Distil the special sauce of south London down to its raw ingredients and, according to Joy Crookes, it’s a mix of sharpness and charm. “If you can balance the two, that’s one of the best combinations of all time to me,” the Elephant and Castle-born singer grins. “You can stand your ground but be eloquent with it. I really enjoy that moment where you deal with something lightly even when the things you’re dealing with can be quite heavy or deep or misogynistic. To take all that and just be like, ‘Nope!’”
The 26-year-old’s just-released second album Juniper is full of such cheekily cutting quips. The follow-up to 2021 debut Skin — a record of personality-drenched, soul and jazz-infused social commentary that earned her two Brit nominations and a Mercury Prize nod — Juniper swaps much of its predecessor’s outward gaze for a deeper delve inward but loses none of its swagger and sparkle. “I shine and you get sunburn” goes a stand-out line on the Vince Staples-featuring Pass the Salt: a kiss-off to a toxic figure in her life. “I was gassed when I wrote that line because I really truly do feel that is accurate,” she chuckles. “Everyone has their own defence mechanisms and maybe mine is being a bit of a c*** back to people…”
