There are many elements that make up the sound of Niji Adeleye’s music. Though the artist is best identified in jazz-fusion, with piano as his instrument, his influences range from RnB, and soul, even stretching out to hip hop.
Last year, the London born artist performed at the Royal Albert Hall, as part of the historic venue’s Unstoppable Voices season. Before the world went into lockdown, he performed alongside Stormzy at the rapper’s first-ever US television performance.
I spoke to Niji about the last year, the state of the music industry, and what’s happening with him right now.
Tell me about the Royal Albert Hall performance from last year. What was that experience like?
Niji: It’s the first digital concert that I’ve done, in a sense, there were elements that were out of my control, like putting it up on YouTube means it no longer at the mercy of me, if this whole thing goes down (laughs) there’s absolutely nothing I can do except try and get someone from YouTube on the phone. It was quite daunting actually, but that being said, it was an absolute honour to be asked. They’ve had incredible artists on there, and it was a privilege that we were a part of it.
Let’s take it back, when did you first discover the piano?
Okay. My dad plays five instruments.
Wow.
Yeah, and he made sure that we all picked up an instrument. I actually started on the drums, and I thought I was the bee’s knees on the drums, and then I did work experience with the London Community Gospel Choir when I was 14. I went in there, because they had rehearsals there every week, and I would go down and play the drums thinking I was the hottest thing on drums, and I really wasn’t. And then I was like “I play a bit of piano”, and I played some piano at rehearsal and they were like “Oh, you’re really ahead of your years”, and that was the key moment when I said piano’s my main instrument (laughs).
So talk to me about performing with Stormzy on Jimmy Fallon, that must have been insane.
It was interesting because for the most part of my career over the last five years I’ve only really done my stuff, apart from some odd bits with other artists. I got a call from his [Stormzy’s] MD and he was like “We’re coming to New York”, and at the time I was here in New York. “Would you wanna do Fallon with Stormzy?”, and I was just like “Well, yeah of course.”
Why not?
(Laughs) Yeah, why not. It’s so interesting because for the longest amount of years people have been saying “You look like Stormzy you know”.
I saw the picture of you both on Instagram, you do look like brothers.
So that was cool, we had two or three days until rehearsal, and we did ‘Crown’ off of ‘Heavy is the Head’, and it was wicked, backstage at Fallon we met the Roots band and stuff like that. Pretty cool.
You play on the intro part of the song as well, it’s the epic part where the first 30 seconds is just your piano and his vocals.
This is the thing. Because I focus mainly on my artistry, and I don’t really do many other sessions with other artists in that sense, it took me a long time to continually just play a part, because in that environment it’s about the overall performance, not how well I can play, so it took me a while to just get my head in gear and just be like “Okay cool, just play the intro.”
And then also for him, he’s a massive artist, but this was still his US debut, you know, so everything was about making sure it was just a great bed for him to come and do his thing. But yeah we did it, and it sounded great, and he’s a great guy as well, he just feels like one of the mandem. That was probably his only US TV thing, ever, because then we went into lockdown.
It’s hard to think that was his debut. It’s taken him a minute to break the US considering the album was huge and it was before all of that.
He didn’t really need the US, it was going well, and that was the only natural progression, the next community to branch out internationally. All kudos to him, he’s done an amazing thing to reach where he’s reached, headlining Glastonbury and flying the flag for Black Britain, hats off.
What music are you listening to at the moment?
At the moment, I’m listening to Lianne La Havas’ album.
I haven’t heard of her.
You haven’t heard of Lianne La Havas? Wow.
Is this gonna blow my mind?
It’s a great album, it depends what you’re into, but it’s a great album. Another album is by an artist called Cleo Sol, she brought out an album called Rose in the Dark. And those two albums have been my playlist, my soundtrack to the last month or two. Really well produced albums.
So things are maybe getting back to normal now. What’s next?
What’s next for me is, now that this cycle’s finished, it’s to record, I’ve written 70% of the next album, I just need to get all the boys together to record it. When I’ll bring it out I don’t know, but at the moment I like the consistency of just bringing out music I think. Whereas before, you wouldn’t mind artists bringing out a project every couple of years, and tucking away in the meantime, the appetite has changed so much, and it’s probably a little bit better that there’s chunks of music but more often.
So do you miss the times where there would be an album every three years rather than now when every year there’s a demand to just ‘drop’ a whole album?
Yeah, there is a pressure to bring something out every year, you know, and I’m probably lucky that I’m in the jazz instrumental space, because if I was in any other space, it’s even more frequent than that. If I’m honest, I’ve never ‘dropped’ any single whatsoever it’s just like “There’s the album” (laughs) so I know that at the stage I’m at in my career, which is quite early on, that isn’t probably too sustainable because you kind of need to bring people along the way as you’re starting out. So to answer your question, I’ll get the boys together to record the album, and continue recording and releasing singles.
Describe the last couple of months of your life in one sentence?
Learning to let go of what you can’t control.
