In 2017, Sampha Sisay released his debut album Process. A troubled, sometimes harrowing, frequently beautiful response to his mother’s death, it was rapturously reviewed and a Top 10 hit. It wound up high in critics’ year-end polls, occasioned nominations at the Brit awards and the Ivor Novellos, and won the Mercury prize. There was the sense that an artist who had previously lurked in the background – albeit the background of some of the biggest albums of recent years, by Beyoncé, Drake, Kanye West and Frank Ocean – was finally coming to the fore.
But Sisay retreated into the background once more, although his mobile still clearly buzzed with A-list requests. He turned up duetting with Alicia Keys on her 2020 album Alicia, earned a Grammy nomination for his brief appearance on Kendrick Lamar’s Mr Morale and the Big Steppers and had an entire track, Sampha’s Plea, devoted to him on Stormzy’s This Is What I Mean. The latter was a rare moment when Sisay took the limelight: the overall impression was of someone who had taken a look at centre-stage success, decided it wasn’t for him and headed back behind the scenes.
