An Interview With Sampha
From the archives, a little-seen interview with the soulful British singer by the time of the release of Process, his 2017 debut album.
Sampha has a new album out today, which bears his middle name, Lahai. It’s been six years since Process, the debut of the London singer-producer, who became through the last decade a sought-after, yet low-key collaborator for some of the most dominant artists of our time (Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, Drake, you name it). In my book, this side of Sade, there are very few artists that could turn turmoil into grace the way Sampha does. One of my favorite songs of his, “Plastic 100°C”, actually talked about a health scare he went through in 2011, yet it felt like the quiet contemplation of a sun-bathed morning.
I felt compelled to republish this interview we did in February 2017, with journalist Mélodie Raymond, thanks to an assist from my friend Valentin Cassuto, for a now-defunct sneakerhead magazine called Shoes Up. I cherish this interview because it’s the last I did for a very long period of time, and it took place with an artist I deeply admire. I remember Sampha as a gentle, if a little tentative interviewee. I’m not sure we succeeded at making him confident in our presence, and we barely approached the emotional centers of Process. We hadn’t registered the more personal themes, such as the loss of his mother, that permeated the album (which, if I remember correctly, we didn’t get a chance to hear in full prior to the interview). Yet, reading back Sampha’s answers now, there is a searching quality to his words that reflects the openness and vulnerability he displays in his music.
In "(No One Knows Me) Like The Piano", you say you started playing the piano at three. What's the story of that piano?
As I say in the song, it kind of just appeared out of nowhere for me because I was so young. My dad bought the piano for a couple of hundred pounds, from some neighbors that were moving out. I think [he bought it] as a distraction from TV and stuff. So, yeah, I just started playing from around that age, three-ish, four. I don't even remember, but I [in the song] say three. I just chose a number. [laughs] I grew up learning things by ear, and I had piano lessons for, like, four years in secondary school.
Do you remember the first pieces you played at that time?
Yeah, the very first songs I learned how to play, I remember, like, Céline Dion, "My Heart Will Go On". My mom loved that. I was like, ah, I know how to make my mom smile. [laughs] And Al Green, "Let's Stay Together". Coldplay, "Trouble". And then Stevie Wonder songs, like "All I Do" and stuff like that. Those are the ones I remember, these and whatever that was on TV. I remember hearing Rotary Connection's "I Am The Black Gold of the Sun" and trying to play it on the piano. Most of my playing was just by ear.
You have brothers.
Yeah, I've got four of them.
Were you the piano man, or was the piano shared between siblings?
I mainly played it, I would say, because by the time I was five or six, a lot of [my brothers] had moved out and kind of left me. [laughs] I've got a brother who plays the guitar and the keyboard as well. And they're all really into music. They love listening to music, like a lot of people, but they're just, like, very avid music listeners. But yeah, it was mainly me. I think I was called Piano Man for a little bit in my family.
You grew up listening to grime music. You were freestyling and producing under the name Kid Nova. What made you change and become Sampha as a singer?
I think... I can't really remember. It's weird. Sometimes thoughts just come to you out of nowhere. I remember walking under a bridge. I remember thinking about this thing for some reason, and I was like, oh, maybe Sampha is my name. I just started to appreciate my name. I was like, maybe I should just use my real name. There wasn't that deep thought. Kid Nova just wasn't... I think it was the “Kid” part of it, and “Nova”, I don't know, maybe I thought it was a bit pretentious. [laughs]
What made you change course and move away from grime music to do the music that you do now? Or do you see it that way?
Well, I think I've never been good at making something that sounds... It was kind of grime, but it was almost like a bastard of grime. I just naturally kind of moved away from it. Growing up as well, the more music I listened to, the more that influenced the direction I was going. Especially moving on to Myspace. By going through people's Top Friends, I could find different worlds of music I had never listened to. I would find myself in a completely different universe of music that I would never have been able to find otherwise.
Do you remember specific and significant genres or artists that you found out on Myspace at that time?
Yeah, the first one was [London producer] Kwes. Kwes and Micachu. Mica Levi, that’s her name. And then I remember finding Hudson Mohawke and Flying Lotus and stuff, and I had never heard anything like it. It kind of humbled me, because I think when you’re a teenager, by certain aspects you can feel like a superhero. But when the world opens up to you, you realize there's just so many talented people doing so many incredible things… [Myspace] just humbled me, really, and kind of just changed my perspective.
Throughout your life, what were the songs that moved you the most?
That moved me the most… [Searching] I remember, growing up, a lot of Tracy Chapman songs. Actually, I heard Tracy Chapman firstly through Boyzone, with their cover of "Sorry". [singing] "Sorry / Is all that you can't say..." It was great. And then, bands like Semisonic. You know them? They had a song called "Secret Smile". [singing again] "Nobody knows it / But you got a secret smile…" Yeah, and Stevie Wonder songs. Stevie Wonder probably hit me very hard, but less lyrically. Things I always listened to were, like, music first, but when Tracy Chapman did "Fast Car", I was living the movie in my head through the lyrics. Songs-wise, I would say anything by Pharrell, like "Am I High" by N.E.R.D, or Minnie Riperton. The list goes on and on…
At times, when you write and produce, do you look at your work and manage to identify influences?
I think I do. I do a lot of that, actually. Sometimes I try to move away from something if I think it sounds too much like something else. And then sometimes I just forgive myself. I realize nothing I do is an immaculate conception. Everything is based on the western tonal scales, and there’s only so many melodies. [laughs] There’s definitely things I hear and I go, this sounds like Todd Rundgren. But I feel comfortable now if it sounds like Todd Rundgren or a bit too much like Steve Reich.
You released your first EP, Dual, in 2013. When you look back to it now, what differences do you see in yourself, as an artist?
I think I'm a bit more easygoing, in the sense that I'm not as anxious as I was in terms of me wanting to do everything. I learnt how to let go of some things by working with other people, and letting them help me make music. It gave me the ability to concentrate more on the book and the story, as opposed to concentrating on what I thought people perceived of me as the author of the music. Maybe that was just natural vanity — but I wonder if it's vain to say I became a little less vain. [laughs] Yeah, I could tell that’s how I progressed. For me, a lot of the music is also like a documentation, so there are a lot of things I listen to in Dual and think, the sun was beautiful back then, it was a nice time. It's a reminder of things. Sometimes I think it didn’t get any better than this.
The album carries a lot of intimate emotions, which are now available to anyone to hear. That moment when the record becomes a public thing, what kind of emotion does it trigger?
I don't think I have figured it out yet. It's like a newish emotion, and it's hard to articulate. It's almost like I disconnect from it, to be honest. It’s kind of out there, in the world, so it’s hard for me to listen to it. At one point it was very personal, but then it starts to become a bit more impersonal, because the story is out there. It becomes other people' story, other people are experiencing this music how I experienced it. Now I, like, not necessarily forget, but it's like evaporated. I move on, I'm looking ahead to how I feel now. But it's a really weird thing, to be honest. [laughs]
Is it therapeutic too?
I'm going through a phase where I connect to it when I play it live. But listening to it, I've got to the point where I've listened to this so many times, and now that more people listen to it… I don't really know how to express this emotion, but it's like, sometimes it’s so much about the journey. You've kind of left that train stop, and you're moving somewhere else, while everyone's kind of just coming to the destination. I have climatized. You know, it's like your hometown, sometimes it's hard to appreciate it. Like, some people want to come and take photo of my hometown in Morden, and I’m like, Why? [laughs] I've been living here everyday, I've seen the same thing. For me, it's like someone growing up to the beach. You might not appreciate it, like oh, it's just the sea. [laughs] Sometimes you have to go away, and then come back.
Now that you've "closed" this project, do you have early ideas of where you want to go next, music-wise?
Yeah, I have a million of ideas, and that's the issue. [laughs] I need to narrow them down a bit. There are so many ideas I didn’t get on this album, I feel like I learnt how to make an album with this first album. So yeah, I got a lot of stuff.
Looking back at your career, it feels like your voice has always existed on multiple dimensions. It’s been a vocal sample for Drake, a ghostly presence on Beyoncé's “Mine”, a rhythmic pattern in “Blood on Me”… What relationship do you have with your own voice? It feels like you're as much an instrument as much as you are an interpret.
Yeah, definitely. I feel like, the more I used it, the more I sang, the more I kind of appreciated it. I use everything as an instrument, but there's an element of awareness I have about it every now and then, my voice as an instrument. I say this a lot, but even like, talking to people, when I realize that the words coming out of my mouth, I'm not actually writing them. I actually start to hear myself and realize that there's no effort in me talking to you. It's a thing of me becoming an observer of it. My mouth is like an interface. I have that kind of perspective, that this is something I can use or make things with. I don't know, maybe I’m getting a bit weird. [laughs]
Over the last years, you've been a recurring presence on pop's biggest records, to the point of becoming for some a secret ingredients, for others a cult figure. This status, were you seeking it, or are those just chance encounters?
Some of it is by chance. I guess it’s like, sometimes things feel like they come out finite, but they don’t. The more music I've worked on, the more my music spread, and for whatever reasons, things happened that I didn’t really know about. I release an album, and because I put that energy out there, it kind of comes back in some form. It wasn't a conscious thing, for me to work with a lot of people, and then release an album. [I didn’t plan to] feature on people's record and piggyback off that to launch my career. I think I've just said yes to a lot of things. Like, I'm a fan of that person, they want to work with me? Great… Usually, if I get into a room and there's a piano, I'll end up playing it and make something out of it. I had to get to a point where I was like, I'm gonna work on my music. Literally, sometimes I would sit somewhere and be like Don't sing, don’t sing, don't play the piano, cause it's like an itch, this is something I love to do. All of it just come around quite naturally, really, in a weird days. Some of it, I don't really know why this keeps happening. [laughs] Every now and then, I get an email like, This person wants to work with you, and I'm like OK, cool. I think about it, and…
Something that fascinated us last year was that you were one of the very last pieces added to Kanye West's The Life of Pablo.
It surprised me too. [laughs]
How did it feel to be part of that record, and yet not really be part of it until the very last minute? The song on which you appear, “Saint Pablo”, was added four months after the album’s first release.
I guess it isn't even officially the last song. Who knows? [laughs] It was really weird, but it was cool at the same time. I had heard the song before [Kanye West] played it out in a DJ set, but only maybe a couple of days before. He was asking me if I was okay if he put it on the album. Actually, before he sent me the song, I had never heard it. It was a freestyle I did, and they had taken this freestyle and made a song out of it. It was all pretty weird to me, I feel like it was just like a sensory overload. I didn't really know how to take it, but I like this one, it was cool, and [Kanye] did something I'd never really seen before, so it was all a bit like, yeah… [laughs]
There was even a leak of that song, where your vocal take at the end was different. There’s one version where you say “Understand I’m standing under oath with my hand on the book”, but on the final record it’s a different sentence.
Yeah, I changed it, ‘cause I listened to it and I was like eeeeeeh, I'm gonna sing something else. I don't know if it's any better. I was like, Is it any better? I had no idea, because I was finishing my album, and I couldn't really focus. [laughs] There was too much going on. Does that sound any good? The first one, that was it, that was the very first time I'd sung any of that. It was a freestyle. Naturally, I could be quite self-critical, and here I was just a bit over-critical.
Last question about these collaborations. You've been in a position to observe some of the most iconic artists of our time. Did you have those fly-on-the-wall moments where you felt like, oh, what can I learn from watching them? And did you learn anything from those moments?
Yeah, but not any more than I learned from [others]. Working with, like Kwes or Lil Silva or SBTRKT, [I learnt] as much as I did with Kanye or someone else. It didn't really make big differences. I did definitely learn things from him, but just as much as I've learned from FKA Twigs or whoever.
What would be your dream collaboration at this point?
Dream… Dream would be like Steve Reich, because he's one person I still idolize, in a way. There are some emotions he expresses, there's a lot of complexity and subtlety to it. This is something I really connect with. Sometimes, playing the piano, there's a limit to what I want to do. In my head, I can hear it, but I can't get it out. There's an element of composition, basically, just as a composer, like harmonically speaking. I'd like to be able to just sit down with someone and create a long piece that evolves and goes different places, as opposed to what my album is, which is quite like most of that pop structure, really: verse, chorus, verse, bridge. That's what I like to do, where I'd like to go a bit more…
When we see you on late-night television in the US, and put that in perspective with what you do, it's always striking because you don't feel like someone who wants to be in the spotlight. What's your relationship with fame and anonymity?
I'm not really looking for either. I know that I want my music to spread, just by definition of doing what I'm doing. By being a singer, that automatically has already increased the amount of people listen to me and stuff. I’ve never written music with fame being the main thing. I'm naturally quite into pop music and pop culture. Sometimes, when I play an instrument, I just start singing, and I’ll start thinking of a chorus, so there's an element of that ingrained in me in some senses. It's nice when people recognize you for what you've done or whatever, there's an element of vanity, but at the same time, I wasn't looking to be completely anonymous. Well, now I can’t, really. [laughs] Maybe, if I want to make more music, I might just do that and put it out under other name, make music for the love of it and be anonymous. In my head, I really think I will not really be that famous either. I'll be able to walk down the streets, a couple of people will be like Ooooh, and it will be fine, but I don't think I'm gonna make the smash record where my face is going to be like… Well, it kind of is in a lot of places now [pointing to the album cover], but it's a weird-looking face. People are like, what’s going on here? [laughs]
Since we have a little bit of time left, I have a nerd question that I wanted to ask you. It's about the opening beat in “Blood on me”. I was surprised when I heard it the first time because that was not my expectation of a Sampha lead single. What's the story behind that beat? Because it reminds me of, I don't know, late-eighties New York rap or a Slick Rick-type of thing.
I don't know, I didn't really mean it to be like that. It's made on this 1970 kind of drum machine called the Drumtraks. And literally, I just played it, just there. Everything is all on one track, unfortunately, or two tracks. So the hi-hat is with the snare and there's not much separation, but it's kind of just something where I was just, like, basically, playing the drums. I cut it, and that was it. And then it just had that boom-bap kind of vibe. To be honest, I didn't like that song for ages. This is not quite what I had expected myself. Even the emotions behind it and stuff was a bit of a different vibe. But then it just kind of grew on me. But, yeah, I didn't really intend making that. And that's the thing with hip-hop. It actually derives from funk, break beats and stuff. And I guess that was more so my mind. I was thinking more James Brown or something when I was, like, making that [starts beat-boxing and imitating the James Brown grunts in a way that can’t be transcribe] That was what was going on in my head. But then… sorry, I guess you can’t put that part in the interview. [laughs]
I also wrote about Sampha here, and will certainly do it again in the future. Lahai is available everywhere music can be found.