Stormzy announces new album, ‘This Is What I Mean’

Stormzy has announced a new album, ‘This Is What I Mean’. The grime star’s first album in three years lands on 25th November via Def Jam/Interscope.

The majority of the 12-track release was written during time spent on Osea Island, in the Blackwater Estuary, Essex. A popular destination with artists, musicians and other creatives, the London MC was there for a writing camp — a process he has admitted to feeling somewhat skeptical about beforehand. 

Speaking about the experience, Stormzy said: “When you hear about music camps, they always sound intense and somber. People saying, ‘We need to make an album.’ ‘We need to make some hit records.’ But this felt beautifully free. We’re all musicians, but we weren’t always doing music. Some days we played football or walked around taking pictures.”

“The by-product to that was very beautiful music,” he continued. “Because when you marry that ethos with world-class musicians and the best producers, writers, and artists in the world, and we’re in one space, that’s a recipe for something that no one can really imagine. You can’t even calculate what that’s going to come up with. And it came up with a big chunk of this album.”

Stormzy, who received an honorary degree from the University of Exeter in June, teased news of a forthcoming record back in early summer. Absent from the album release schedule since 2019’s ‘Heavy Is The Head’, September’s stand-alone single ‘Mel Made Me Do It’, which does not appear on the new LP, marked his return to solo work. The ten-minute track featured verses from Stylo G and Wretch 32, with cameos by Louis Theroux, Little Simz, Headie One, Usain Bolt and Dave in the accompanying video.