Let the Spirit Catch You: Sampha

The 34-year-old singer, songwriter, and producer took a nearly seven year hiatus between the release of his debut album Process in 2017 and his sophomore album LAHAI. The entire world experienced pivotal upheaval and change in that interim, as did Sampha’s internal world: he became a father. The experience of bringing another human being into the world catalyzed his first brushes with the spiritual and supernatural. Through his relationship with his daughter, Sampha felt a metempsychotic connection to his late mother, whose passing in 2015 inspired many of the tracks on Process. That glimpse into the world of the unseen opened up the physic exploration that would become LAHAI.

Sonically, the project presents a matured yet quintessential Sampha. His voice is as soulful as ever and his production even more dexterous and ambitious than before, blending sounds from West African folk and hip hop beats with his instrumental mother tongue of piano and his classic restless and melancholy melodies. Lyrically, his storytelling is vibrant and evocatively fantastical, questioning ideas of intergenerational and chronological linearity, and — in the most striking shift from the grief of Process — presenting a portrait of a man who is unwaveringly facing forward into his future. 

Over the summer, Sampha joined us over video call from his home in London to discuss returning to the stage, the inimitable value of experiencing music collectively, and the spiritual valence of fatherhood.

[Originally published in office magazine Issue 20, Fall-Winter 2023. Order your copy here.]

SAMPHA wears TOP, PANTS by HOMME PLISSE ISSEY MIYAKE, SHOES by CAMPERLAB (left)

SAMPHA wears TOP by JW ANDERSON, PANTS by KENZO, SHOES by OAMC (right)

Hi Sampha. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me today. I’ve really enjoyed listening to the album, and the themes of spirituality and family resonate a lot. The album is named LAHAI, after your paternal grandfather and your own middle name. I know you’re Sierra Leonean — I’m Ethiopian, and I know how significant hereditary names can be in African cultures. How did you decide on that title?

It's a personal journey and a personal record, and one that I wrote in the time of COVID. I had just become a father. I was having maybe, a good old standard existential crisis. I just felt this kind of disconnection to anything beyond the physical realm. I had this feeling like I'd never really been in touch with any sort of other side, or had any sort of visceral connection to a spirit or someone who's passed.

But then having a child of my own, I just had this extremely strong sensation of seeing that part of my parents is in this other person. That kind of reflected on the realization that I'm also part of them. I had this really strong feeling of remembering through my physical being. And so it got me thinking about lineage and about being a part of a continuum, and about time, and about a lot of things.

Lahai being my middle name, it got me thinking also about the people I come from, where we're going and the linearity and non-linearity of it all. And then obviously the name just has a personal resonance to me, which seemed to fit in with the theme of the record.

How has fatherhood changed your approach to your music?

It's naturally quite a dramatic change, because I was a bit of a night owl before. And suddenly, my world had to just focus on keeping this being alive, and getting up early, and so my whole schedule has changed. It was quite the whirlwind initially.

I didn't make any music for a little while, for a few months. And, yeah, it's funny — I wasn't, like, just washed over by this kind of euphoria and wanting to write 50 billion songs. It was very much the physical here and now. And it's a beautiful thing, because it's a love that slowly grows, and it keeps on evolving. But yeah, it took a while for me to start making music again, and then I had to start making music at “reasonable hours.”

SAMPHA wears JACKET, TOP, PANTS by FEAR OF GOD, NECKLACE by ELIOU, SHOES by FERRAGAMO

I know a lot of this album was written during COVID lockdown, which for a lot of artists came with a pressure to use the time as a creative incubator. How did that isolation affect your artistic process?

I imagine if I didn't have a daughter, it would have been a different experience, a quicker experience, potentially. I imagine I would have spent a lot of time making music. So yeah, it wasn't an incubator in that sense. I was more so just incubating something – someone – else.

As I'm growing older though, I also appreciate being around people in the physical sense. That’s what I wanted to do, before any of this happening. I'd written a few tracks before March 2020, but not many. So a majority of it was written after it became a pandemic. It was a period where I couldn't, even if I wanted to — I wasn't traveling anywhere, wasn't doing any big sessions. 

When I did start doing sessions again, it was like a lot of remote sessions and doing things over the internet, which just forced me into a kind of new way of making music. I guess that will lend to the nature of the record as well, potentially. I’ve never really done too much of that before, working on my own music with some people remotely. The change was more so just the perspective that it gave on what I was actually writing, more than the process of making it. 

You recently did a series of shows in Brooklyn. Was that your first time back on stage since the pandemic? 

I did a few guest spots, for people in London, and I did SNL with Kendrick [Lamar], but I guess that’s a bit different. But yeah, that was my first time coming back and doing a solo show with a band.

In the show notes, you said you wanted it to be a place for experimentation and to kind of free yourself up a bit and try new things on stage. Was that successful? Where did that desire come from?

I felt like I was just coming back into a whole different universe, especially with the acceleration of how we put out music and record and document stuff and social media. And for me, you know, it's been a long break, and I just felt like I needed to create for myself.

It was also a genuine thing because I haven't put anything out in a while and I haven't performed, and it felt like I just needed a space where I felt free to play with arrangements. To be honest, now it's something that I just want to keep on doing. I want it to keep feeling like this ever-evolving thing, where it's always like that no matter what or where the show is. We were telling ourselves that this is always a space for experimenting and expressing, and it makes it fun as well. It makes you feel slightly more flexible, you know, and then you're able to connect.

I think it's naturally how I play anyway, to a certain degree. I have always been really bad at playing things the same twice, or playing a song exactly how it sounds on the record or singing exactly how I did the day before. 

It’s interesting you mention that acceleration, because I really admire how much time you’ve taken between projects — it’s a real subversion of the demands we put on artists nowadays, and few are able to really resist it. How intentional was that?

SAMPHA wears JACKET, TOP, PANTS by FEAR OF GOD, NECKLACE by ELIOU, SHOES by FERRAGAMO

My process of writing music sometimes is naturally quite slow, especially when it comes to writing lyrics and actually having enough strength to finalize them. It might be quite cliche, but I started off just making instrumentals. That was my first genuine outlet, and I've always leaned more towards that side of things. Vocally and lyrically, I've always had to build up confidence — to be like, “I don't have to sound perfect, I don't have to be a singer-singer.” Or my lyrics, I don't necessarily have to be the deepest storyteller, realizing I can write things in my own way and sort of getting comfortable with how I write. But it just takes me a while. I've seen many other artists write, and some artists are able to pen a song in a day. And I can also write quickly as well sometimes, but it’s more so figuring out what I want to say. I freestyle a lot and then it will take me a while to decipher what I'm actually trying to get out of this, or what I'm talking about. Some of the ideas are quite lofty, and trying to make sense of it all for the purpose of a record could sometimes feel like a bit of a tall order.

But every time, I always endeavor, like, “Oh yeah, my next album, I’m gonna bang it out in two months!” [Laughs]

On that note, how does it feel now that this is your second time approaching an album release? Does it feel different from the time leading up to Process? 

It's different a little bit, I guess just naturally because the world has changed, and even the way in which we release music has changed. But, also, my experiences have changed quite vastly. There was something nice about being maybe a little bit more innocent — I’d be like, “Hey, I don’t know what this is, I’ll just do it!” I guess the difference is now, I do know what this is, which does have its pros as well in navigating things. It's also funny how much I forget as well, like how it actually felt releasing things. Sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday and sometimes it feels like it never happened, you know, in a weird way. But there's a lot of similar feelings. I'm still traveling towards an unknown territory and unmarked space.

I feel like I'm in a similar space where I don’t really have much of an idea of how people are going to take it in, or what the collective consciousness will make of it. And it's exciting, also with a little bit of anxiety at times, and a lot of growth in terms of learning how to deal with those emotions in the most healthy way possible. I’m not attaching my whole sense of self worth and value to the work I make. 

I feel like I'm more aware now than I was then that I'm a bit more of a vessel, and it's not necessarily all me in a sense. I'm not talking about some sort of higher power or something speaking through me, but you're allowed to let go. You're allowed to not have to attach yourself to something you've created.

One of the lyrics that has stuck in my head as I've listened to the album is “spirit gon’ catch you,” from the first song you put out from this album, Spirit 2.0. That lyric reminds me of so many times in the last few years that I felt that way, like spirit caught me. Is there a moment that you feel like spirit caught you that you would be open to sharing?

I remember a friend of mine who used to talk about “sliding door moments,” or the moments you can see a little bit of a crack in reality, or the times where life kind of slows down and you have an epiphany. And as I said, one of them was feeling my mother's energy through my daughter.

SAMPHA wears TOP, SHOES by BURBERRY, PANTS by SAVANT STUDIOS, WATCH by HUBLOT

Sometimes it’s that I have a lot of self doubt or anxiety when it comes to performing music, for instance, and the idea of doing it is almost like it's not me who's gonna be going up there and doing that — that must be someone else. But when I actually get to go into piano, I get lost in it and something takes over, and it's like, “Wow, where did this come from?” Sometimes, in my normal days I forget about that ability.  

I might call that spirit. I don't know what it is or, you know, that thing where it feels like something takes over. I guess it's the world of creation, I would even say when I'm talking to people — I’m not making up the words I'm saying to you right now. I'm winging it. I can't pre-write what I'm saying to you, you know, it kind of just keeps flowing. I can't predict what I'm about to say to you in the next 20 seconds. It's just being, and I think sometimes it’s so constant that you're not even aware of it.

You cited physics and magical realism as some of the inspirations or themes of the album, which I found interesting because the older I get and the more my relationship to spirituality deepens, the more I realize that there's less contradiction and more agreement between science and spirituality than I previously realized. What role did that play in your thinking as you made this album?

I’ve always been interested in science — maybe just popular science, but I've always been interested in the intersections and the borderlines between disciplines and genres. Sometimes there's moments where you can start to see those walls melt away a little bit.

I was watching this documentary about the universe, and Brian Cox was presenting the show, and he was talking about time and entropy, about how it's harder to figure out how to travel back in time because of entropy, as opposed to moving forward. It was just an interesting statement to me, and when I was at the piano, I just kind of got thinking about stories and our obsession with time. 

Life can be extremely mundane and extraordinary in the same moment, in the same sentence. Making tracks and stuff, sometimes I would just imagine scenarios, like I would just imagine flying on air. I've got a track of my record where I talk about running away from demons or flying up to a forest in the clouds. I've found an interesting way of just being able to paint pictures, you know — paint pictures with words, paint pictures with sounds. 

Sometimes I feel insecure about some of my songwriting, and when I came across terms like afrofuturism and magical realism, they just felt like terms that related to what I was already doing. 

That speaks also back to what you were saying about intergenerational connection and what it feels like to be part of a literal lineage — because here you’re placing yourself in an artistic lineage. The storytelling you're describing for your music to me is very visual. Do you see there being a visual component for this album?

I always endeavor to, because the way I write, I use visuals as a mirror or something to write to. I might put on a film and put it on mute, or have photography or art books open, and sort of write to that. Or when I'm writing, I'm writing to a particular scene that feels like a mood, and I try to sort of articulate that in lyrics.

That being said, what I see in this record is quite wild in some ways or quite specific, and it's definitely a challenge trying to figure out how to translate that visually, because I'm not so skilled in being able to quickly translate how I want something to look as opposed to how I’d like something to sound. I'm working on it, you know — trying to figure out how to do that and get better at it. But it's definitely a difficult, challenging, and exciting process of figuring out. I like to figure out: what is the feeling that's being translated and how is it being done?

Sometimes it's the story, but sometimes I realize, well, maybe it wasn't even the story, it was the camera that was actually doing the writing, and the film and the texture, just like with my music. Sometimes it takes me a while to realize that there is a sonic thread between all these tracks, like something that sounds slightly impressionistic and magical.

It's taken working with people like Khalil Joseph for me to recognize what I like is things being shot on film and what I like are these specific colors. It's definitely an important component, but in all honesty I feel like I'm a little bit further behind in terms of trying to express myself visually. I'm trying. [Laughs]

When the accompanying film for Process came out, you and the director Khalil Joseph did smaller screenings of it in a very intentional way, having the audience experience it intimately. Could you tell me a little about why you made that choice?

That film was a collaboration, and the rollout was actually mostly led by Khalil, who is sort of precious about his work. Keeping things that precious or putting them in a space where it feels, as you said, intentional is really nice. There's something nice about seeing things in physical spaces with people on big screens, in terms of creating an environment as an artist for people to take in your work in a particular way.

I think the way in which I express that sometimes is like, creating a song that's five minutes long and not making it three, and then putting it out first — “Spirit 2.0” is a 5 minute song and it's the first one I’ve put out. I wasn't gonna try and change that. I'd like to create experiences for people to listen to the record in its entirety and listen in collective spaces. 

Everyone has extremely busy lives and, you know how sometimes you need someone to come over for you to clean up your house? There's times where you need to create a space for people to come over and just be able to leave things at the door, and have a moment to just let go and focus in on something and not feel this nagging feeling to do something else, or feel guilty about listening to a whole record or watching a film. I'd like to create that collective experience for people to react in-person. 

I feel like there's so much good music out there — people might complain about there not being good music, but a lot of the time I realize it's actually about my capacity to really take things in. When you get older as well, it's harder to take in new music and to really focus on it and make the effort. As much as it's beautiful to have music that just floors you instantaneously, there is also listening as a practice, you know, focusing as a practice. Creating spaces and environments where you can hone that is special.

SAMPHA wears FULL LOOK by FEAR OF GOD