It’s something that still influences her now, and you can hear it in the vast range of her voice or in certain moments like the choral opening harmonies of “Something in the Way”. Encouraged by her parents, she started playing keyboard at the age of 8, and was learning to sing classical by secondary school. Both of her parents were musical, and BBC Radio 1Xtra was constantly playing in the kitchen, blasting out bassline classics like T2’s “Heartbroken” as she did her homework. All this for awoman who is only 20 years old, and whose debut album is scheduled to come out later this year.Jorja grew up in the industrial West Midlands town of Walsall. And while most teenagersin London are spending their commutes to work listening to Drake, Jorja’s in there collaborating with the Toronto megastar on “Get It Together”, featuring on his More Lifeproject, and performing as a special guest at his UK headline shows. She’s toured the planet, supporting Bruno Mars in the US, and sold out her Shepherd’s Bush Empire headline shows two times over. Whereas “Let Me Down” (which premiered on Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 show) is a slice of effervescent vocal beauty, with a feature from the man of the moment, Stormzy.Last year, she came fourth in BBC’s Sound of 2017, and this year has been awarded the Brit Awards Critics’ Choice, and will perform live at the ‘The Brits Are Coming’. The former is a garage-inflected club number that comes with a video featuring cult UK comedy crew Kurupt FM. Her two most recent singles, “On My Mind” (feat Preditah) and “Let Me Down” have been testament to her versatility. It blew up unexpectedly, earning the praise of Skrillex and Stormzy, before it was eventually included on Drake’s OVO radio show.Since then, Jorja has gone on to create a name for herself as Britain’s most exciting R&B songwriter, with a masterful knack for crafting melodies that make you feel like you could be anywhere from a smoky Parisian jazz club to a North London warehouse party. Written after watching Dizzee Rascal music videos while taking a break from her A-Level dissertation (titled: “Is Postcolonialism Still Present in Grime Music”) the song was inspired by the hostile situations innocent young black men were facing every day, not just in her local town of Walsall but around the world. It all started in January 2016, when Jorja Smith uploaded “Blue Lights” to Soundcloud, her self-released debut single.
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