Sampha

Sampha Lahai Sisay, born in 1988 in Morden, south London, the youngest of five brothers, to Sierra Leonean parents — a singer, pianist and producer whose cracked, weightless voice made him the most in-demand guest in British music before he'd released an album, turning up on records by Drake, Frank Ocean and Kanye West (with Kendrick Lamar following later). Process (2017) is his debut and largely a record about losing his mother to cancer; it won the Mercury Prize. "Incomplete Kisses" is the album's penultimate track, where the grief begins to resolve into something like release. Unexpectedly for such an interior record, part of it was cut at Ocean Sound on the Norwegian island of Giske.

From the notes for Episode 02 · fact-checked Sep 23, 2026.