That’s my pumpkin there,” says the genre-melding rapper Jords, proudly showing off a picture on his phone of fresh weedlings poking through a patch of soil. “We have pumpkins, callaloos and some potatoes growing,” he beams, reclining on a cracked leather sofa in the back of a dimly lit hotel bar. “I’m having a big harvest!”
The Croydon-bred rapper, born Jordan Edwards-Wilks to Jamaican parents, discovered his green thumb when seeking some solace after the recent release of his buzzy debut album Dirt In The Diamond, a project that fused rap with jazz and R&B. In it, Wilks pays homage to his Jamaican heritage (“Ancestors”) and his family (“Slow Songs”). He proved his grime chops with the 2020 Stormzy-esque banger “Patterned” and does so again on “Drill vs Grime”. Mostly, though, this debut sees Wilks moving slower and smoother; he muses about love on “Beauty Spots” as his gravelly voice purrs over the trap-inflected beat. The album also makes Wilks the first UK rap act to be signed to the American recording label Motown Records, a historic moment, Wilks suggests, worthy of a “trivia question at Christmas dinner”.
