I’ve got a bone to pick with Labrinth. I interviewed the singer/songwriter/producer in September 2014 about his imminent second album, which was called Take Me to the Truth and was due either in November or December of that year. But it never arrived, and I can’t help but feel that my article was in some…
When I meet Casyo “Krept” Johnson and Karl “Konan” Wilson, things are looking good for the Croydon rap duo. We’re in the meeting room at Apple’s Beats studio in King’s Cross, where they’re about present the 33rd edition of their show Play Dirty Radio. They’ve just finished filming their role as judges on The Rap…
For someone whose Nigerian sound is now in such international demand that he’s currently clocking up more air miles than Santa Claus, Wizkid seems pretty relaxed. He meets me in a Soho recording studio, booked not for making music but because it’s the environment in which he feels most comfortable for interviews. He’s slouched in…
In May this year, Dermot Kennedy sold out the 5,000-capacity Brixton Academy – a landmark feat for almost any musician. What’s unusual about this is that at the time, the Irish singer-songwriter was still five months away from releasing his debut album and had never even had a single in the UK chart. “It’s a…
Charli XCX doesn’t have long for me in between radio appearances, lunch with her management team in the high-end Indian restaurant Dishoom and the general whirlwind of promoting her third proper album, titled simply Charli. But as she says herself, she’s a fast worker. That means getting straight to the big talk. “I’m gonna be…
Pixies released two classic albums, Surfer Rosa in 1988 And Doolittle in 1989, and here we were, 30 years later in a vast venue, still thrilled by those songs and accepting new ones with polite interest. They last, these small precious collections. The Boston band, regularly cited as a chief influence on Nirvana for…
When Cate Le Bon glides up the red carpet at the Mercury Prize ceremony next Thursday, few will remember the first time the Welsh singer-songwriter attended. In 2008, a year before she released her debut album, she was there as a guest singer with Neon Neon, the electronic side-project of American producer Boom Bip and…
You never know quite what you’re going to get with MUNA. The LA trio’s band name, which they present in capitals though it isn’t an acronym, translates as “hope” or “desire” in Arabic, and is often used as a girl’s name. However, in Finnish slang, it means “dick”, or in the plural, “balls”. Harry Styles…
Ideally, Kano wouldn’t be making his return in quite such a flurry of activity, a rush of vital work that is going to make him one of the key faces of the autumn. If all had gone exactly to plan, the east London rapper’s sixth album would have come out last year, allowing a decent…
Ms Banks is running an hour late and the battery on her iPhone is at a perilous 1%. Before I get to ask her any questions, she has an urgent one for me: do I have a charging cable? As a Samsung guy, we’re off on the wrong foot, but the 25-year-old rapper isn’t being…