NME’s latest star of The Cover, Sekou, has created an exclusive playlist to accompany the story’s launch – check it out below.
The Leicestershire-born R&B artist is on this week’s (November 24) edition of The Cover, a manifestation of NME’s commitment to supporting emerging talent across the globe on a weekly basis. Every week, a rising artist will feature on The Cover – you can read Sekou’s profile here, written by Nick Levine and featuring photography by Tom J. Johnson.
To accompany his appearance on The Cover, Sekou has curated an exclusive playlist, titled ‘Into Sekou’s Mind’. The playlist features the artist’s selection of tracks by Adele, Amy Winehouse, The Supremes, Billie Eilish, Whitney Houston, and more. Listen to the full playlist on Spotify below and on Apple Music.
As a child, Sekou was a “nerdy outsider” who drew strength from singers with “big voices” – including some of those featured on his playlist, like Adele, Winehouse and Houston. As he got older, he saw closer parallels between himself and Houston. “She grew up singing in church like me. And watching her interviews and stuff, she just felt very similar – like no filter, quite shy,” he says.
Discovering Houston’s jaw-dropping performance of ‘I Will Always Love You’ at the 1994 Grammy Awards was a revelation. “Her veins were popping out of her neck,” he says approvingly. “And I loved that, because I’d had that happen to me, and I felt it wasn’t normal. But when I saw her veins popping, I was like, ‘No, that is a real singer.’”
At 16, Sekou left his sleepy Leicestershire town behind for London, where he began hustling for his breakthrough in music. He soon scored his first record deal, but “a lot of lows and quiet moments” followed. Now 21 and signed to EMI – and with a BRITs Rising Star nomination under his belt – he’s grateful that his career didn’t explode straight away. “Who I am now at 21 compared to who I was at 16, it’s like two different people,” he says. “It felt right for me to take my time with things.”
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Read Sekou’s full Cover story here and find out who else has been on The Cover here.