

DJ Próvaí: “They’re always looking for their column inches as well and trying to latch on to anything in the news.”

Móglaí Bap: “It’s that need for sensationalism. Keir Starmer giving an interview about us playing Glastonbury to The Sun? Why would he do that? That’s weird. He gets to pretend to be outraged about something that doesn’t really have an impact or any repercussions for him, but it makes him look good. We have this dysfunctional symbiotic relationship with politicians.”

You went the mile on this album to write the song ‘Palestine’. How did you tackle the essence of capturing something so profound into a song?

Móglaí Bap: “Obviously, with everything going on, politics was going to be quite important for the album, and we thought it was quite important to have a representation from Palestine on there. We’d heard of Fawzi from Ramallah, and we connected with him. It was something we wanted to develop, to build on that connection between Belfast and Palestine.

“It’s been that way in Ireland for a long time: this international solidarity. Because we’re musicians and artists, this is a way for us to build that bridge. There’s no better people to speak about Palestine than Palestinians.”

One of the most personal songs on the album is ‘Irish Goodbye’, which is about Móglaí Bap’s mother’s depression, taking her own life, and the courage she gave you. What did it mean to you to put that into song, and what did you get out of it?

Móglaí Bap: “When someone passes away, someone close to you, it takes a long time to remember them with nice memories if they’re going through hard times. It’s been five or six years. I didn’t have a plan to make a tune about it, but somebody sent me a documentary with my ma’ in it and us as children. It was the first time I’d seen us happy in a video, and that had a profound effect on me. It helped me remember the happy times, so this song was reflecting on those. All the happy times are the boring, mundane stuff where you miss somebody, never the big moments. It’s always just walking around a park and the small things that become really big.

“It was really nice for me to go back in my memory and recreate that in my head with the song. It was a nice way to reinforce those memories.”

Your parents crop up a couple of times on the record for their activism with the language. There’s been a nearly 400 per cent rise in pupils in Irish-medium education over 25 years, and over 1million active learners on Duolingo learning the language. What does it mean to you when people talk about ‘the Kneecap effect’ with people picking up their native tongue?

Móglaí Bap: “On the opening track ‘Éire go Deo’, this is an ode to the people that gave Kneecap this opportunity, who set the framework, who started the schools and the cultural centres, the youth clubs. We just feel like Kneecap is part of the wider movement. We’re working with kids, sports teams and all this stuff. If I were 16 years old now and saw an Irish language film in the cinema, it’s very important that you feel that your culture is valued and seen in these mainstream areas.”

Before the band started, Móglaí Bap was active in promoting the Irish language through music, DJ Próvaí was a teacher, and Mo Chara was training to be a youth worker. What was it about the spirit of who you were before Kneecap, why you needed this outlet, and how much of that you still carry today?

DJ Próvaí: “Those three things you mentioned all kind of align in the language movement. When we all started out, we all loved the language. We were in our early twenties, and all found each other. Something happened in Belfast, and we were all drawn towards it. We became this big friendship group. Lots of people were leaving school and didn’t get the chance to speak the Irish language in a social setting. We found each other just at a time when we needed that in a social outlet.

“Music, partying and talking in Irish was what it all revolved around. All of those things lined up nicely.”

Mo Chara: “With the youth work and stuff, there was that need for a social space. Any kind of movement needs social spaces. People were going to school, a lot of people were leaving school with a basic grasp of Irish, and then weren’t really using it again. We were kind of creating that social setting. That’s when I started volunteering, and it was out of that ethos that Kneecap grew: that need to see the subculture represented. Once we all bumped heads, this was the natural progression to go.”

Móglaí Bap: “It was a grown collective self-esteem that Kneecap came out of – this idea that we do deserve the same rights as everyone else. Because we had these jobs as youth workers, teachers or working in events, we thought that we should have art and culture in the Irish language. That seed was planted.”

What do you want now? How do you imagine the future for Kneecap?

Móglaí Bap: “I’m happy to be making music and having the opportunity to go around the world and meet with people from different indigenous cultures. That’s such a cool thing. Not just in Ireland, but people all around the world are going towards their native, indigenous language. That’s something that we can hopefully connect more with.”

Mo Chara: “I’m just hoping that we can keep doing what we’re doing and not think too far ahead. We’ll keep reminding ourselves of how lucky we are and long may it last.”

Do you feel like the next to undermine you could be just around the corner?

Mo Chara: “I don’t know. I try not to think about these things. If it is, it’s going to be out of our hands anyway. We’ll just do what we can. As long as people listen to us and as long as long as there’s a demand there, then we’ll just continue to create.”

Móglaí Bap: “We started Kneecap with a lack of self esteem. We thought nobody would be interested in Kneecap outside of our 10 friends. Maybe something was changing and people were looking for something more authentic. Over the years our confidence grew and Kneecap is something that we’ll continue to work on and bring us to new places around the world.”

DJ Próvaí: “Hopefully new generations will take some more self esteem and take it to the next level as well.”

Móglaí Bap: “If we’re an inspiration for other bands to do a similar thing in Irish, then even better. That will be a great conclusion.”

In the very least, you’ve got some great material for Kneecap: The Movie 2.

Móglaí Bap: “And we’re going to franchise it like The Fast And The Furious, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.”

Mo Chara: “If the money’s right.”

Who’s going to play Keir Starmer?

DJ Próvaí: “Quasimodo.”

Móglaí Bap: “Sharon Osbourne.”

‘Fenian’ by Kneecap is out now. 

The post Kneecap on ‘Fenian’ and fighting back: “We understand that religious divide serves absolutely nobody” appeared first on NME.

David Arnold is a James Bond expert. In 1997, shortly after scoring sci-fi blockbuster Independence Day, he recruited Pulp, Iggy Pop, Bjork, Chrissie Hynde and Leftfield for the ambitious ‘Shaken And Stirred’ Bond covers album. 007 boss Barbara Broccoli was so impressed, she hired him to work on the soundtrack for that year’s Tomorrow Never Dies. He returned for The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day, Casino Royale and Quantum Of Solace.

Now Arnold’s back in the world of martinis and MI6 for ‘First Light’, his titular collaboration with fellow Bond superfan Lana Del Rey that serves as the theme song to a bold new video game. “We didn’t set out to just make the next James Bond game, we set out to tell the next James Bond story,” explains Dominic Vega, audio director at developer IO Interactive. “Getting the theme song right was really important to the soul of the project.” When the idea of Arnold and Del Rey working on it was suggested, “it seemed too good to be true,” he grins. But here we are.

First Light, an action-adventure game that details the origins of 007, was first pitched to Arnold by Broccoli at an appropriately high-level briefing. “The meeting took a long time and was very detail heavy. I loved how committed they were,” says Arnold. “But really [I said yes immediately because] it was the opportunity to write an official Bond theme. I’ve never tired of doing that. I really don’t mind if that’s what I’m known for, because It’s always been my dream,” says the composer, who saw his first Bond flick ‘You Only Live Twice’ when he was just eight years old.

The soaring ballad takes Bond into a new era

Rather than rushing off to bash out his sixth Bond anthem though, Arnold spent time with the concept art, script and early development footage of the game. “I’m obviously aware of the 60 years of history – all the songs that have been written as well as all the movies, TV shows and novels that have been [created around this character]. But I had to get a sense of what this Bond was like,” says Arnold, referring to how actor Patrick Gibson has taken on the mantle of the world’s most famous secret agent for this title. He follows Daniel Craig, whose explosive farewell in No Time To Die half a decade ago still smarts for some fans. A fresh face for the films is still to be announced.

Back when Arnold first fell in love with Bond, the suited and booted gentleman was an aspirational figure who could do whatever he wanted in the name of king and country without any consequences. Craig’s era changed all that. “He didn’t just kick someone in the face, say something funny then bugger off. It’s not quite a vulnerability… but more layers have definitely been revealed. There’s room for him to be something different now,” says Arnold, who wanted to explore that within the lyrics.

“It’d be easy to fall back into things that have been done before, and I’m sure there are people who think I’ve done that, but the intent is to move it along every time. Billie Eilish’s ‘No Time To Die’ doesn’t sound anything like Shirley Bassey’s ‘Goldfinger’ or Wings’ ‘Live And Let Die’. Carly Simon’s ‘Nobody Does It Better’ doesn’t sound like John Barry’s ‘You Only Live Twice’ which doesn’t sound like Matt Monro’s ‘From Russia With Love’ but they’re all quintessential Bond songs. There’s just this feeling to them all that makes them Bond – and that’s what I needed to discover [for ‘First Light’]. It’s always the hardest part of the process.”

Lana knew just what was needed

What wasn’t difficult was working out who was going to sing it. Lana’s name sat top of the list of potential suitors – and she needed no convincing to get involved. “Lana pitched a song for Spectre and is very aware of the history of James Bond,” says Arnold. Del Rey’s cut was eventually rejected in favour of ‘Writing’s On The Wall’ by Sam Smith. “For as long as she’s been making records, people have asked why she hasn’t done a James Bond theme yet. There’s just something about Lana Del Rey that makes her [perfect] for Bond – and that’s definitely not true of everyone. She’s just timeless.” And timelessness is something Arnold has always aimed for. “I want people to be able to listen to the songs in 30 years without thinking they sound dated.”

Still, with Del Rey busy headlining stadiums and festivals following the release of 2023’s ‘Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd’, Arnold needed to rely on modern technology to get the track finished. Over the course of several months, the pair traded ideas back-and-forth over Zoom. “She’s charming, funny and brilliant but was also really enthusiastic and engaged with the whole process. All you can really ask for in a collaborator is someone who is as committed as you,” remembers Arnold.

“When you’re working closely with someone, you can forget just how brilliant they actually are. But as soon as she sang that first verse… it was just amazing… Her voice is extraordinary and is always unmistakably her.”

There are clues to the game’s story hidden within

In keeping with First Light being an origin story, Arnold revisited some of author Ian Fleming’s books for inspiration – which is where the dreamy yet haunting lyric about “running towards the sun” came from. “The idea of charging towards an exploding sun seemed to sum up who Bond is [in First Light],” says Arnold. “It’s the perfect metaphor for something unknown and dangerous, but he’s compelled to go towards it anyway. The song feels like a warning.”

“It does a great job of hinting at what path this young Bond is going down. Just like in Casino Royale [where the iconic theme doesn’t play until the very end of the film], the player earns the themes as they play the game,” adds Vega.

The track celebrates Bond’s past, present and future

‘First Light’ also laid the foundations for The Flight’s original score for the game which, according to Vega, has the same texture and feel. “We had conversations to ensure we were on the same page because music’s such a huge part of Bond’s world,” agrees Arnold. “They were asking me the same sort of questions I was asking in 1997 when I did Tomorrow Never Dies.”

A lot of ‘First Light’ and the cinematic title sequence it soundtracks feels like a modern update to classic Bond. “The game shows a version of him we haven’t really seen before in a world that we’re familiar with. We needed a song that moved the sound of the universe forward, but could also exist alongside all the great songs that have come before,” says Vega.

“We wanted to anchor it in what we already know [to show people] it’s part of the same world,” says Arnold. “Music has been so important to the James Bond series. To run away from what’s made it great would have been foolish.”

‘007 First Light’ is released on May 27 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC

The post Inside Lana Del Rey’s era-defining James Bond theme song ‘First Light’ appeared first on NME.

We are well and truly in the thick of a worldwide girl group renaissance. Heralded by the continued success of K-pop acts across the 2010s, this current decade has welcomed not only the return of all-female groups in the West, including NME Cover stars FLO and Say Now, but it has also given way to the ascension of those from Southeast Asia to the global stage for the very first time.

The latest act to break out of the region, and following in the footsteps of T-pop favourites 4Eve and Filipino stars BINI, are Indonesia’s powerhouse performers No Na. Comprising Baila (24 years old) and Shaz (23) from Jakarta, Christy (25) from Lombok, and Esther (24) from Bali, the quartet officially debuted last year and were named to the NME 100 of 2026 on the strength of their alluring blend of nostalgic R&B with their “island girl” roots, as they describe it.

Their heritage is front and centre in everything No Na release: traditional gamelan music is featured prominently in latest single ‘Rollerblade’, which also features lyrics in Indonesian; their music video for debut single ‘Shoot’ showcased the beautiful rice terraces of Bali; their group name is derived from the Indonesian word for young lady. “It always goes back to the reason why we’re here, like what motivates us and as we represent our country on the global stage,” Shaz explains. “That is what we hold on to strongly.”

That desire to wave their country’s flag high on the global stage has led the group to a bold direction, even this early on in their career. ‘Work’, their first single of 2026, eschewed their previous ’80s and ’90s influences for a modern, high-octane pump-up anthem – plus a video that kicked off with a viral feat of flexibility from Christy. “That switch-up was crazy for everybody,” Esther says. “When we dropped ‘Work’, everybody was like, ‘Oh my gosh, they can do more than just sing. They can dance.’ We’ve always wanted to be known as versatile artists, and ‘Work’ is basically that.”

Given the long training process they’ve gone through – one that started in Jakarta after they were scouted by 88rising in 2022, and moved to Los Angeles in 2024 – it’s no surprise that every member of No Na has emerged as an all-rounder. “Our confidence and energy also comes with [the fact that] 88rising hired us when we were all adults,” Esther says. “We’ve already lived lives before we came into this project, and we’ve already known our own personalities.”

Esther and Baila, you were both already in the music industry before joining No Na, having been on Indonesian Idol and Indonesian Idol Junior, respectively. Being more experienced, how was the training process for you?

Baila: “I feel like it was super hard for me to switch from being able to work alone to having to work with other people. It was hard in the beginning, but at the end, I cannot see myself working without [gestures at the other members]. Now it’s like I cannot go on the stage alone, I’m not gonna fucking do that. And I’m not gonna make songs alone. I need my girls with me.”

Esther: “Exactly the same for me. I struggled in the beginning. They know my struggle.”

Baila: “Also, she’s an only child.”

Esther: “Yeah, I’m an only child, so I hadn’t worked with people before. But through this journey, I learned a lot from them about myself, and I learned the true meaning of sisterhood. Ew.” [The rest of No Na laugh] “But genuinely, I think I was meant to live this life with these three girls. I’m very thankful to 88rising for introducing me to these three sisters that I have now.”

And Shaz and Christy, you two come from dance backgrounds. How different was it for you two when it came to the training?

Shaz: “I learned a lot with my singing, and learning about [my bandmates] more. I actually liked it because I get to explore so much more of myself that I didn’t get to explore before. And doing a lot of other genres that I haven’t known and finding our sound together as No Na. It was really a unique experience for me and I loved it.”

Christy: “For me, it was a really hard part [of] my life. The hardest part, because I started singing from zero. But now I’ve found my voice because of the training.”

Baila: “And us.”

Christy: “Yeah, they help me a lot.”

“We got to choose our songs, and we chose R&B. It’s just in our blood” – Baila

Even when you are exploring different genres, at the core of your sound is R&B. Where does that stem from?

Esther: “We grew up with R&B. And I think also [when we were] starting out, [during] the artist development three years ago, we were also singing a lot of R&B songs. We were paying homage to a lot of early-2000s artists as well. We practised TLC, we practised Ciara.”

Baila: “We got to choose our songs, and we chose R&B. It’s just in our blood.”

How did you work with 88rising to find and build upon this island girl sound and concept?

Esther: “We say ‘island’, they say ‘yes’.” [No Na laugh] “We communicate our wants, they communicate their wants, and we find a middle ground.”

Shaz: “We discussed a lot. We tried a lot of concepts. I remember before we debuted, we tried so many photoshoots just to see how we look in different concepts, but island girl was just what defined us, so that’s what we went for.”

Christy: “I remember, we were all together [thinking about what we] all have in common. And then, we said it together: ‘Island girl’.”

Baila: “Because Indonesia has like 17,000 different islands, so we’re all island girls.”

You really bring your Indonesian and Southeast Asian roots into your music. It’s in the lyrics, sound, outfits, dance…

Shaz: “Every time we do something, we always try to implement Indonesian elements. For example, before we make our [music videos], we have a discussion on what [we can add] that is very Indonesian or Southeast Asian. With ‘Work’, it was the traditional ceng-ceng instrument from Indonesia and the batik in our costumes.”

Being in a girl group isn’t easy, especially in this era of social media and parasocial relationships. How do you guys deal with the attention?

Esther: “I’m very into watching people’s reactions and what they like about it, what they don’t like about it. That way, we know for future releases and future projects what to do and what not to do, what people like and what people don’t like, while also protecting what we wanna do as artists. We’re very open to listening to what people say. But if it’s just coming from an ill-intentioned [place], we usually just…” [motions her hand over her head]

Baila: “Just know that we laugh at your hate comments.”

“Every time we do something, we always try to implement Indonesian elements” – Shaz

So what have you taken from what you’ve observed and how have you applied that to your releases?

Esther: “People really loved that we’re very Indonesian. We’ve shouted out our country multiple times. We’ve also showcased our beautiful cities and other places in Indonesia in our music videos, and that’s what kind of drove us into doing that more and making that a statement in every single release that we had.”

What parts of Indonesian culture have you not showcased yet, but would like to in the future?

Baila: “You know what I wanna try? I really want to try piring.”

Esther: “I was thinking the same thing!”

Shaz: “It’s a traditional dance from the Padang region and they do this…” [Esther passes Baila a plate to balance on her hand] “and they just dance with it on their hand.”

Esther: “I wanna showcase Indonesian food in our music videos. I don’t think we’ve done that before. More people need to know that we have really good food.”

Shaz: “For me, clothing. There are so many [types of] traditional clothing that we have, and because we have it different[ly] in every region, we just wanna show more and more.”

Christy: “I want people to know [that in] Indonesia we eat with our hands [without utensils]. People [are] gonna [be] like, ‘What?’”

Baila: “‘You eat with your hands?’ Yes, we do.”

Esther: “It’s [more] fun that way too.”

No Na will be turning one in less than a month. Did you ever imagine the group would be so successful in such a short time?

Baila: “This is all a surprise to us. Of course, we manifested for this to happen, but we didn’t actually think that it was gonna happen.”

Shaz: “And this soon!”

Baila: “Yeah, and we haven’t even turned one yet. We’ve barely started walking, but we’re so grateful for all the love and support.”

Esther: “And we still have a long way to go. As much as we feel like, ‘OK, this is a great start’, but we’re coming back for more.”

Baila: “Don’t get tired of us. We promise there’s more.”

No Na’s single ‘Rollerblade’ is out now via 88rising.

Photography: Toshio Ohno
Photography Assistance: Yumika Ikeda, Ryo Yamanaka
Producer: Shin Ohira
Production Management: Ippei “Tory” Fukuda, Rintaro Ito
Production: CEKAI
Retouch & Colour Grading: Defamer

The post No Na: the fiery R&B girl group bringing Indonesia to the world appeared first on NME.

Gaze out from the city quayside in Belém, Brazil, and there’s a lot to take in. To the north, the sprawling Baia de Marajo estuary stretches towards the mighty Atlantic Ocean. To the south, an epic blanket of green – the uppermost tip of the Brazilian Amazon, 60 per cent of all the world’s remaining tropical rainforest. To the east, in contrast, is the concrete skyline of the region’s urban capital. Home to 2.5million people, Belém’s waterside colonial old town is soon dwarfed by high-rise apartment blocks. Cutting through it all, and oozing Main Character Energy, the muddy Guamá River. More than a mile wide, it shapes both the landscape and the culture of Belém. Home to fishing canoes and monstrous cruise ships, its choppy waters represent a life-sustaining artery. This is life on the equator; life at the “gateway to the Amazon” – where modern human living and ancient biomes are locked in an increasingly heated bear hug.

It’s an oppressively humid Monday lunchtime in mid-November 2025. A rickety passenger boat, transporting a group of musicians, makes the short journey across the Guamá from Belém to Ilha do Combu. Three times the size of Glastonbury Festival, Combu is a forest island abundant in wildlife. Along the palm-lined banks, local Ribeirinhos – indigenous people – welcome visitors to boat-stop restaurants that rise out of the waves on tall wooden stilts. Bowls of thick savoury açaí and fresh guava fruit are handed to tourists – when the native howler monkeys don’t get there first.

For some of the diverse group of musicians that make up the newly formed multinational, multi-genre collective Flow, this could not feel farther from home. For others, this is their backyard. More, in fact – it’s ancestral soil they’re fighting to protect.

An interchanging number of songwriters, all distinguished in their own right, this mission-driven sisterhood has linked up with a unifying commitment to lift up stories of women and water worldwide. So it’s very deliberate they’re here in the Amazon right now. Across town, in a vibeless temporary conference centre, 50,000 besuited delegates are amassed for COP30 – the UN’s flagship climate change conference. A political forum intended to carve out a safer, healthier and fairer reality for every human on the planet, not just here in South America. [Hardly a spoiler: it’s not excelling]. But while the circus of power is in town, Flow are determined to have their message heard – in the corridors of power and the cultural communities of the city.

Forget supergroups, “we’re building a ‘super dynamic’” says Zimbabwean-British powerhouse Shingai, ex-Noisettes, champion of African artivism, and one of Flow’s members.

There’s the willowly Jaloo – a self-produced DIY artist and pioneer of Sci-fi Brega (an updated synth-pop and electronica take on northern Brazil’s ’60s rhythms) whose vulnerability, style and allyship for queer communities have earned her a devoted Latin American following. “There’s no straight white man behind me and what I do,” she asserts. “Particularly when I share my difficult times, I think people connect with me through those emotions.”

Madame Gandhi, former MIA drummer, from LA via Mumbai, whose innovative drive to promote social justice and nature connection has taken her to stages at TED to Burning Man. Rising Brazilian star Bebé Salvego, the youngest of the family, injects the soul of jazz and the spirit of rap. Celebrated British-Bangladeshi vocalist Sohini Alam, songwriter and vocalist with bands Khyio and Grrrl, meanwhile, explains why she’s here: “I don’t want my daughter to be fighting the same battles I am.”

And, Keila – energy commander-in-chief – vocalist from Belém, Brazil, is known for her high-octane tecnobrega, whose bold style and campaigning (against exploitation mining companies and industrial agriculture) means she’s a firm local hero.

“I don’t want my daughter to be fighting the same battles I am” – Sohini Alam

They make for a formidable crew. With five shows in four days, Flow’s women are here in Amazonia to make a noise. Briefly, though, here on Combu, there’s a rare moment to take a pause.

“We’re very used to being near this water at all moments in our lives,” says Keila. “When we’re happy, when we’re sad. When we need something. To us, it is recovery. When I speak, I think a lot about Indigenous communities, about the original peoples, about the genocide, suffering, and struggle of those who protect the forest and protect these places.”

Rewind 12 hours, and the scene is the opposite of nature’s restorative calm. Where other cities are tucked up in bed early on a Sunday evening, Old Town Belém is bouncing. It’s approaching midnight at Casa Apoena, an old converted mansion and legendary cultural venue usually found hosting carimbó and samba nights. Tonight, it feels like a rustic backyard party – buckets of iced beers passed between people. And it’s packed – at capacity before soundcheck.

Locally, word has spread rapidly about Flow. Following a short spell of rehearsals in São Paulo, their weekend kicked off with shows and talks in the official “blue zone” at the climate conference. The musicians’ presence was met with a mixture of bewilderment and excitement from blazer-wearing delegates more used to being handed free coffee from an information stall than having a singer crash-land into their lap (a Friday gig highlight is Shingai clearing the assembled crowd to somersault across the conference room floor). These spaces are not used to the women of Flow, and that’s the point. They depart, with an invite from organisers to the next global gathering in late 2026.

Online, chatter about their provocative presence grows – driven by the fanatical followings of the Brazilians in the group. Jaloo, for example, can’t walk a few metres without a selfie request. On TikTok, someone cheekily brands them the ‘Spice Girls da COP’, which soon catches on. “Which Spice Girl am I?” responds Keila with a wicked smile, “Which is the crazy one?”

All that means anticipation for their Casa Apoena appearance is high. The house lights go down, and 300 camera-phone lights go on as Keila, Sohini, Bebé, Shingai and Jaloo walk from a backstage balcony down through the audience to the stage.

The show is a vibey celebration, each artist taking a turn to lead while the others become their backing band. A team, sure, but also a healthy competition. It peaks with Shingai cartwheeling and Keila conducting the crowd from the heart of the dancefloor.

The music is as diverse and wild as its theme and creators. When the recorded Flow album arrives in November, it will also feature contributions from Nadine Shah, Maxine Peake and Charlotte Church. Shingai’s track ‘Mhondoro’ is the infectious first taste – all ‘Mhande’ handclaps, distorted guitar and a mountainous chorus – and will be shared this week (April 30). “Flow gave us the freedom to explore our cross-cultural experiences,” she says. “I recorded my piece in Zimbabwe with local musicians. Shortly afterwards, I was rehearsing it with the other artists here in Brazil, which felt quite magical.

“My hope is that the music created through Flow becomes something joyful yet impossible to ignore” – Shingai

“My hope is that the music created through Flow becomes something joyful yet impossible to ignore,” she continues. “Something that resonates across cultures and conversations. We are building our own ‘Ancient Futures’ and the soundtrack is already cooking nicely.” A documentary film – there’s a crew out here in the Amazon – will also arrive in the autumn, before touring around the world.

There’s one final stop on their Brazilian adventure, a show at Casa Mídia Ninja. In tune with the change-making spirit of Flow, the venue is an activism and content hub formed as a response to the exclusion of youth and underrepresented voices in traditional Brazilian media.

The performance, once again, shifts up a gear, with the centrepiece a chest-beating speech from Keila chiding the absence of major musicians speaking out on behalf of people and the planet. As the crowd continues the party into the night, backstage, the Flow artists fall into each others’ arms. Mission-accomplished – for the moment.

“Flow shows what can happen when women are given the space to write about subjects beyond the narrow expectations often placed on them in mainstream music,” says Shingai later. “It’s refreshing. It’s necessary. And honestly, it’s about time.”

Flow’s ‘Mhondoro’ is out on 30 April via EarthSonic. 

The post Flow: the multinational, multi-genre sisterhood dubbed the ‘Spice Girls of the Amazon’ appeared first on NME.

The strange limbo between your late teens and looming adulthood colours the entirety of ‘Restless In Bloom’, the just-announced debut EP from London four-piece Tooth, who capture the anxieties and struggles of coming of age through a palette of grungy garage-rock and angsty second-wave emo. Penned as the band themselves were experiencing the trials of that period in life, it swirls with the innocent melodrama of relationships, growing up and finding your place in the world.

“It was a reflection of where my head was at then,” frontman Tom Pollock tells NME now, as he and his bandmates dial in from sun-splashed bedrooms and gardens on the UK’s hottest day of the year so far. “When I was writing the lyrics, I was at that fork in the road moment when you turn 18, and you notice that your adolescence is falling behind you. You hit this strange point where there’s no real certainty of what will happen in the future, but you’ve got to keep moving on.”

The band’s urgent debut single, ‘Age Of Innocence’, perfectly encapsulates this sentiment. Set against a backdrop of fuzzed-up, aching guitars, there’s a vibrant rush of youthful malaise and nostalgic warmth as Pollock delivers a vocal that feels ripe for the biggest festival stages: “I didn’t think youth would get so complicated / It’s a certain fate, I’ll never think straight”.

The track effortlessly lives up to the word-of-mouth buzz that the band have built through a heavy touring approach over the last three years, making the most of opportunities to play after forming during the pandemic. Although Pollock and guitarist Ben Ashley had been playing together since their early teens, the singer notes that period of enforced lockdown “was really important for us because it offered an opportunity to pick up instruments and really learn”.

Like many other budding young bands around the world, the pair instantly bonded over legendary touchstones like Sonic Youth, Interpol and Pixies, and decided to start their own project after some initial jam sessions. Soon, the lineup was completed by Charlie Arnison (bass) and Roy Lowe (drums), and as soon as lockdown was lifted, they threw themselves onto the London gig circuit, taking on a residency at The Blue Posts in Soho. “Those nights were messy and sleazy but a lot of fun,” recalls Ashley. “The place was the size of a bathroom with leopard-print carpet, and we’d just get really drunk every Friday. “It was important for us, though, because we got to play every week and it was a great testing ground.”

Inspired, rather than daunted, by the vast bustling music scene on their doorstep, the band, who all grew up in the capital, immersed themselves in the wider community. They lined up gigs at venues like The George Tavern and The Windmill – spaces that have become a rite of passage for any alternative band, in London and beyond, serious about their future.

“Some people often see London as quite an intimidating place culturally, but that wasn’t our experience,” says Pollock. “As soon as we started branching out and trying to play in different venues, we found so many like-minded bands. There was a real sense of belonging when we started playing around the city.”

“Even as mates, we’d just go to shows every week and having that constant pool of music there did shape us,” adds Ashley. “I remember seeing Wunderhorse opening for Fontaines D.C. in 2022, and that was such an inspiring moment. You’re so impressionable in your teens that each new band we saw each week took our sound in a new direction and made us quite versatile.”

Given Tooth’s songs grapple so directly with relatable themes around the turmoil of growing up, it’s understandable that – despite only being a handful of singles in – the band have already built a devoted youthful community of their own. Listening to freewheeling alt-rock anthems like ‘Medicine’ and it’s not hard to see why the songs have struck such a chord. There’s a sense of abandon as moody, driving guitars cascade under Pollock’s lyricism, which captures the enormous weight of young romances: “She sells stimulation, I feel it in my chest / It wounds in ways I can’t explain”.

“There’s people who turn up to every show now, and that only started happening last year,” says Ashley. “It’s so cool because you start seeing people’s reactions and how much they care. I remember that feeling of finding something that was special and your own, and it’s really wild to suddenly be on the other side of that.”

Pollock says it’s something they’re hoping to build on, “We really hope that people can relate to those feelings of confusion because it’s such a universal set of emotions that everyone goes through in life. It’s a rite-of-passage as you face this realisation that adulthood is waiting for you.”

While they might still be at the very start of their journey, the band do see ‘Restless In Bloom’ as the closing of a chapter now they’ve navigated their own coming of age and entered their early twenties. “We’re very proud of these songs, but moving forward, we want to push the boat out and reflect on who we are as people now,” Ashley muses. “I see the EP as a diary – we’ve left that note in, and now we’re going to move forward onto the next thing.”

“When you turn 18 […] you hit this strange point where there’s no real certainty of what will happen in the future” – Tom Pollock

“That’s the bit that excites me the most,” adds Pollock. “We’re all experiencing new things all the time. I’ve got a vast pool of inspiration to write about through being a young adult in London and all of the highs and the lows that come with that. It really excites me because we’re not closing any doors, we’re chasing whatever feels fun.”

With the EP on the horizon and a big summer ahead following their inclusion in 2026’s NME 100, including performances at tastemaking festivals like The Great Escape, the band are determined to soak up every moment through this breakthrough year. Given the subject matter they’ve written about so far, a set at Reading – a festival that’s long marked moving from adolescence into the early days of young adulthood for British youth – will carry extra significance for the band.

“A lot of people who come to our shows are the age we were when we first started the band, and Reading will be no different,” says Pollock. “Songs like ‘Age…’ and ‘Medicine’ are written about that point in life, so it really does resonate with people, and platforms like Reading are brilliant for striking that connection. It will be a really nice full-circle moment.”

As things dial up, they’re determined not to lose sight of who they were from day one. “When things started to feel a bit more serious, I think we were quite overwhelmed by it all,” suggests Ashley. “We had to take a moment within the group and identify the reason why we all started playing together in the first place. We decided that having fun was the most fundamental thing within the group that we needed to maintain at all times.

Considering Tooth entered this project under a cloud of uncertainty, moving into their own futures, you can’t help but feel like the road ahead suddenly seems so much clearer. As Pollock concludes, “If we stay together and focused, that will give the best chance for magic to fall at our doorstep.”

Tooth’s ‘Restless In Bloom’ EP is out on June 12 via Soil To The Sun Recordings

The post Tooth are channelling youthful confusion into supersized grunge anthems appeared first on NME.

A magical, colourful spectacle is unfolding on the streets of Kingston. People are covered in jewels from head to toe, and women are carrying flowery wings like carnival fairies. Trucks roll slowly through shut-down streets, bass travelling through concrete before it reaches bone, while feathers and sequins catch the afternoon sun that’s beating down as the Road March parade – the biggest day of Carnival In Jamaica’s week-long celebrations – takes over the city.

• READ MORE: Destin Conrad: an R&B adventurer who’s hungry for more
  

Across the route, floats cut through the crowd with a steady rhythm. Soca legend Machel Montano commands one – carnival time is his heyday, as he soundtracks some of the biggest songs of the season – while international Jamaican music superstars like Shenseea, Ayetian and Klassik Escobar keep the energy high from above, playing to the crowd. Below, the response is immediate: waistlines wukking, arms flinging, cups pushed skyward.

Just months earlier, parts of this same island looked unrecognisable. In October 2025, Hurricane Melissa tore through Jamaica’s south coast, flattening homes and farmland – stripping people of their livelihoods. It caused an estimated USD$8.8billion worth of damage, killed 45 people, injured nearly 100, and left thousands of families without homes.

For a diaspora scattered across continents, Jamaican music has always functioned as more than entertainment – an anchor back to roots. In the wake of the storm, it became a way to rebuild and reconnect, and from London to Kingston, club nights turned into fundraisers and sound systems into lifelines, its familiar rhythm something to return to when everything else felt uncertain.

In St. Elizabeth – one of the hardest-hit regions – leading modern reggae star Protoje watched it unfold in real time. “It looked atomic,” he says. “Like a bomb went off.” His stark description matches the reality of the situation – the strongest hurricane ever to hit the island country caused an aftermath that was both economic and emotional. “My mom used to grow a lot of produce there, and it all got ruined in the storm,” he explains.

That loss threads through ‘At We Feet’ – a Damian Marley-featuring track from Protoje’s latest album, ‘The Art Of Acceptance’, that moves between documentation and defiance. In the song’s accompanying visuals, he shows onions, melons, and pak choi – crops native to the region – and uses them to show the fruitfulness of the area before. “God a wipe out while man a make plans / So in all things, yeah we haffi give thanks,” he sings at one point, proving that, despite devastation, positivity and gratitude for life are what push the nation forward. “We have this resilience to rebuild and go again,” he explains to NME. “To huddle and come together as people and help each other out, and emerge victorious.”

Protoje practised what he preached in February. Nearly four months after the hurricane, while other events across the island were being cancelled, he pressed ahead with Lost In Time, the festival he founded with his sister, festival director LeAnn Ollivierre. Logistically, it didn’t make sense. But the decision came down to something simple: presence. “[My sister] said just showing up would be enough,” he recalls. So they did, building the entire event in six weeks and bringing people together at a time when it would have been easier to retreat.

According to Protoje, music – whether you hear it at Lost In Time or Carnival – is so important because “you could still be hearing a topic about struggle, but the feel of the drums and the bass… you’re moving, and on your face is a smile”. People come back to Jamaica for big events like Carnival because “music has the power to heal, power to kill, power to uplift, power to drag down – it’s not a joke thing”.

That belief is built into the spaces Jamaican music moves through. At Tuff Gong International, the Kingston studio founded by Bob Marley, they function on the ethos of one of Jamaicans’ core attributes: resilience. Long before 220 Marcus Garvey Drive became a one-stop shop for the island’s creatives, it was a battleground for access. “Bob Marley first tried to get here and record, he was told no because, one, he’s a Black man, and two, a Rasta man,” Oneika Young, Group Marketing Manager of the Bob Marley Group of Companies, which owns the studio, tells NME. He got through eventually – but not before declaring that one day he’d own the space, so that people who looked like him could create there freely.

Carnival season 2026 arrives in the middle of that promise being kept. The studio, recently renovated under CEO Cedella Marley, now functions as a full creative hub – recording, rehearsal, visuals, vinyl pressing, all under one roof – and its rates are deliberately affordable, starting at 5,000 Jamaican dollars (£23.35) an hour. “This is for everybody,” says Stephen Marley at the relaunch. The intention behind those words runs centuries deep.

“Reggae is the music of the people, and the drum is the heartbeat of a society,” Young says. “Jamaicans especially have been able to use music as a platform to speak about our injustices and our resistance – but it has also been a way for us to advocate for ourselves.” In the months since Hurricane Melissa, that advocacy took on new urgency – in fundraisers, in festivals that refused to cancel, in a carnival season that showed up louder and more purposeful than ever.

If Tuff Gong represents the backbone, the diaspora shows how far that reach travels. “Music is probably the most prominent thing that keeps me connected to the island,” says Jephina Lueche, a Chinese-Jamaican creative known as @jlueche online, based in Toronto. “There’s nothing that brings me home like hearing lovers rock playing in the kitchen.” Her Guyanese father, once the lead vocalist in a reggae band called Leejahn, raised her on that genre and roots – Bob Marley, Steel Pulse, Beres Hammond, Sanchez. Over time, those songs stopped being something she just listened to and became cultural currency she passed down to her eight-year-old son.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa, that sense of shared identity became visible in action. People returned home to bring aid and rebuild – and even during the storm itself, in the places less badly hit, people were still outside and still finding music to move to in the middle of it. Lueche watched it unfold on social media in real time. “I think people are able to still party and dance because they know they have each other’s backs. If you know one Jamaican, you know all Jamaicans – it’s always love,” she says.

For Lueche, who returns to the island regularly to visit family, Carnival represents an extension of that same instinct – communal, deliberate, restorative. “Carnival brings in a lot of revenue – the island thrives on tourism,” she adds. “People coming back, especially for things like Carnival, helps put money back into the economy.” In a way, this year’s event carries a smidge more weight – it’s still a bold demonstration of Caribbean joy, but this time, there’s a thread of recovery and grit in it, too.

For months, people have been trying to rebuild their lives, but for a week, they come together to release that stress. The season all starts with fun, soca-filled warm-up parties like Sunrise – a formal outdoor brunch party with surplus food and special musical guests – and I Love Soca Fête. Often, on the morning of or the day before the famous colourful masquerade band parades, J’Ouvert takes place.

The event – which name means “daybreak” in Creole – started in the 1780s in Trinidad and Tobago, when the formerly enslaved reclaimed the streets in response to the pre-Lenten masquerade balls held by French colonial elites that they were excluded from. NME rolls out with the Gen X Immortals band this year, waking up at 3am to party until the crack of dawn, spraying Fruit Shoot-style bottles of paint and flinging powder packets around in a carefree free-for-all – a messy affair not concerned with appearances. Even after the Road March is over, there are endless afterparties where bejewelled bodies continue to dance on under the night sky. There’s still music on every corner, parties on every street, and carnival season pulls Jamaicans at home and across the diaspora into a shared moment of unity.

The island hasn’t forgotten what it’s been through – you can still see it in the flattened fields, and in the work still being done to rebuild – but it hasn’t stopped either. “Wi likkle but wi tallawah” – small, but mighty – isn’t just a motto of Jamaican people, but also a way of understanding how the country and community move through moments like this. The bass still rolls. The songs still carry. And long after the road clears, what’s left isn’t just the memory of a party, but proof of something steadier underneath it – a rhythm that holds.

The post Carnival In Jamaica 2026: how music kept Jamaica moving appeared first on NME.

Over the past year, Saam Sultan has built a cult-like following off the back of his visceral, self-produced sound: a blend of misty cloud rap, ambient pop and film-score sensibilities that’s guided by instinct rather than genre. Breakout tracks like the astral, lovesick pull of ‘Locked In Love’ and the blown-out, mantra-like ‘Ydoifeel?’ have quietly gathered momentum online, positioning the Fort Lauderdale-born, Brighton-raised artist as one of the UK’s most intriguing new voices. There’s little doubt why he earned a spot on this year’s NME 100.

• READ MORE: La Reezy makes hip-hop full of heart and humanity

Although the 20-year-old says recognition has “never been something that’s on my mind” and prefers to keep his focus on the music itself, scoring a place on NME’s list of essential emerging artists was worth it to see his mother’s reaction. He lights up, recalling how she “jumped and got excited” at the news. “She’s such a music nerd,” he explains, nestled in a plush leather seat at London’s The Standard hotel, a fuzzy cashmere hood swallowing his unruly curls. He credits her expansive record collection – spanning Persian music, Motown, Latin sounds, ’80s J-pop and everything in between – as the root of his wide-reaching taste. It’s a foundation that explains why Sultan’s music feels so unbound: it was never raised in one place to begin with.

Across his growing catalogue, Sultan swings between hushed introspection and cocksure clarity, between ambient confessionals and moments of pure ego – “talking his shit” one minute, dissolving into something far more vulnerable the next. It’s a push-and-pull that feels drawn from a lived reality. His life has been shaped by constant movement: Sultan was born in Florida and raised between the Sunshine State and Barbados. When he was around 10 years old, his family relocated to Brighton after his father lost his job.

“My way of making music is jamming. I just jam. Whatever comes at the moment”

“When we moved to the UK, we lost everything,” he recounts, detailing the “really tight conditions” his family lived in. That instability never calcified into hardship in his mind, though: “I always saw having a bed to sleep on, having my parents there, as the biggest privilege in the world. My family is loving, my circle is tight – that’s what I consider real wealth.”

Sultan learned early to make the most of very little, and his way into music was very much the same. While he didn’t have access to formal training, he was a curious lad who took risks and made opportunities for himself. When he was “eight or nine” – on a brief trip to Brighton before the permanent move – he spotted a MIDI keyboard in the window of the music shop GAK and convinced his parents to let him save up for it. “I had to do chores, wait for my birthday – saved up £60,” he recalls. Around the same time, his great-uncle – a techie with a slight hoarding problem – built him a PC from spare parts. It wasn’t powerful, but it didn’t need to be. The keyboard came with Ableton, and Sultan taught himself everything from there.

At school, he’d skip classes under the false pretence of piano lessons, hiding out in empty music rooms to experiment. Later, at 17, he dropped out of college to pursue music full-time because his mum told him he had “enough time to fail”. Even now, he still resists traditional structure: “My way of making music is jamming. I just jam. Whatever comes at the moment.” It’s why his music often feels less like it’s been written and more like it’s been uncovered – ideas surfacing from somewhere half-conscious, half-remembered.

That instinctive approach also explains why his early breakout moments arrived almost accidentally. Sultan didn’t mean to contribute to the UK’s cloud rap resurgence with ‘Ydoifeel?’, its warped samples and weightless delivery evoking Clams Casino’s production on A$AP Rocky’s ‘Live.Love.A$AP’. “I wasn’t really informed enough to understand that’s even called cloud rap,” he admits. In another world, the song wouldn’t have been released at all. “It doesn’t resonate with me the most personally,” he says. It took a friend pushing him to release music after nearly a decade of making it privately and second-guessing whether it truly reflected him.

To Sultan, music isn’t something to analyse or categorise: “Music is something that’s supposed to plug into your soul. You’re supposed to feel it.” He learnt this young, standing beside his grandfather’s hospital bed as Michael Jackson’s ‘Smile’ played – a moment he still describes as “the most ethereal feeling” of his life. Long before gaining any traction in the industry, Sultan had already committed to the idea that music wasn’t something to “make it” from, but something to live through. “I’d rather be 80 years old and never have achieved my dream,” he says, “but have a whole catalogue of music that someone can find one day and be proud that I lived my life, rather than survived it.”

Sultan’s already had a taste of that dream with ‘Locked In Love’ – the cinematic track that has become his biggest song to date, giving that world its widest audience yet and solidifying his signature soft-focus style. But he’s already evolving with his newer material. Take ‘Crocodile Woman’, a woozy cut from his upcoming EP, where he pushes further into emotional expression – stretching his voice to its limits on a progressive R&B ode to love that feels as unstable as the feeling it’s trying to preserve. The source of conflict here is external: outside voices creeping in, making him “question something that felt pure”.

“My family is loving, my circle is tight – that’s what I consider real wealth”

It’s a subtle shift, but an important one: where earlier work felt like personal observation, ‘Crocodile Woman’ opens that world up, letting narrative lead as much as feeling. In doing so, Sultan starts to stretch beyond the loose underground rap framing that’s followed him so far. He’s simply outgrowing its limits, and although he does rap, he’s hesitant to claim his place as a rapper outright: “I have no issue with someone calling me that, but it’s not what I am in my own world.”

As Sultan evolves, the new EP acts as a bridge – a “crossover period”, as he puts it – between all he’s made so far and everything he’s about to become on his debut album, which he’s already started fleshing out. Before that arrives, though, we’ll have this new record – a way of showing where he’s at without locking himself into just one category. Maybe that’s the clearest way to understand Saam Sultan right now: not as an artist chasing definition, but as one building a space where that doesn’t matter.

The post Saam Sultan lets his instincts guide the way: “Music is supposed to plug into your soul” appeared first on NME.

Sofia Isella trades in textures. From the breathy spoken-word of her dark, discordant pop songs to the layered visual metaphors of her eerie music videos, there’s a gritty brutality to her music, like lines scratched in dirt.

• READ MORE: Sofia Isella on the NME 100 of 2025

Her new EP ‘Something Is A Shell .’ turns that up an octave, prying apart lofty concepts surrounding God, morality and eternal damnation, dragging them back down to earth where Isella can break them down for parts. “I love to give a physical sensation to people, rather than just going straight to the ears,” she says.

Written from the wreckage of a cultural wasteland that pumps out porn and tradwife content with equal enthusiasm, the EP registers like a body horror, where jaws unhinge and flesh fries. “The context is not beautiful,” she nods.

“The contents that I’m talking about are horrifying. They are scary and they’re disturbing, so anything else wouldn’t make sense.”

When NME first spoke to Isella in 2024, she’d already started to gather a cult following thanks to the social media success of early tracks like ‘Everybody Supports Women’ and ‘The Doll People’. Delivered with an air of Regina Spektor flourish and NIN-esque industrial weight, her incendiary takes on misogyny and womanhood appealed to a generation of young women who could quote a line from Sylvia Plath’s “Fig Tree” with the same ease as they might a Taylor Swift lyric – an overlap that neatly crystallised with Isella supporting her at Wembley Stadium.

Back then, she told us that she’d sometimes write a line and find it would later manifest in her real life. ‘Above The Neck’ might be looked back on years from now as the starkest warning we got on yoking femininity so closely to unattainable perfection: “Everything but the imitation of youth must be given up at the desk / Everything but the look that sells / You’re 12 looking 20, or you’re 20 looking 12”.

“What is seen as attractive is to look as if there is no knowledge or life in you”

“When I wrote it, I was thinking of a combination of a bazillion different things, and one of the main ones was porn,” she explains from Los Angeles over Zoom. It’s not gone unnoticed by Isella, 21, that skirting the ‘barely legal’ line sells best. “They wear Hello Kitty underwear, they put pigtails on and they cross their eyes,” she sighs, her own obscured by steampunk glasses. “And they act as if they have no idea what’s going on. Which is hot to the men, and very disturbing and very creepy to me.”

Porn is “a heightened and more obvious” reflection of trends in broader culture, she points out, as pedophilic beauty standards seep into everyday life too. “Our skin, the closer it can look to a child’s, the better. The closer our bodies can look to prepubescent, the better.” Isella seemingly responds by routinely caking herself in dirt and favouring baggy, beige clothes on stage.

Throughout our conversation, her speech is considered and unhurried, and she’s unflinching in her assessment that “everything about us has been directed by paedophiles.”

“And,” she adds, “what is seen as attractive is to look as if there is no knowledge in you, there is no life in you. There is no desire to think of anything.”

What Isella describes no longer seems like a distant horror story in light of the partial release of the Epstein files. The ugliest underbelly of the political elite has been revealed, and Isella, rather than turn away from the world’s ugliness, seems to revel in exposing it, making it sound as squalid and perverse as it is when she spits: “Men are titillated by that delicate line / Between sex, song and nursery rhyme.”

It is perhaps because of her confrontational writing that Isella has had people call her ‘demonic’ – a label she deems cliché and boring. But she was struck by one person who was “very convinced”, advising that people should pray before and after listening to her music, and wash their hands, lest her words somehow seep through the skin – a visual you can’t help but imagine she’d like.

Over the years, Isella says, her ‘live and let live’ philosophy around religion has roughened, evident on EP opener ‘Numbers 31:17-18’ when she pointedly asks: “What kind of god are you defending?”

She laughs softly and promises to be “gentle” when religion comes up, sensing her next words will be anything but.

“My problem with ‘to each their own’ now is it’s not to each their own, because when you have this type of belief system being woven into our culture and how people make laws and how people think of the world, to each their own doesn’t really hold any weight anymore.”

Isella thinks very little of those who demand reverence of “old texts” and the violent acts within them, like “child rape and mass murder, with no sense or reason”. “[When people say] we must have some deep respect for that, it’s just shocking to me. And I have completely gone against it.”

“I think the flow state of writing is the greatest feeling in the world. Everything I do feels like a love letter to that state of mind”

Isella, who was homeschooled in LA, picked up songwriting at eight and didn’t have a phone until she was 16. With social media not yet clouding her consciousness, her time was spent reading poetry, practicing violin and learning to produce music.

“I didn’t know who Ariana Grande was until I was 14. I was very detached from what to know,” she says. “A lot of why I can write, and the biggest thing I give credit for it, is I was extremely bored growing up. I had, like, acres and acres of free time, and I wasn’t around people my age all the time. I was at my house, bored.”

Despite her antipathy for religion, Isella isn’t spiritually incurious. She does feel a kind of tether – “a flow state, is that what they call it?” – to something beyond herself when she writes. “I think it’s the greatest feeling in the world, and I think that everything I do feels like a love letter to that state of mind,” she says. “And it does not feel like it is coming from me. It feels like there is something else, like some kind of long straw.”

As far as invisible cords go, you could argue there’s another one linking her to artists like Paris Paloma, Hayley Williams and RAYE. All pretty distinct in sound, but united by a refusal to shrink that empowers the women in their fanbases. Another name that might come to mind is Florence Welch, whom Isella will join on Florence + The Machine’s US tour dates this month.

“She is so mind-blowingly incredible,” she says of Welch, who has now become a friend. “She is a legendary talent, and the kindest, warmest human. Man, I am just excited to get to see her show six times. That’s what I’m looking forward to.”

With her own tour of the UK/EU looming, what is Isella looking forward to most when she heads out on her own?

“I’m a very argumentative person,” she knowingly smiles. “And a lot of times when I write songs, especially political songs, I have argued with people so much that I know exactly what they would say. I’ve discussed religion to smithereens.

“There’ve been people who come to my shows and they’ve said I’ve changed their mind on something,” she adds. That’s the thing she wants to do more of: “To change people’s minds.”

Sofia Isella’s ‘Something Is A Shell .’ is out April 17. The Her Desire, The Nemesis Tour of the UK/EU begins in May

The post Sofia Isella looks into the abyss appeared first on NME.

Holly Humberstone’s personality has enough warmth to put the coldest of winter mornings to rights. That’s exactly what happens on 2026’s edition of ‘Blue Monday’ (January 19), as Humberstone gazes at the guitars that garnish the walls of London music store Dawsons before joining NME on the sofa. Visibly excited for the year ahead, you can only imagine how Humberstone is feeling today (April 10), as she finally unveils her long-awaited second album ‘Cruel World’.

In truth, the gap between now and 2023’s ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’ – plus her appearance on The Cover – feels long because of the rocket strapped to Humberstone at the start of her career. NME was one of the first on board around her outstanding 2020 EP ‘Falling Asleep At The Wheel’, which introduced the magical combination of her spellbinding voice with gut-punch indie-pop storytelling. She landed a major label deal with Polydor/Interscope, and was soon collaborating with The 1975’s Matty Healy.

The reality of Humberstone’s move to London from Grantham, where she was raised, was laid bare when she performed ‘London Is Lonely’ at the 2022 BRIT Awards as the winner of the Critics’ Choice (fka Rising Star) award. Touring life, it turned out, was just as intense as the Big Smoke. Four-walled hotel rooms, distance from her loved ones and never-ending change informed much of ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’. When its resultant tour cycle finished in September 2024, Humberstone, after nearly five years under the lights, finally had some downtime.

“When I came off tour, I was like, ‘I know who I am as an artist, but who am I as a person?’” she tells NME. “It was the first chunk of time that I’d ever had off. The main objective is to go and live your life like a normal person and write an album, which was a very different experience to how I wrote ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’. I really needed the space to take a breather, slow things down a bit and reconnect with who I am.”

The result is ‘Cruel World’, a radiant album that finds beauty in the good, the bad and the ugly of life as Holly Humberstone traverses her twenties, step by step. For the latest edition of our In Conversation series, she discussed the journey to the album.

NME: Where did ‘Cruel World’ start? Did it fall out of you, or was it a process you instigated?

Holly Humberstone: “Lots of things [changed] during this past year that informed the writing of the album. Firstly, my first experience of being in love and in a relationship. That’s such a formative thing, exploring love as an emotion and finding out that actually, it can be the most amazing thing, but it’s inherently such a painful emotion at its core. You can’t really separate out the amazing parts with the really, really rubbish lows. Exploring that dichotomy was a big theme in the album, which you can hear.

“Also, we moved out of the ‘Haunted House’ [Humberstone’s family home in Grantham]. For that first chunk of the writing period, I was going back to the Midlands and helping my parents sort out 25 years’ worth of six Humberstones. I rediscovered lots of old relics that I used to treasure in the back of my wardrobe and under my bed in my childhood room that I would never have found… it really helped me reconnect [with] who I am at my core.”

“I think we’ve all got to surrender to the weirdness of life”

What’s it like trying to start a new life in London and say goodbye to the place you grew up in? Is it something you’re still navigating?

“Definitely. I’m so heavily inspired by my physical surroundings. I’ve moved house in London… redefining home and physically shaping my world around me has been really crucial to the writing process. I painted my new bedroom pink, it’s the colour of my childhood bedroom. I think it’s hilarious, the character arc that I’ve been through.

“Being in your twenties is so confusing. I personally feel like a different person every week, trying to figure out who the hell I am… writing has always been my way of trying to navigate what’s going on around me. ‘Lucy’ is for any other young girl out there like me trying to navigate life in a world that isn’t really built for them. Things can be super confusing, but you’ve got to roll with the punches and realise that it takes time to find your feet in the modern world.”

It’s such an important message… things are changing, things are confusing, but that’s okay. What revealed that to you?

“The songs, honestly. I have no real control over what comes out in the room. That sounds so stupid, but I have to go with my gut in the room and write about how I’m feeling on the day. The beauty of life is that anything could be around the corner, and you’ve got to roll with the punches and remember that you’re only a human being. We’ve got to ride the wave of chaos that comes at you in your twenties… it’s hopeless trying to keep your life in check. I think we’ve all got to surrender to the weirdness of life.”

What did that life look like? You said you had to figure yourself out – did you need time for Holly Humberstone, the person, to catch up with the artist making music?

“It definitely took me a while to figure out how to exist, be on my own and have thoughts, because touring is overwhelming and overstimulating. [I was] trying to be kind to myself and to give myself the space to be creative in my own time. Obviously, the objective was to write an album, but also to find out who I am again and live my own life. I like going to the pub with my friends and sisters, and seeing my family is really important. It’s been a formative year, and I feel like I am in a position where I finally can take agency in my personal life, as an artist and run my own project more, which I found super hard to do in my early twenties.”

“Every songwriter probably has that intrusive thought – ‘I’ve written my last good song’ – but I think that’s a normal thing”

That empty time, feeling understimulated – were there things you did to fill that void? Was music the thing that kept coming back? Or is it not about filling the void, and just being okay with it?

“The instinct is to try and fill the void with having The Simpsons on a constant loop in the background… me and my sister [Eleri] had a lot of time to go on some crazy tangents with the films we were watching that have really heavily inspired the creative, as well. Especially with fixing up the house, it’s been a learning curve, and I still don’t really know anything. For once, going to the studio was the least stressful part of my life. I didn’t have the spare mental capacity to be worrying about what I was going to write. So when I did get to the studio, that felt like the place to escape and to create my own fantasy world, which is where ‘Cruel World’ came from. It’s nice to be able to romanticise the mundane. I talk a lot about where I live, being a young woman in London and trying to figure out this confusing city.”

For future periods of change, you’ve always got songwriting and the studio. Is that a nice thing to think about, that music can always be there for you?

“Every songwriter probably has that intrusive thought – ‘I’ve written my last good song’ – but I think that’s a normal thing. Music will always be such a huge part of my world, which I’m so grateful for, because the world would be such a dull place without music and human connection. Especially with the current climate and all the horrific, terrifying things that are happening in the world, having human connection and music to retreat to as a comfort thing has been so important for me. I think that’s why it’s important to be vulnerable, open and share the truths, the good parts of my life, being in love, and also the not so pretty parts.”

‘To Love Somebody’ is a great example of that. How easy or difficult is that to focus on lots of different emotions, rather than isolated emotions, and channel them into a song? It’s so easy to focus on negatives, when times are tough. Where do you find the silver lining?

“I wrote it about somebody really close to me going through a really, really rough breakup. When I set out to write that song, I think my main aim was to give her something that felt positive, to flip a horrendous, brutal heartbreak on its head. You’re feeling all of these really low lows right now, but the grief that you feel now is only a reflection of the love that you felt. Some people go through their whole lives without being in love, and it’s such a special thing to have in your life, even if it is short-lived, it comes and goes.”

To follow on from that, ‘Make It All Better’ and ‘Die Happy’ are about the relationship you’re in at the moment. What’s it like to give yourself to that amazing feeling and convey those emotions?

“They’re talking about the exact same thing, how love can be all-consuming and so powerful. ‘Die Happy’ was really inspired by the season I wrote it in, which was Halloween. I loved Tim Burton movies, his world-building aspect, and I wanted to write my own Tim Burton-esque song about how love can feel really dangerous, and you can love somebody so much that it can be scary. ‘Make It All Better’, I’m really proud of that songwriting. I wanted to romanticise my own life and write in a melodramatic way about love.”

Your sister Eleri was involved with the creative, something you said you threw yourself into more than you’ve had time to in the past. What was that process like?

‘When we wrote the song ‘Cruel World’, that sparked everything and led my sister and I on this crazy tangent. I’ve always been inspired by gothic, dark fairytales. Alice In Wonderland, The Wizard Of Oz and stories about alternative universes where the main character goes into this underworld or upside down to try and escape growing up and avoid reality. The videos tell that story from my point of view, and I feel like ‘Cruel World’ is my own dark fairytale universe that I’ve made with my sister. It was my first time working with a female director [Silken Weinberg]. It’s definitely given me so much more backing and confidence to work with my sister, who knows me better than anybody. I really trust her.”

You’ve moved in with two of your sisters plus a friend, and you’ve never been shy about writing songs about how much you appreciate them. What’s that been like in this house, especially given ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’ was partly written about missing some of these people and holding relationships when you’re halfway across the world?

“We’re all young girls trying to navigate life in our twenties, and it’s really nice to be able to do that alongside each other. My sisters and my friends are so much wiser than I could ever be. I don’t feel the need to leave the house because I’ve got my best friends and favourite people within the house. I think it’s turned ‘Cruel World’ into a very feminine record. The transition from girlhood to adulthood is very scary, and I’m very lucky to be able to do it alongside other girls. My small contribution to what we’ve got going on in our little cult is that I can write songs for everybody. It’s not that great, but everybody needs to know that they’re on the right track sometimes. That’s why ‘Lucy’ and ‘Beauty Pageant’ are really important for me to put out and were really cathartic for me to write.”

Holly Humberstone’s ‘Cruel World’ is out now

The post Holly Humberstone: “You’ve got to roll with the punches and realise that it takes time to find your feet in the modern world” appeared first on NME.

It’s barely minutes into the conversation when La Reezy leans in with a grin and says he’s got something “exclusive” for NME. Asked what first pulled him toward music, he doesn’t start with a verse or a turning point, but a memory: captured in a photo of himself at four years old, beaming in an oversized black jacket and a red SpongeBob tee. “I was dancing around the house like Michael Jackson at that age, and my grandma used to make outfits for me to dress up and dance in,” the New Orleans upstart recounts over a grainy Zoom call. “It’s been written.”

• READ MORE: Samara Cyn: in pursuit of freedom and growth in a grim world

Three years on from the TikTok traction he gained with ‘Birth’, a diaristic gut-punch that zeroed in on the instability of his upbringing (“No parent, friend, or blood / Treated my pain like Funyuns crumbs”), the artist born Khayree Salahuddin has gone all-in on ensuring his dreams aren’t “make believe”. What started as internet buzz around the intro to his self-produced EP ‘Reeborn’ has grown into something harder to ignore. After a whirlwind 2025 – four projects, including ‘Pardon Me, I’m Different’ with fellow NOLA native PJ Morton, opening for Little Simz at the Hollywood Palladium, and sharing a bill with Earl Sweatshirt and Clipse at Camp Flog Gnaw – his rise feels undeniable.

With that momentum, it’s easy to see why La Reezy shrugs off reductive labels. Artist, activist, entertainer: he brushes past all of it with the same ease he flips between flows. “My message is always the lead, then it’s whatever my ears are intrigued by,” he says. It sounds offhand, but it’s the engine behind everything he does. One minute he’s in a reflective, conscious pocket that harks back to Talib Kweli, and the next, he’s veering into something more off-kilter and animated, his tone stretching and snapping in a way that nods to Danny Brown. Then, just as quickly, he’s back riding bright, kinetic New Orleans bounce like it’s second nature.

That push-and-pull is baked into his DNA. On ‘Hungry Flows’, a chipmunk soul-laden cut he confesses he made when he was “flat-out broke, eating nothing but fast food”, he’s unapologetic about his ambition: “Martin Luther had a dream, Kanye West said ‘And I wonder’ / K. Dot wanted to be heard but Reezy ’bout to bring the thunder…” It might read as bravado but plays more like a manifesto, echoing the righteous intensity of Black Star. Yet on tracks like ‘Have Mercy’, he remembers a childhood friend grappling with teenage fatherhood (“Roman is 17 and he’s a dad, damn Roman ain’t have a dad / Maybe that’s why he was mad, the oldest boy was never taught to be a man”), revealing a level of emotional maturity well beyond his 21 years.

He calls himself the “leader of the UTH” and is quick to stress the weight of that role. “I think my words and my concepts come first,” he says. “If that’s activism, then yeah, but it’s really just speaking life into people.” That philosophy has already taken him into spaces far bigger than the usual rap circuit, including performing at the 61st commemoration of Malcolm X in February. Even now, he sounds slightly dazed recounting it. “You learn about that in school, then you’re there, you’re a part of it. It makes you realise this history is still now.”

“Even though it’s one of the hardest things to do, I wanna sound like myself”

That perspective shapes how he sees the wider rap landscape, especially who gets visibility. When a certain streaming giant recently implied that hip-hop is in need of new leaders, Reezy didn’t let it slide. “It just felt discouraging,” he laments. “We’re out here spending our last dime, sacrificing relationships, trying to be great. If you got that big of a platform, use it to shine a light on the people that’s already working instead of saying something for clicks.” It’s a bit like basketball, he thinks. “It’s like saying the [Los Angeles] Lakers need more superstars when you’ve got players on the bench ready to go. Put them in the game.”

Reezy’s criticism hits harder because he’s still very much in the grind himself as an independent rapper, which is why moments like a chance encounter with Kendrick Lamar mean so much. “I didn’t even know what a co-sign was,” he laughs, admitting that he almost “blacked out” upon meeting him at last year’s BET Awards. “He recognised me and said my name, and everything I wanted to say to him went out of the window.” Still, the impact lingered. “It felt like confirmation, like God was telling me that I’m on the right track.”

Crucially, that track runs straight through New Orleans. When he describes it, his eyes light up, painting his hometown as less a place and more a colourful, unpredictable feeling. “You’ll see a teal house with a red door, then a brown building with purple stairs, and each house has a classic car outside,” he says, highlighting how that visual patchwork mirrors the city’s sound. “We got second lines where a brass band just starts playing and you run outside and dance.” To underline how ever-present the NOLA bounce is, he taps a rhythm on the desk, rapping the line “it’s 7am” as if over a classic Mannie Fresh beat. “I’m like a New Orleans time capsule to the world.”

At the same time, he’s careful not to become a pastiche of what came before. From the city’s knack for turning rhythm into identity, to the legends he nods to on ‘I Look Good’, its lineage is undisputed. But Reezy is more focused on carving out his own voice than mimicking Lil Wayne, Juvenile, Master P, Soulja Slim and other Louisiana legends. “Even though it’s one of the hardest things to do, I wanna sound like myself.”

Part of that individuality comes from an unlikely mix of influences. “NBA YoungBoy was born and raised an hour away from where I live, so his success felt obtainable to me,” he says. Besides the Baton Rouge megastar, there’s also Justin Bieber, whose early superstardom left a lasting impression. “When you’re a kid and you see that level of stardom, it sticks. It makes you believe it’s possible.”

“What if the struggle is part of it? What if that’s why the art hits?”

That belief often clashes with reality, and Reezy doesn’t sugarcoat it. On ‘Ya Feel Me’, he taps into the kind of everyday coping that rarely makes rap’s highlight reel: “Nah, forget that, brother, let’s take a shot from the bottle / And swallow the problems we bottle.” It starts like a casual exchange before landing on something heavier: “These dollars gon’ hold me all week, I ain’t got no dollars for you.”

That tension forms the spine of his upcoming release, which was born from moments where inspiration and circumstance collided. He recalls falling into a YouTube rabbit hole, watching performances by Louis Armstrong and Etta James around the time Sinners was in cinemas, struck by the emotional weight and cultural richness of Black artistry while dealing with some personal financial hardship. “I’m looking around and we’re struggling, but culturally, we’re leading. So I’m like, how does that make sense?” he says. Instead of trying to resolve it, he leaned into the contradiction. “What if the struggle is part of it? What if that’s why the art hits?”

Reezy considers the project some of his most serious work, and after spending several weeks last year crafting it, he felt the need for a reset. “I just wanted to have fun and feel like a kid again,” he admits. That impulse led to last September’s light, bouncy ‘Lareezyana Shakedown’. Its sun-soaked cuts, like the breezy head-nodder ‘Hardhead’, should go over a treat in London at All Points East, where he’ll join the likes of Dijon, Vince Staples and Turnstile at a two-day takeover headlined by Tyler, the Creator.

Away from the booth and the stage, the sacrifices are real. He speaks candidly about having to give up video games – specifically his beloved NBA 2K – to stay focused. “That’s how you connect with your friends, but I can’t be working less than someone like Drake who’s already made it.” He also makes it a point to learn on the job. “Watching Little Simz on tour taught me the value of showing up for your fans, no matter what.”

Five years from now, he sees arena tours and Grammys. Ten years? It’ll be less about accolades and more about growth. “I just want to get better at delivering a message,” he says, laying out his simple but ambitious goal: to make “human music” feel aspirational again. “More people live like me than like these rappers talking about material things, and I think I’m able to shed light on people who just have normal experiences and aren’t living a fantasy.” For now, La Reezy sits in a sweet spot: not quite mainstream, no longer underground, but moving with purpose and momentum. And he’s only just getting started.

The post La Reezy makes hip-hop full of heart and humanity appeared first on NME.