Brum-born and based Kofi Stone has been bringing his soulful sound to the UK rap scene for a while now growing a wide following of fans who are into his honest, relatable, and personal lyrics. After taking a hiatus for the past couple years, he’s finally back with new music: in fact, a whole new album. We linked up with Kofi to find out about his album "A Man After God's Own Heart", what he thinks of UK rap right now, and what else is on the cards this year. Here's what went down.
We’re catching up ahead of your upcoming album, “A Man After God’s Own Heart”’s drop: how are you feeling?
I’m feeling very good about it! It just feels like I’ve been working on it for a while now and I feel like I’ve really dug deep and kind of allowed myself to be vulnerable. I feel like [when it drops] it’ll be a bit of weight off my shoulder, so generally I’ve been feeling good about it. Although I’m a bit nervous, because it’s such a personal, honest, and vulnerable record, [so] it does feel quite exposed which is an interesting place to be.
Do you usually try to feel vulnerable when you’re making music?
Yeah, when I get on records I try to be as honest and vulnerable as I can. You know, you can say certain things [on a track] that you might only think about, and you might never say. But I think on record I try not to go by those rules, and it makes things a little more exposed.
Who’s your biggest inspiration in music right now?
I think it hasn’t really changed, it's always been Kanye, [because of] his talent, him being unapologetically himself, his mind, and yeah, just him being different. He came into the game at a time when the gangster rap stuff was quite popular, and he was more of a normal guy, but he found his way.
You’ve lived in Birmingham most of your life. Did growing up in Brum influence your music style at all?
Yeah, sort of - I think Brum’s quite a gritty place; when I was growing up there wasn’t much in Brum. There was scarcity, especially in the entertainment industry and you didn’t always have resources, so you had to get creative. That definitely had an effect on me, and just my everyday life: going to school, playing outside, meeting people from all different walks of life, girls, family. All of those things sort of amalgamated together.
Were there artists from Brum that you’d say helped you form your style?
From Birmingham not so much, but from London, yeah. Because my sound is quite soulful, there hasn’t been much that’s come out of Brum [that’s similar] in about ten years, so maybe I am the first of my kind from Birmingham.
Between your debut album “Nobody Cares Till Everybody Does” in 2019 and your upcoming album, you’ve taken a kind of hiatus. Why did you feel the need to slow down new dropping music, when others might feel pressure to speed up?
It was because of a few things [but for one,] I really wanted to make the record as good as I could. I still had my foot in the game, I did quite a lot of features to kind of keep things sharp over the four years. but there were a few records that I dropped that were leading to a project but I didn’t feel like it was right.
So I think I just wanted to make sure it was right and that I’d lived a bit, because I felt like the first record was almost my whole life: it was experiences from my upbringing and I gave it a lot of care, and it resonated with people. So, I felt like I had to give that same amount of attention again, otherwise maybe you can’t expect that reaction again.
There were a few other things that happened, like I was quite ill for some time, and then Covid as well threw me off track a little bit. It's funny, because I had some of the music for this record going back like three years ago, and it just wasn’t finished, I couldn’t get the last few lines and in the last two months I got it all. But sometimes it goes like that.
We know you’re going on a European tour in October - bet you’re super pumped! What’s your favourite and least favourite parts of performing live?
I think remembering all the lyrics is probably my worst. Especially now because the gap between putting the album out and touring is gonna be quite close. I’m in a place of still tying up loose ends on this record, so I haven’t been able to dial in and learn everything and make sure the show is on point. That process can be a bit daunting but once I’m in it and I do the first show, I’m OK.
My favourite bit is seeing the way it makes people feel, and just knowing that that had a positive effect on someone’s day. I like meeting the people that listen to me, it’s just nice to reason with them.
What is on your rider for when you go on tour?
We haven’t updated it for like three years - it needs updating. But I think there’s like Doritos on there, chilli heat wave. and fruits. It's pretty boring to be fair, there’s not much going on, but you’ve just given me a reason to update it. Thinking about it, I would get jollof on there, a pack of jollof rice. Get me some jollof on there, get me some plantain on there.
What do you think is great about UK rap right now?
Right now I feel like it's booming. It's alive - it’s well and truly alive. There’s a lot of artists doing their own thing, which is really exciting and it creates new lanes for other people to come through. There’s a lot of identity I think within the UK rap scene, and a lot of people are paving their own way, which I think is beautiful,
What do you think the genre’s missing?
Unity. I think that it can be reluctant to work with certain artists, or to align the different waves maybe just because you might not have come into contact with them, or maybe ego; there’s so many things involved. Obviously not everybody can be friends, but I think [more unity] would elevate the genre.
What’s the song of the summer in your opinion?
Odeal - “Soh-Soh”
Lastly, can you share anything else on the horizon that you’re excited for?
Yeah, I’ve got straight back into another project. It feels like it's coming together quite quickly so it's gonna be more heavily feature-based than the record that’s about to come out, so that’ll be exciting.
Featured image via @kofistone_©
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