FEATURE:
Modern Heroines
PHOTO CREDIT: Bolade Banjo for THE FACE
one studio album so far, I think that Jorja Smith is going to be an icon of the future. She is definitely equipped to fulfil such lofty predictions. It seems that music is her main passion; she has this drive and dedication that is wonderful to see. Born on 11th June, 1997 in Walsall, West Midlands, Smith is a stunning artist who has won huge acclaim. Her debut album, Lost & Found, was released in 2018 to massive applause. Smith won the BRITs Critics' Choice Award. In 2019, she was named Best British Female Artist at the 2019 BRIT Awards; she was also nominated for the Grammy Award for Best New Artist. Lost & Found was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2018. I will end by sourcing from an interview where Smith discusses new music/future plans. I first heard about Jorja Smith when she put out her Project 11 E.P. back in 2016. I will draw in some songs from Lost & Found through this feature but, as it is important to learn more about Smith, I want to quote from some interviews – I will also source a couple of positive reviews for Lost & Found. I have been a massive fan of Smith’s music for a long time now and I think she has one of the most expressive and beautiful voices in the world. She is influenced by artists like Amy Winehouse, Sade, and Nina Simone – she cites Winehouse’s 2003 debut, Frank, as a hugely influential album. Despite these influences, Smith is very much her own artist!
I want to borrow from an interview Smith conducted with GQ back in 2018. We discover more about her beginnings and why, with such talent and promise, she is pushing away the temptation to sign with a major label:
“Within a week of uploading her debut single to SoundCloud, Jorja Smith went viral. It was January 2016. She was 18, unsigned and had been working in Starbucks since moving to London from Walsall, in the West Midlands, six months before. There was no big label push, no video, no PR campaign. But still, “Blue Lights” blew up, with shoutouts from Skrillex and Stormzy catapulting Smith towards half a million streams and into the sights of every A&R in the country.
Smith’s mellifluous voice marked her out as a rare talent, but even more exemplary was the songwriting. Sampling Dizzee Rascal’s “Sirens”, Smith was inspired to write the song while working on an A-level essay: “Is Postcolonialism Still Present In Grime Music?” The result is a scathing study of the police prejudice she’d seen her young black male friends face, with Smith repeatedly reassuring the listener that “There’s no need to run if you’ve done nothing wrong.” Her timing was bang on. Six months later the track would be played at a Black Lives Matter rally in Birmingham after the movement picked up wind in Britain.
The 21-year-old’s big break came, however, when Drake played “Blue Lights” on his OVO Sound Radio. Now on the rapper’s radar, Smith received a message from Drake in the summer of 2016 requesting a collaboration: a dream for any emerging artist. She said no. “It was a really sick song,” she says now, “but I wasn’t feeling it.” Almost a year later, after a breakup made her see the song anew, she changed her mind. Despite being “a bit offended by it at first, because he thought, ‘Maybe she doesn’t want to work with me,’” Drake gave Smith not one, but two features on his multi-record-setting 2017 mixtape More Life.
Smith is still purposefully unsigned. “I don’t know any different,” she says, “and it’s been going very well.” Would she take a major deal? “Not right now,” she says. “I like having as much control as I can. It’s my life, so I need to be doing what I want and making what I love without someone else dictating to me.”
This desire to do things her own way is tempered by a cautiousness rarely seen in today’s young female stars. The pouting selfies Smith shares to her 1.3 million Instagram followers might suggest that she’s brimming with stage-school bravado, but in person Smith is softly spoken and shy. While she loves performing, she hates “people hearing my talking voice”. And despite levels of hype that would be enough to inflate even the most modest of egos, for Smith, this year has been something of a pleasant surprise: “I didn’t have any expectations for the album, because I didn’t want to be disappointed.”
When asked what has been her made-it moment of 2018 – this glorious, golden year in her career – Smith replies, “I don’t think I’ve had it yet, no. I’ve still got a lot of work to do”.
I am really interested learning about Jorja Smith’s start and how she got into music. It is evident that her music has progressed since her debut single and earliest days. What strikes me about Smith is how assured she sounds in everything she has put out!
Drawing from an interview from The Guardian, we learn more about her teenage years and why fame does not appeal to Smith:
“Her teenage years brought insecurity, about her looks and, at times, about being mixed race. “All my friends were white, they were all slim and had long hair,” says Smith. “I didn’t want to have big lips or a bum. In school you’re so confined to a small space and the boys like the blonde girls and they didn’t like me. But it’s all right, I got over it.”
Music became more serious when, at the age of 15, she was bought a MacBook. On the program GarageBand, Smith would record covers and upload videos to YouTube; one of these, her take on Alex Clare’s Too Close, found her a manager. After school, she left Walsall for south London, where she lived with relatives and took a job in Starbucks. All the while, Smith was writing, putting out tracks on Soundcloud, and it was one of these – Where Did I Go? – that found its way to Drake. He made contact on Instagram, said the song had kept him sane on a long flight, and asked her to do a duet on a song called Get It Together. Smith, scarcely believably, said no, because in her words: “I didn’t write it, I didn’t know what I was talking about.” But she changed her mind a year later and the track appeared on his ubiquitous 2017 mixtape More Life.
Smith’s success is all the more astonishing for the detail that she isn’t backed by a major label. There’s a simple reason for that: she doesn’t much like being told what to do. That clear-headedness could be seen at the Observer’s photo shoot. “If I don’t like something, I won’t wear it,” says Smith, who has now changed into her travelling outfit of a Mondrian-ish Nike tracksuit, with her hair scraped back into a tight bun. She giggles: “I have a lot of control, yeah.
That’s fame, I suggest. “Don’t want to be famous,” Smith shoots back. “I’m not famous. People” – she pauses, picks her words – “know about me. No, do you know what? I don’t have goals or bucket lists because I don’t like being disappointed. But famous? Famous is like Rihanna. I’m not Rihanna. I’ve got a lot of work to do. I’d like to be successful. That’s what I’d like. And happy.”
As for what’s next, Smith just wants to get back to writing. “Or else I’ll never put out another album. And this year I will write more stuff”.
Since that interview, there has definitely been movement in Smith’s camp. I will bring in a more recent interview but, just before that, there is one more interview that caught my eye.
Smith spoke with SSENSE back in October and was asked some interesting questions (which provoked some pretty intriguing answers):
“On a day-to-day basis, what kind of scenarios make your blood boil?
Anything. You could look at me funny and I would get pissed off at you.
What fills you with joy, brings you to tears, gives you goosebumps?
I cry at any film, when someone’s dying or if there is an empowering moment. I watched The Florida Project recently and that last scene, I was in tears.
Do you believe in fate?
No.
Do you have any regrets?
No.
Have you ever had your heart broken?
No.
When did you last break someone else’s heart?
I can’t remember when, and I don’t really care. I’m the kind of person that will take a lot of shit from somebody, but once I end it, it’s done.
Do you ever feel lonely?
I like being on my own.
What kind of legacy do you want to leave behind?
A strong one. I want people to remember me for my music. Hopefully I won't do anything crazy that they’ll remember me for.
What are the biggest distractions in your life?
My phone. To be honest, I’m easily distracted. I find it hard to focus. Even on stage, I’m constantly thinking about other stuff. It could be something that I last said to someone and I’ll keep recalling it in my head. I’m trying to deal with it, I’m trying to learn how to be calmer and not let my mind wander so much but I find it difficult. I think it’s related to my obsessive streak, getting too fixated on things.
What would be your perfect day?
The perfect day would start with me waking up and understanding that Joel might sleep in. I’m horrible, usually if I’m awake that means he has to be awake. I’ll make myself a cup of tea, let him sleep and not freak out and think he’s dead—that’s happened before. Once he’s up, we’ll make some music together and then go for a long walk. I like walking, if it’s the perfect day then nobody will stop us for a photo because he always has to take it and I feel bad. I’m really conscious of time, so I would try my best to be patient and go with the flow, but I would know exactly what time we’d be going for food. I’d get dressed up and we’d go out for lots of food, with all the courses and more. I love sushi and he likes lobster. Then we’d go for a night walk and run around central London. That’s what we do sometimes, or he runs off”.
Just before I round off and highlight why Lost & Found is such a remarkable album, I have discovered a recent interview from The Face. We learn what Smith has been doing since lockdown - and whether we will get a follow-up to 2018’s Lost & Found:
“She’s been busy during lockdown, too. In June, Smith released a cover of St. Germain’s Rose Rouge as part of legendary jazz label Blue Note Records’ Re:imagined project. She followed it the next month with By Any Means, a Roc Nation-released charity single inspired by her attendance at a Black Lives Matter protest. The video, shot in Smith’s hometown of Walsall in the West Midlands, featured Black-led radio station No Signal, on which she appeared during a Wray & Nephew-indebted clash with Burna Boy in September (the pair going up against each other to select their favourite songs).
In early October, she rounded off the end of summer by dropping the visuals for her brilliant, carnival-ready single Come Over, featuring Popcaan. Inspired by a guy who was longing her off, the video sees the singer situated in her own anime-inspired comic book world, soaring through the streets on a motorbike as she sings about waiting for that call, both she and the guy unsure as to what the other is really feeling. The track spent almost the entirety of October in the UK charts and the video had racked up almost four million views by the end of the month. It’s one of the pieces of work that she views as signalling the growth of Jorja Smith.
“I feel like from Rose Rouge, to By Any Means, to Come Over, that I’m on a shift,” she says. “A real shift.”
That shift will be there for all to hear on her second album – and, before that, an EP, due for release early next year. My portion of doubles demolished, Smith says she’ll treat me to a sneak preview. There are limited drinks in the fridge so she grabs a bottle of flat Champagne, mixes it with apple juice (sounds weird, actually alright), hands me a glass and presses play on her phone.
“The EP’s changed so many times, but now I’ve finally got it,” she says as the never-before-heard-by-outsiders music fills her flat. Whatever the changes behind the scenes, you can tell that she’s feeling it: singing along, flitting between tracks, turning up the volume, struggling to tell me which she loves the most.
From the tracks I hear, it’s clear that Smith’s next project is an amalgamation of the people and topics she really cares about. Each song sounds entirely different: there’s a house‑y tune in there, a little jazz, a little of the slower-paced sound for which she was, before Be Honest, best known. One that particularly stands out is a remix of Peng Black Girls by south-east London rapper ENNY, which is essentially a love letter to Black women. Another was inspired by one of Smith’s younger fans, whose mum passed out at one of her shows.
I get the impression that Smith is not naturally at ease in the spotlight.
“I don’t like anything outside my house,” she agrees. “I like being on stage but that’s all I like. I don’t like anything else. I love everyone, but I just like being by myself. That’s why I used to go home quickly after school.” She even considered whether it was wise for her stage and real names to be the same. “I thought, why the fuck didn’t I change my name? Why did I give myself my actual government name?” she asks herself now. Because that means “I can’t switch off. There’s nothing to differentiate. But I don’t know what the difference would be? Maybe I wouldn’t be Jorja Smith?”
She tells me about a farm she recently bought near Walsall, “a massive field, with horses, where I’m going to build a studio. Because I’m not going to be there all the time, I’ll invite loads of kids – kids I used to babysit, and these twins I went to school with that sing, and be like: ‘Look, on a Thursday you can go here.’” She plans to enlist her dad as studio manager.
“In this whole lockdown, I realised who I was and who I am,” she states firmly, interview and Trinidadian meal over. “I feel like you’re going to see growth, a lot of growth,” she concludes, beaming. “The evolution of Jorja Smith”.
I am keen to wrap things up but, when I said that Jorja Smith is going to be an icon of the future, I meant it! A lot of that comes from the beauty and quality that we heard on her debut album. It is such a realised and fascinating album that, almost three years since its release, is moving me hugely. It is a wonderful record that is worth buying. In their review, this is what AllMusic had to say:
“Within two-and-a-half years of uploading "Blue Lights," Jorja Smith crashed the Top 40 in her native U.K., recorded with and opened for Drake, racked up a bunch of Top Ten U.K. indie singles, appeared on the Black Panther soundtrack, and won the Brit Critics' Choice Award. She also received additional acknowledgments via the MOBO Awards and BBC Music Sound of 2017. These and other developments and accolades increased anticipation for Smith's debut album. With one-third of the independently released Lost & Found previously issued, its arrival is somewhat anticlimactic on first contact, but the known and new material coalesce into an assured and complete debut. Had Smith arrived in the post-new jack swing '90s, her work would have been classified as hip-hop soul, what with the streetwise, wise-beyond-her-years perspective, captivatingly raw emotional content -- with an aching, slightly coarse voice to match -- and favoring of breakbeats and mellow, slightly rugged grooves. Standout "Blue Lights" inevitably reappears with its mournful rumination about the terror of racial (racist) profiling.
Other than that cut and "Lifeboats (Freestyle)," on which Smith raps metaphorically about inequality and turning a blind eye to those in need, Lost & Found focuses on romantic pitfalls and impasses. In multiple instances -- the opening title track and following "Teenage Fantasy," two highlights -- she frets about lovers who don't want what she wants, and otherwise regrets wasted time, miscommunication, and dead ends, only rarely looking back with a low degree of fondness. A powerful tool for repairing a broken heart and indicative of an even brighter future, Lost & Found is satisfying and promising at once”.
There is so much to discover in Lost & Found. It is an album that demands repeated listens. I would also advise people to listen and read interviews Smith has conducted, as her past is really interesting. I believe she has the desire and ability to go incredibly far and influence a lot of other artists.
I will finish off by quoting from Pitchfork’s review of Lost & Found. They make some really interesting observations:
“But Smith’s wanderings extend far beyond the personal, and it’s this insight and curiosity that elevate her work. “Blue Lights,” her 2016 debut single, resurfaces here; its heartbreaking and transporting take on police brutality and racial profiling remains a remarkable feat of storytelling. This time, Smith’s questions are posed rhetorically, to illuminate injustice: “What have you done?/There’s no need to run/If you’ve done nothing wrong/Blue lights should just pass you by.” “Lifeboats (Freestyle)” is a spoken-word take on privilege, income disparity, and the failures of the welfare state. “So why are all the richies staying afloat?/See all my brothers drowning even though they’re in the boat/Mothership ain’t helpin’ anyone,” she raps with the swagger of a young Lauryn Hill, indicting her government for its treatment of marginalized citizens and mishandling of the refugee crisis.
It’s not surprising that Smith resents comparisons to other artists, but her link to Hill is clear. Another wildly talented, young, black woman looking for clarity in a world built for everyone but her, Hill used her music to transform her pain into salvation. Just three years younger now than Hill was when The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was released, Smith shares her predecessor’s wounded takes on the world’s injustices and compulsion to search for deep truths.
On Miseducation’s luminous title track, Hill sings what could be Smith’s battle cry: “Deep in my heart, the answer, it was in me/And I made up my mind to define my own destiny.” On Lost & Found, Smith is defining her own destiny. In the process, she confirms that she is special and rare, an asker of impossible but necessary questions”.
Even though she has not been on the scene for a very long time, I feel that Jorja Smith is going to be a huge star. Smith recently launched Tearjerker: She presents a series of healing, emotional music. Immerse yourself in a world of soothing orchestral music, piano, strings and soundtracks to bring you comfort and escape. Go and listen to that, as we learn more about artists that influence Smith. I expect that we will hear developments in the coming weeks regarding a new E.P. and, maybe later this year, we will get a long-awaited and anticipated second album. With such a stunning voice, beautiful soul and incredible talent, Jorja Smith is…
ONE of Britain’s finest and most-promising artists.