Following his three critically acclaimed albums, 2010’s James Blake, 2013’s Mercury Prize winning Overgrown and 2016’s The Colour in Anything, James Blake has established himself as one of the worlds most talented and influential musicians. Since 2010 he’s won an Ivor Novello award for best contemporary song for Retrograde, received his first Grammy Nomination (Best New Artist) and has played sold-out live shows in some of the most prestigious venues in the world including The Sydney Opera House, Radio City Music Hall and Glastonbury Festival. He remains a founding member of the 1-800 Dinosaur label collective and earlier this year hosted a successful BBC Radio 1 residency.
James’ unique songwriting and production skills have become increasingly influential throughout modern music. In 2016 he contributed songs and production to ‘Lemonade’ by Beyonce and Frank Ocean’s ‘Blonde’ and followed up in 2017 with production and writing on Jay Z’s 4:44 LP, all the while teasing his growing audience with quintessential new material in the form of ‘Don’t Miss It’ and “The Car Beside You Moves Ahead”. In early 2018 he co-wrote the track ‘Element’ on Kendrick Lamar’s Platinum selling Damn and was involved in the era defining Black Panther OST where he collaborated with Lamar again on ‘King's Dead’ and "Bloody Waters”. Off the back of these collaborations James and his band joined Kendrick as support during the 2018 Damn tour. To round off the year James delivered a show stopping vocal on “Stop Trying To Be God’, the first single from Travis Scott’s Astroworld LP, and appeared on stage a the VMA Awards in NY for a televised version of the song alongside Scott.
This year James turned 30 and he’s found that milestone to be a useful marker allowing him to take stock and appreciate everything that has happened to him. His constant thirst for change and ability to move the musical dialogue onwards has meant that he has become one of the most essential and anticipated modern artists. People across the world are fascinated to discover what he is going to do next and as 2019 approaches it feels like the perfect time for James to take centre stage. To be continued...
