FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Jorja Smith

FEATURE:

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Annie Reid for GQ

Jorja Smith

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THIS is one of my…

favourite artists. Someone I have been following since the start of her career. Jorja Smith is one of our greatest treasures. Her new album, What Are the Odds, is out on Friday (21st August). I am going to end with a review of the album. Smith has a busy diary and she plays All Points East in London thew day her album is released. I am going to come to some interviews with this queen. I will come to a fairly recent interview, though I do want to head back to last year first. Jorja Smith has stepped away from the spotlight, or she did in 2025, and was living away from London. That peace and being close to family has been of real benefit. Vogue spoke with her last year:

“Beyond a new ease in her style, a fundamental ground shift has occurred for Smith. On “High”, her first single back last year, she asked: “Where do you run if you can’t?” For Smith, the answer was simple: home to Walsall, the West Midlands town just north of Birmingham. Inspired by a friendship breakup and reconnection, the track flows almost like a voicenote. When she sings, “I went to find myself, I couldn’t take you there”, it feels like she’s addressing something deeper. “I can’t lie, I didn’t think me moving back home would be such a big thing,” she says, laughing. When she made the move from London in 2023 it became a news story in itself, people seemingly incredulous that a star might choose to live somewhere other than the capital. “I’m from Walsall, and I’ve gone back home,” she shrugs. “That’s it.”

She has chosen a home town date in Wolverhampton to kick off her upcoming tour in May, which will be followed by two London shows and dates in Europe, North and South America. After we meet, she releases a new single, “Crush”, with AJ Tracey, which sees her try her hand at a sprinkle of rapping, over a beat that feels like it’s lifted directly from the Channel U era. (Days later, her Black Country accent goes viral on TikTok, with thousands of viewers around the world lipsyncing to her playfully rounded vowels.) A joyous performance at the Brits, where she was nominated in the best R&B category, with Mercury winners Ezra Collective, was proof of just how pleased she is to be back where she belongs.

“When I was in the studio and he played me the song, it just took me back. It’s proper nostalgic,” she smiles. She connects to my Bluetooth headphones to play me the two songs she’s working on right now, written with Maverick Sabre and producer Ed Thomas. Even in their nascent stage, I’m transported. The lyrics are brooding, her vocals that signature rich blend, over a Y2K-tinged breakbeat. “I used to come up to London when I was 15, in the summer holidays and work with Mav and Ed and it just felt like that. They were the first people I ever wrote with.” Playing the next one, she says, “This reminds me of a sunrise and a sunset at the same time.”

Even if Smith doesn’t get the big deal about leaving London, when I ask how she’s gotten closer to the peace she’s after, it dawns on her that the biggest catalyst has been her move. “Maybe moving back did have a big impact on me, I think it did,” she pauses. “Even my mum says to me, ‘You look like your old self.’ She texted me that and I thought it’s kind of sad and really sweet.”

There’s a sense that, despite her business, fame is her lowest priority. “I didn’t go in thinking, ‘I want to be famous.’ Oh, man, even the word,” she cringes. “When I started, all I wanted to do was put out music. I didn’t even want to be in my first video because I thought, ‘I just want to be music. How can I just be music?’” It’s a luxury so few femme artists are afforded, instead required to be the perfect blend of everything to everyone: alluring and relatable, accessible yet infallible, outstanding but nonthreatening. But, from Chappell Roan to Doechii to Billie Eilish, we’re in an age of pop stars refusing to bend to the will of the machine. So the fact that Smith spends her time talking about where she lives and what her body looks like feels bizarre: “When I put out music when I was younger, this is not what I thought we’d be talking about.”

She’s protective of her privacy now – be it familial or romantic – and says she now fills her time with stillness and play; writing songs at the piano and going on long countryside walks like she did when she was younger. “I like getting lost,” she says with a smile. “Phone’s dead, off-track, but I’ll find my way back eventually”.

Before getting to a GQ interview with Jorja Smith, I want to come to this one from AnOther. The fired twenty questions at Smith. She is one of our greatest artists. Someone I have not seen live yet, I do feel that I need to correct that. She has a very busy tour diary, so it may be next year when I can see her next:

“How would you describe it in three words?

Upbeat, fun and in motion, if that’s a word … Well, it’s kind of two words.

Is there a song that you’re particularly excited about? Can you tell me about it?

I’m excited about a song called I Lied You Lied. It’s super funky, and when I say funky, I mean a bit housey funky. It’s just a song about when shit isn’t reciprocated and being fucked about, really. I like it.

How long has What Are The Odds been underway? What is the process of making an album for you?

This is my third album and making it was a totally different process to my last two. It’s produced by P2J. We started talking about making this music in 2023 and we were going back and forth for like two years, and then we finally got together in September 2025 and I submitted it in April 2026, so it’s the shortest time I’ve ever spent making an album. Everything felt right, and I just kept moving forward with this energy – I felt really present. My first album was like a collection of songs, and the second, I had decided I’d make an album but hadn’t fully figured it out, so that was a challenge. And now, this third time, I’ve really enjoyed the process.

What does music offer as a tool for communication?

I like listening to people sing about things they’re going through and relating to them. Maybe I’m going through them too – then I don’t feel so alone. It’s the same when I’m writing music about things I’m going through and people say how they relate to it and that listening to it helped them through something. I also love how songs can take a life of their own. How I interpret a song may be nothing like what it was written about. Sometimes they mean completely different things for other people, and I think that’s beautiful.

If you weren't doing music, what do you think you’d be doing?

I think I’d still be writing – maybe I’d be writing books, novels, scripts. I used to write poems. Before I wrote songs, I wrote stories but I never finished them. I’d always do like chapter one and a blurb, then stop.

How do you find life in the public eye?

Strange. It’s challenging. It’s still changing and I’m still figuring it out. It’s not something I wanted as an 18-year-old putting out music. I didn’t really think about the consequences of what happens if you put out music and it does really well. I’m getting to grips with it, trying to take it in my stride, and yeah, I’m still figuring it out. It’s only now I think I’m reflecting on it, and thinking about, you know, going from being somebody nobody knows from Walsall to someone people from across the world know. It’s a bit weird, isn’t it? It’s definitely not normal”.

I shall end with a review for What Are the Odds. GQ interviewed Jorja Smith last month. After a career break, she “is as revitalised as her music sounds”. I don’t think there is anyone in music who sounds quite like her. A unique and brilliant artist who is going to be making music for many years, she sounds at her most relaxed and free:

“Smith, right now, is “so excited that we need a new word for excited”. Her third album, What Are the Odds?, has been finished for months, and she’s waiting for it to come out; her pure ebullience is practically seeping through the screen. The promotional grind hasn’t always been Smith’s bag, and a few years ago, while releasing her second album, Falling or Flying, she actually reached breaking point (more on that later). This time around, however, she feels energised. “We’ve got shoots, we’re planning videos; I’ve been in the studio, but nothing to do with my album – I’ve been working on other stuff because I’ve got lots of ideas floating around up here that I want to get down,” she says. “It seems quite natural, so I’m just taking it in my stride. I’m trying to make everything as easy and fun as possible – I know some things can make it not enjoyable, early call times and whatnot, but…”

Made entirely with Richard Isong, the London producer and Beyoncé collaborator better known as P2J, What Are the Odds? is a dynamic survey of British and African dance sounds, from funky house to garage, drum’n’bass and Afrobeats that highlights Smith’s power as a club vocalist. Lyrically, Smith is still laser-focused on relationships, whether between friends, lovers or exes – but, with the help of P2J and longtime co-writers Hope and Millie Katana, she translates everything into the drama and shimmer of the dancefloor.

Smith says What Are the Odds? is a natural transition from the elegance and grandeur of 2023’s Falling or Flying – an outgrowth, in fact, of “Little Things”, a P2J-produced track from that record. “After those songs, me and P were like, ‘It’d be great to explore more of this music.’ Tap into funky house, garage, more of that, because I have a lot of fun making it,” she tells me. For the better part of two years, she and P2J talked through “how we wanted to feel and make people feel,” she says. “We’d share some music – little sounds we liked, whether it was a bass line and how it made me feel, or the sound of certain keys.”

In September 2025, they met up in the studio again with a view to making a four-song EP. To Smith’s surprise, P2J revealed that he had an entire tranche of beats made just for her, based on their conversations over the prior years. In just one day, Smith laid down vocals for five tracks; the next day, she freestyled four more. “It’s probably the quickest album I’ve ever been involved with – we were just flowing, literally going back to back,” says P2J over the phone. “When we work, it’s always fun – we don’t overthink it. She makes me feel proper heard in the studio and vice versa. She’s always coming with sick ideas; we’ll send each other old-school songs and new-school songs, and it’s super organic.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Annie Reid

After the second session, Smith walked around the corner to the office of her label, Famm, played them some demos, and delivered a surprising message: “I was like, ‘Guys. I’ve got an album,’” she recalls. “They couldn’t hear [what the songs would sound like] – I can hear everything finished, where it’s gonna go – but they can feel it.” Smith was so excited about the music she was making that it even impacted the holiday she went on shortly afterwards. “I was like, ‘Oh, fuck’s sake, I just want to be in the studio,’” she says, slipping into an exaggerated, clowny sad face.

The album is called What Are the Odds? in part because, when they started making it last year, Smith wasn’t sure she’d ever truly love making music again. “Falling or Flying was at a time where I was just like, ‘Oh my God.’ I’ve been in this industry for so long – it gets a lot, and I don’t think I was enjoying it. I don’t think I was enjoying being Jorja Smith,” she says.

She is quick to clarify that this industry break wasn’t as dramatic as she’s making it sound. Or maybe it was. She’s working on expressing her emotions without minimising them. “I didn’t even step away, I can’t lie – I still had shows. I just –” She pauses, about to say something she doesn’t mean. “I’m not dramatic, actually. I need to stop saying that, because I’m actually not dramatic. I wasn’t on socials as much, so it was that type of break, you know?” she says.

Smith makes a point, whenever she meets a younger artist, to offer herself up as a font of knowledge and advice on how to navigate the industry, given how thorny it can be for young artists, and young women especially. When she was coming up, she was fortunate enough to have other musicians in her corner offering advice on how to make sense of the world. The Iranian Dutch singer Sevdaliza reached out on Twitter early on, “being like, you know, ‘The industry’s tough for young women.’” Raye, back when she was just a songwriter and not an arena-selling superstar, had Smith’s back too. “I met her at a studio in London before I dropped ‘Blue Lights’ – we followed each other and then she messaged me, and we hung out a few times when I started,” Smith recalls.

Despite the occasional reminder, Smith hasn’t been consciously thinking about the fact that it’s been a decade since she released her first song. “I’m definitely like, Wow, I’m still here and making this music, and people still listen to me and come to my shows,” she says. “I’m continuing to grow my audience and I’m able to touch more people with my music. This whole year has been emotional, but I’m more thinking about the future – 90 per cent thinking about the future. No, 25 per cent reflecting, and the rest thinking about the future”.

NME gave a four-star verdict of What Are the Odds. A slightly stylistic shift and evolution, Smith “uses dance as her source of refuge on album three”. I feel that this will rank alongside the best albums of this year. Make sure that you pre-order What Are the Odds:

“Jorja Smith has never been afraid to be noisy. Among sombre and sobering offerings lie the exhilarating, elastic segments of the 29-year-old Walsall native’s discography; the pulse of the two-step-infused ‘On My Mind’, the clubby ‘Little Things’ or the alt-leaning ‘Go Go Go’. Smith is as much R&B as she is house, an equilibrium of sorts – once she acquaints herself with a genre, she’s able to contort it to her will, translating it to her audience in a hue that makes sense to her.

On ‘What Are The Odds’, however, the singer-songwriter clearly wants to dance. What happens when Smith embraces the noise? Perched alongside executive producer P2J, the pair worked across three immersive sessions to create an arresting, club-ready collaborative effort. There’s a familiar tension amid the escapist synths though: the confrontation of emotions. The all-encompassing embrace of the challenging, difficult, soothing and harsh realities of a person that’s lived, loved and wore her heart on her sleeve along the way.

Smith has always been one to confront her realities in the booth, and ‘What Are The Odds’ is no different. ‘What’s Done Is Done’ is cocky and confrontational as it taunts a guilty ex. “Do you think about me / Do you know it hurt me”, she hisses. Her hollow assertions a near-perfect match atop a moody, smoky blend of hip-hop and garage. Here, Smith flirts with rapping once again, but on the album’s title track, she leans in fully, utilising a skill she’s harnessed as a feature artist alongside Enny (‘Peng Black Girls’) and AJ Tracey (‘Crush’). “That’s a thing about a life up high / In the lights you can’t see what’s off”, she warns. It hints at the star’s relationship with fame. Perhaps it explains her aloof relationship with hypervisibility, her retreat, away from London back home.

‘What Are The Odds’ is also flirtatious in its use of sonics, ‘I Lied, You Lied’ acting as an ode to P2J and Smith’s first project together ‘Little Things’ – a single that formed the genesis of the pair’s ideas for a holistic dance LP. Here, the singer embraces her mystery, an alluring meld of funky house, jazz, afro-house and R&B prancing beneath Smith’s runs. “You won’t figure me out,” she asserts. ‘Dancing’ leans further into percussion, a rumba tease ushered onto the dancefloor. “The music feels like, la, la, la, la / Makes us move like la, la, la la”, it appears that Smith is ready to get lost, enchanted and mystified by each and every note. Soon joined by Wizkid, for ‘Alive’, P2J’s afrobeats signature makes an appearance, something which feels equally as natural to Smith as it does to Wizkid.

‘Young Heart’ also exists in this eco-system, its name as a double-entendre of sorts. It both explores Smith’s youthful approach to love, sometimes naïve in calming her yearn to love and be loved, but also speaks to her sentience as someone still in their 20s, her ability to embrace the youthful sounds of the dancefloor. In 2026, afro-house – through the likes of Piano People, Dankie Sounds, GroupTherapy – is steering a new generation of ravers. Smith’s ability to champion and harness such sounds speaks to her adaptability as an artist – and in this case, it works for her.

‘What Are The Odds’ is Smith at her most comfortable, loosely embodying her emotional state. All that she’s been, and all that she will be – the mess, desire, regret and state of armour she’s built across her ten years in the headlights. It’s endearingly charming, brutally honest and ultimately fun. Now able to enjoy the catharsis that comes with perspective, Smith comes of age once again on this album, this time bold in her instincts and ability to laugh at herself along the way”.

I wanted to feature Jorja Smith in this Modern-Day Queens, as she is an artist I have admired for over a decade now. Her latest album finds her in a happy space. Maybe it is being where she grew up and having that comfort around her. It may be her stage of life and this new perspective she has. Whatever it is, Smith is at the top of her game. One of our best and most consistent artist, she is someone I will follow for as long as she is recording music. The divine Jorja Smith is…