“I always hated talking about my personal life in music,” explains Jelani Blackman. “It made me feel too exposed and vulnerable so I just wrote things that kind of related to me but nothing specific. Starting to get better at sharing cos I realise you just have to be honest with yourself.” To that end, he releases Brixton, a song about “one half of the roots of [his] family tree,” a place that seemingly leaves him with mixed emotions:
“‘Brixton’ is about being separated from my dad and the area he’s from at two years old, but still feeling connected to it because I spent the beginning of my life there and it’s where his family first came to from Barbados. The area and him have impacted who I am even though I don’t really know either of them. It was a hard song for me to write, and it took a lot of dealing with personal demons to be able to confront it as an issue. I never wanted to accept that I’d gone through that stereotypical black male experience of growing up without their dad.”
Stream the video below via YouTube.
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