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8:50 · 1,488 words of transcript · watch on YouTube
- The story starts with a demo put on MySpace around 2010, a London singer, writer and producer folding dubstep, indie rock and R&B into one song that still worked as pop.
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- Its appeal was that it sounded like a forecast rather than a record, taking pieces of separate scenes and making them accessible at once.
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- The reaction was fast: blogs and best-new-track coverage, UK radio rotation, and a bidding war that landed him at the label that also had Adele, Vampire Weekend and Radiohead.
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- Both Drake and Beyonce released tracks sampling his song, which is a remarkable thing to happen to someone with two songs out.
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- The influence is named directly, with James Blake, Frank Ocean, Lorde and BROCKHAMPTON all pointing to him, and a whole underground wave labelled after him.
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- The album appeared on Bandcamp in April 2013 with no name and no titles, and listeners identified it as his by recognising the two tracks they already knew.
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- The release made no sense as a strategy, arriving on a Saturday night with no publicity, and the label denied authorising any of it.
▶ 00:03:06
- The explanation was theft. His laptop was stolen and whoever took it put the unfinished album online, which the rough mixes support over the marketing-stunt theory.
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- Close to everything he had made between 2007 and 2013 was leaked, including material that was probably never meant to be heard at all.
▶ 00:05:16
- He has said he hated that the music was being heard, never finished the album, and went underground for another six years before releasing two new songs and the leaked material with cleaner mixes, which the video reads as reclaiming what was taken.
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