Stormzy has announced that ‘This Is What I Mean’, his third LP, will be arriving on November 25th. The lead single, ‘Hide & Seek’, will drop at midnight tonight.
This news follows the recent release of his new single, ‘Mel Made Me Do it’, although that track will in fact not appear on the new record. Stormzy’s last album was 2019’s highly-acclaimed ‘Heavy Is The Head’, after his 2017 debut, ‘Gang Signs & Prayer’.
The newly-announced album was confirmed earlier this year, but only given its official title and release date last night, October 12th, via a social media post – the London-based grime artist cleared his social feeds for the occasion.
A large portion of ‘This Is What I Mean’ stems from a music camp that Stormzy attended on a remote island near Essex, along with a collection of currently unnamed producers and musicians.
On the experience, Stormzy recalls: “When you hear about music camps they always sound intense and sombre. 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. And the bi-product of that was very beautiful music. “
“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,” he continues. “You can’t even calculate what that’s going to come up with. And it came up with a big chunk of this album.”
‘Hide & Seek’ will arrive at midnight tonight, October 13th, and will be followed by a music video drop tomorrow – Stormzy has teased this with a short clip from the studio which he posted on social media:
You can pre-order ‘This Is What I Mean’ here, with the full tracklist reading as below:
1. Fire + Water
2. This Is What I Mean
3. FireBabe
4. Please
5. Need You
6. Hide & Seek
7. My Presidents Are Black
8. Sampha’s Plea
9. Holy Spirit
10. Bad Blood
11. I Got My Smile Back
12. Give It To The Water
