Sekou’s stunning baritone voice can stop you in your tracks. He got signed at 16 after posting a video of himself singing in a car park, his instrument so rich and distinctive that Justin Bieber tapped him to provide backing vocals on ‘Too Long’, a soul-baring bop from this year’s ‘Swag’ album. So it comes as a surprise when Sekou makes a casual confession today: “I hate the word ‘singer’, even though it’s what I do.”
At 21, with a BRIT Awards Rising Star nomination under his belt, Sekou Sylla is realising the full scope of his ambitions. “I feel like ‘singer’ is such a small thing, and ‘musician’ is really what it is [about],” he says. “You know, Beyoncé isn’t just a singer – that’s a musician. Michael Jackson isn’t just a singer – that’s an entertainer, a musician. You’ve got to work towards that. I want to be an artist who has quality and passion in my music and my image.”
On his new mixtape ‘In A World We Don’t Belong Pt. 1’, Sekou presents the most complete vision of his artistry yet. Its five vibrant yet vulnerable songs ping from the shimmering soul-pop of ‘Catching Bodies’ to the boppy R&B of ‘About Last Night’ and classic balladry of ‘Love Language’, on which Sekou implores a paramour to “kiss me like the world was ending”. Co-written with collaborators including Jeff Gitelman (H.E.R., Jorja Smith) and Theron Thomas (Lizzo, Usher), it’s ear candy with an emotional tang.
“This is the first time that I’ve really found myself and my sound,” Sekou says as he sits opposite NME in a North London photo studio. He speaks more softly than he sings, but with the emphatic rhythms of someone growing in confidence. This conviction also comes across in the mixtape’s visuals. The cover art shows Sekou in a stylish Argyle sweater reclining on a chintzy three-seater sofa. It’s ’70s retro with a Gen Z edge, much like the mixtape’s second single ‘Never Gunna Give You Up’, a Motown bop built around a sample of Barry White’s 1973 soul classic ‘Never, Never Gonna Give Ya Up’. “What a moment to take a song that I grew up listening to and then put my twist on it,” Sekou remarks.
“Who I am now at 21 compared to who I was at 16, it’s like two different people”
Sekou had a clear vision, too, for the videos that would accompany his mixtape: “I saw every visual for every song before I even came up with a brief.” For ‘Never Gunna Give You Up’, he knew the video had to include voguing inspired by Paris Is Burning, the seminal 1990 documentary about New York’s LGBTQ+ ballroom scene. “And I knew I had to dance – dance properly,” he adds.
In the video, Sekou glides through a club that prioritises self-expression on the dance floor. It peaks when he delivers a dance break in his own private room: a thrilling moment of self-possession on a song about joyful strength. “They don’t wanna see us together, but I don’t give a damn what people say,” Sekou sings on the chorus. He says the overwhelmingly positive response has been affirming. “I definitely class myself as a dancer, but I’m doing lessons now because I want to be the best of the best,” he says. “You don’t get to be that without learning new moves and training your body.”
Sekou also shows off some fancy footwork in the ‘Catching Bodies’ video, in which he bops in front of a London tower block. “Yes, I’m the freaky typе, but that’s only for my ride or die,” he sings on this retro R&B gem, which was released as the mixtape’s lead single in August. Is it an anti-hookup bop? “No, everyone always thinks that,” he replies. “But generally, it’s just a love letter to yourself. To just be like: ‘You know what? I’ve had fun. I’ve enjoyed my situationships or whatnot, but now I want something real. Something that feels right.’”
Sekou doesn’t mind how the lyrics are interpreted. “People are really taking their own worlds to the song, and I think that shows people like music that’s about real stuff that they’re going through,” he says. “And that’s what really excited me, because a lot of people around me said ‘Catching Bodies’ wasn’t a single. I had to really put my foot down for it to be a single, for it to even be on the project.”
When did everyone around him get on board with ‘Catching Bodies’? “I don’t think anyone saw the vision until they saw it gaining traction, which is kind of normal, unfortunately, in this industry in this day and age,” he says. “But as soon as I posted the first [social] teaser, it did 4million views in 24 hours. And everyone was like, ‘This is great!’ And I was just like, ‘I always knew it was the right song to put out first.’”
Sekou exudes calmness throughout this interview, but his steely determination shouldn’t be underestimated. He grew up in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, a sleepy town in Leicestershire where there was “no drama and no noise”. He had a strained relationship with his father and watched his mother, a lone parent, work four jobs to make ends meet. “That sacrifice she made, it made me hungry to win,” he says. “I loved music, but that took me over the edge. I was like, ‘I’m going to do anything to make [this career] happen.’”
As a child, Sekou was a “nerdy outsider” who drew strength from singers with “big voices”: Adele, Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston. As he got older, he saw closer parallels between himself and Houston. “She grew up singing in church like me. And watching her interviews and stuff, she just felt very similar – like no filter, quite shy,” he says. Discovering Houston’s jaw-dropping performance of ‘I Will Always Love You’ at the 1994 Grammy Awards was a revelation. “Her veins were popping out of her neck,” he says approvingly. “And I loved that, because I’d had that happen to me, and I felt it wasn’t normal. But when I saw her veins popping, I was like, ‘No, that is a real singer.’”
“That sacrifice my mother made, it made me hungry to win”
At 16, Sekou left Leicestershire for London and began hustling. To keep costs down, he lived in a hostel where he learned on the hoof how to take care of himself – he’d never done his own washing before – while building industry contacts. “My strength was being able to DM people and get into rooms with big writers,” he says. During this period, he also began posting soulful covers on TikTok, which led to his first record deal. When an executive from London-based indie label Good Soldier Records messaged him on Facebook, he thought it was “a scam”, but he grabbed the offer with both hands when he realised it was legit.
Since then, he’s been on a journey with “a lot of lows and quiet moments”, but feels glad his career didn’t “explode” straight away. “Who I am now at 21 compared to who I was at 16, it’s like two different people,” he says. “It felt right for me to take my time with things.” Still, Sekou doesn’t gloss over those lows. In 2023, he signed to major label Universal, then released his debut single ‘Better Man’, a stark piano ballad on which he sang movingly about his father. With his soulful follow-up EP ‘Out Of Mind’, home to the percolating funk bop ‘Forgiving Myself’, he built enough buzz to bag a BRITs’ Rising Star nomination.
But behind the scenes, things weren’t quite so rosy. “My life took a turn, probably for the worse,” he says. “I just wasn’t ready to put music out properly. I wasn’t ready to really take on that pressure.” Because his voice was so “big”, Sekou was constantly being told “you’ve got to do ballads”, but he didn’t want to be pigeonholed.
Sekou began 2024 by supporting pop disruptor Reneé Rapp on her European tour. “There’s going to a show and enjoying it, and there’s going to show and being absolutely bonkers, like her fans,” Sekou says approvingly. “I really enjoyed it because I feel like they fully took me in and listened to me.” But after releasing the pleading ballad ‘Let Go Of Me Slowly’ that April, Sekou didn’t share any new music of his own until ‘Catching Bodies’ dropped this August. His stock kept rising anyway, though, thanks to collaborations with Central Cee (‘Limitless’ from this year’s ‘Can’t Rush Greatness’ album), Kevin Abstract (‘Text Me’, ‘Everybody Plays To Win’) and Justin Bieber.
The timing of his Bieber co-sign this summer couldn’t have been better. “I had really found myself in the music [I was making], and that was when people were like, ‘You know, we should take a chance on this guy,’” he recalls. “And I definitely think the Justin stuff helped, because I was getting 20,000 Instagram followers a day just from him just posting [about me].” Sekou leveraged his growing profile to request workable video budgets for ‘Catching Bodies’ and ‘Never Gunna Give You Up’. “I put my foot down,” he says. “The label knew what I was going for and they just ran with it.”
Now, Sekou is on a roll with part two of his mixtape in the pipeline. There’s no release date yet, but he says it could contain some “more jazzy” moments and a “deeper” lyrical approach. “I’m really happy that I stuck to my gut and worked on the music as hard as possible,” he says. “I put my all into it. The pressure can eat you in this industry, but I’m just glad it hasn’t eaten me yet.”
Sekou’s ‘In A World Where We Don’t Belong Pt. 1’ is out now via EMI.
Listen to Sekou’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify and on Apple Music here.
Words: Nick Levine
Photography: Tom J. Johnson
Photography Assistance: Percy Walker-Smith
Hair: Shy Mason
Grooming: Lara Nasamu
Styling: Ellie Rimmer
Label: EMI
The post Sekou is becoming the multi-faceted musician of his dreams appeared first on NME.
