Soul singer Samm Henshaw heads to the U.S. for a trio of shows, his first across the pond since early 2020. Playing at The Peppermint Club on Thursday, November 18, the sold-out event is a welcome return for the charismatic British-Nigerian performer who has been eager to get back on stage. In October, the rising star played London’s Omeara to a sold-out crowd and tonight he plays New York’s SOB’s, and Tuesday he stops at Atlanta’s Vinyl, before making his way to the last stop of the mini tour in Los Angeles. The talented singer was among other 2021 breakouts like Arlo Parks and Joy Oladokun on NPR’s annual Slingshot Artists To Watch list and has picked up serious performance cred over the years, opening for H.E.R., Chance the Rapper, Tori Kelly, James Bay and Allen Stone.
His music has been around for a several years, especially the seriously-catchy “Church” featuring EARTHGANG, released in 2018/2019, “Doubt” featuring Wretch 32 and “Broke”. His long-awaited debut album Untidy Soul is on its way January 28, 2022 with equally impressive tracks such as recent single “Grow” (featuring Tiana Major9 in the music video) and the brand new “Chicken Wings”, with an accompanying music video that premiered last week.
Samm Henshaw’s first two projects (The Sound Experiment and The Sound Experiment 2) were EPs, the first being a project for his dissertation studying popular music. ” I can’t even remember what grade I got for that but I feel like I got worse than it should have been”, recalls Henshaw humorously. “The EP was done, people liked it, I like got signed off the EP so my course should have given me way more credit than that”.
If signing to a major label was his consolation prize, it certainly put Samm Henshaw on the musical map. Though he has moved on and will now release his debut distributing via AWAL, Henshaw looks ahead to a new year of possibility. “It’s weird, I’m like really happy that it’s kind of happening now and I didn’t do it sooner —I think if I had done it sooner the pressure on it would have been crazy. I don’t think there’s as much pressure for me at this point. In the best way, like less people care, so it’s really cool for me to be in the position to do what I want, put it out in the way that I want”.
The sound encompasses what Henshaw has always pushed to the forefront – soul and R&B with fine attention to detail with varying elements pulled from gospel, funk, blues and more. The son of a reverend, Samm of course grew up in the church and among various gospel music, but it doesn’t define his limits or his sound. He does credit a blend of icons like Kirk Franklin, Lauryn Hill and Marvin Gaye as inspirations, reflecting the range of talent he appreciates in gospel, hip-hop and classic soul.
“It’s a huge compliment at the end of the day”, says Henshaw. “What most people don’t realize is that the foundation of most music comes from gospel or Negro spirituals and stuff like that. A lof of the stuff that we love and we vibe to, the origin really is from there. I think that’s why before I used to get angry and now I laugh about it because for one, it’s such a beautiful thing, if you dive deep into gospel music, like what they are capable of. It’s incredible. Because I grew up in the church, most of my foundation and knowledge of music overall comes from that, and so for me I don’t ever want to fight it. The idea of coming away from it, to me I just try to let the music speak. Like with this new record I think you will find there’s a lot of moments where you’re just going to hear something different —cause I think naturally we all progress and grow. For me it was just important I was doing that in the music”.
With the upcoming record, Henshaw is poised to make an impact on the level of his contemporaries Leon Bridges and John Legend. His album title speaks not only to all that soul can be but also to the idea that a person can be mixed up, disorganized and even amongst chaos in their thoughts and ideas. It’s the creativity and embracing the madness that can lead to a breakthrough.
“A lot of people tend to ask me how I would describe my music and I never really knew what to say because first of all to me, I know all of the musical influences I have so I know all of the ingredients that go into what I create. It’s funny, a lot of people will hear my music and be like oh, gospel, soul. I used to get really mad about it because there’s so much more to my music, how can you not hear it? For me, because I can never describe it, it’s kind of like messy, untidy soul, that’s what kind of came out of that. I think there are way more deeper meanings to it as well. The other parts to it are this idea that I myself am quite a bit of a scatterbrain and when it comes to creating, things are all over the place, but I very much have become OK with that concept and OK with the idea that a lot of us as human beings are a bit of a mess and we all need to kind of clean up —and there’s space to grow and change and develop and be better”.
Henshaw is ushering in this new wave of soul and R&B bringing back horns, catchy melodies and joy like on his video for “Chicken Wings” (directed by Jim Pilling), where he plays both a chicken wing shop employee Sonny as well as the older manager. It’s a sort of unexpected love song or metaphor for what we love the most in life and in another person. “It was filmed in the UK in a restaurant. I’m playing another character which is a lot of fun, a character that will be presented for the rest of the campaign, so there’s more coming than just the music video”.
In discussing the characters he plays in the music video, Samm Henshaw talked about his dabbling in acting, including playing soul legend Sam Cooke on a show called Godfather of Harlem with Forest Whitaker. “It was a little cameo thing”, said Henshaw. “It was one of my first big acting things and I thought if twas kind of sick. I love film, I love TV shows, so watching the whole process behind-the-scenes I was like this is kind of cool”.
Samm talked about how playing other characters used to make him cringe but that he’s starting to enjoy it now. “I get it now. It’s amazing to be able to push yourself and see how far you can go with something. See who you can be and what it turns out to become. I think the funny thing is, nine times out of ten a lot of us are performing anyway, we’re all kind of different characters most of the time. So I think some of us are just a bit more eccentric than others, some of us dive into it deeper than others, but I think most people who perform on some level are becoming a different person. We are adopting different versions of ourselves, we are being someone else a little bit, most of the time. During Covid, it came back to the idea of like are there creative ideas that you have that you want to do, and the only thing stopping you is fear? And the answer is yes. In that case I want to put fear to the side and just go for it. I think when we started working on the music videos for these new songs, I just started writing stuff, characters, how they were going to be and creating this world and this idea. And then I tried it, I was pushing myself past the cringe part of it and then it just kind of became this idea of like I really need this to be good by all means necessary, if this isn’t going to be good and I’m not going to give it my all then there’s no point. So I got to the point where I just decided I needed to do it.
And the talent Samm has been among on tours and festivals and alongside in the studio continues to set him apart. He’s learned a lot over the years but Chance the Rapper really made an impact. “I think what I took away from Chance was the work ethic and the amount of like execution and eyes for like detail that he was doing. It just always was so inspiring and even talking to him as well. I saw him a couple weeks ago for his movie that he just dropped and not being afraid to have a creative idea and throwing it forward was a very big deal for me. Because I can sit down for hours and come up with ideas but actually executing them based on this idea of fear —and there are always so many things that just stopped me or prevented me from executing an idea and so watching him just be so fearless with it, and also someone who is very open about his baby, being able to be very fearless about doing that. It was very inspiring and being able to sit down and speak with him and really just see that he fully knows his business and what he’s doing.
Though he hasn’t released anything official with fellow Brit Tiana Major9, the two co-star in his music video for previous single “Grow”, a throwback reminiscent of classic 60s soul. “So Tiana and I got in the studio a while back and we started working on something. Honestly, it’s just been like time. Even getting her for the video was like a time thing. The fact that we even got her for it, it was like yo, this is crazy man. We’re definitely due to, we’ve spoken about it and it’s definitely due to happen. I know she’s been busy finishing up her record but it will definitely happen. Tiana is the greatest, she’s like an incredible person and her pen game is stupid, her vocal is stupid, everything she does is like incredible”.
Whether he’s playing live, inspiring a fearless mindset or making hearts melt, Samm Henshaw’s music elevates all who come into contact with it. He looks forward to testing out new tracks in New York, Atlanta and Los Angeles as well as sharing the song “Loved By You” coming soon. “I’m actually loving playing with a band, I’ve never been able to grow with a band. I’m ready to have some new songs in the set. The recent Omeara show in London was his first in a long time. “That was amazing. It was the first show I did in a year in front of people and it was the first show I’ve done with my band in two years. It was a very special and great moment to do it at home, the crowd was insane. It was a small, intimate show but the crowd —they went nuts, we didn’t expect it but it was amazing.
Tickets to Samm Henshaw’s show at The Peppermint Club on November 18, 2021 are sold out.
Main featured photo by Wikes Hlavatovic
