When Jorja Smith released her debut album in 2018, she was living in south London. After gold sales figures, Grammy and Mercury nominations and Brit Award wins, and guest spots with Drake, Burna Boy, Stormzy and Calvin Harris, she ought to be making her comeback from a sun terrace in Malibu – but no. She’s retreated to Walsall, her birthplace, where she’s bought a farmhouse.
It sounds as if that first flurry of fame, with its Brits Critics’ Choice award decreeing her British music’s next big thing, and high profile songs on Drake’s More Life mixtape after only a couple of singles of her own, was understandably a bit much. Never hungry for stardom, she has continued to avoid major record labels and refused to rush to follow up her five-year-old debut Lost & Found (a placeholding EP in 2021 was optimistically titled Be Right Back).
