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For an album named Subconsciously, the sixth studio album from South African DJ, producer and artist Black Coffee is one created with a clear purpose in mind: freedom. Through open, stripped-back productions where lyrics and mood take centre stage, he weaves his way out of traditional dance and electronic artist expectations—and even those of an African artist—into a space that’s more melody- and mood-driven than any of his previous LPs. “The main event for me on the album is the sound,” he tells Apple Music. “On my previous albums I would sit down with an artist and we’d discuss what we’d want to write about. This time, I relied more on the singers and songwriters. I want the melody to be right. Then the lyrics can follow.” After releasing almost every track on its own ahead of the official album release (“Because people miss songs sometimes if you just drop an album”), here, Black Coffee offers up a track-by-track guide through his latest genre-bending body of work.
Lost (feat. Jinadu)
“'Lost' is a song that originally was created by my friend [Greek artist] DJ Angelo. We spent some time in Italy and one day we were out on a boat; we had lunch and he played a song he was working on. And it just blew me away. It was even more minimal than it is now. So I was like, 'Man, my album is full, but if I wasn't done, I would take the song.' It just belongs in the stories that I'm trying to tell, because I'm trying to include all of these different elements. I always felt like I needed an open, slow-tempo house song. I just added the elements that would make it have my presence, but without overwhelming the song.”
You Need Me (feat. Maxine Ashley & Sun-El Musician)
“Sun-El Musician gave it that feel. I was telling my management, there's a guy that I think can change this around. I have done everything else on the album and I'm not getting the song right. I'm not doing justice to Maxine and what she had done on the song. So we sent it to Sun-El and it just became the way it is, so different, how it builds up and that the groove that he created, still using some of the elements that I used, but different. It's one of the most beautiful songs I've ever been involved in and it just lives in its own place and I love that.”
SBCNCSLY (feat. Sabrina Claudio)
“This is a new-age Black Coffee sound, and it represents what I'm trying to be, and the space I want to be in. I'm turning 45 this year [2021]. By the time I'm 50 I want to have a discography of beautifully written music. Some of it will even have no drums. I want to make stuff with an orchestra and a singer. This one is so clean, it's so spacey and so nicely arranged. And the groove is not trying to be in your face; it's not trying to make you move. This is why it became the title track, because I wanted it to have some kind of focus.”
I’m Fallin’ (feat. RY X)
“RY X is an Australian singer, songwriter, producer. I sent him a groove and then he wrote on it. I often send artists a groove, and I know for a fact that it's not going to be the final one. But he got married to it. I wasn’t so sure. So it took a lot of back and forth. At the end, I just felt like it also came down to being African and artists understanding rhythm differently. I had also been playing the song already in my DJ sets and people were loving it as is. I kind of had to put my foot down. But I love everything about [that journey], because he's a producer as well. He edited so many elements on this song that just made it so full and very emotional. Before he even starts singing, I was in awe. That's what I wanted [for this album]: each song to just be independently beautiful.”
Time (feat. Cassie)
“This is one of the first songs that we did, and it just set the mood for what I was trying to do. So we did what we did with Cassie and we got other songwriters to help and just add stuff, so that it's like a fuller song.”
LaLaLa (with Usher)
“We [originally] worked with Lucky Daye, who I see as a younger version of Usher. I was listening to that version for so long that I wondered if Usher would be able to do it better. And he truly did. His experience came through. It was so cool to do a song like this with an artist like Usher, who I grew up idolising. For this, it took a while to get to that space of being unlimited by genre, because the first time we spoke on the phone, his thoughts on what we would do were different from mine. And that's why eventually it was misquoted [in the press]: ‘Usher says Black Coffee's not African enough.’ I just wanted to do it different. You can go online now and search for Afro, pop, whatever. It's going to give you that new tempo thing. And so it was hard to explain what I'm trying to do. It was hard to explain that [the expected African sound] was actually not what I wanted to do.”
.
Flava (feat. Una Rams & Tellaman)
“I was in the studio with Swizz Beatz in New York and played him this. He pulled me aside and told me he wanted the song for his own album. The guy's very persuasive! He was first planning on putting Chris Brown on the track, then a few months later he told me Alicia Keys wanted the song with a Justin Timberlake feature. Time passed, and I sent a Swizz a text message: ‘Bro, I'm taking my song back.’”
10 Missed Calls (feat. Pharrell Williams & Jozzy)
“Jozzy is one of the most gifted songwriters of all time, and yet people don’t really know her. In the studio, she just started mumbling the melody, which was so beautiful to watch. She said, ‘Put me in the booth,’ and mumbled the entire song, beginning to end—just the melody. She came back, played back, turned the mumbles into lyrics, and created a story out of the mumbling. And went back to the booth and sang the song. I was like, ‘We have to keep you on the song. I don't see anyone else.’ Then Pharrell comes in right at the end. We kept trying different things and we’d go home thinking, ‘Okay, this sounds good, but let's work on it.’ And my management just thought we should just send Pharrell what we'd been doing. Pharrell is like a magician when it comes to bridges in songs.”
Ready for You (feat. Celeste)
“Some collaborations kind of fall into my lap. Celeste was done with her album, and this was a song that didn't make the cut and she didn’t want to work with electronic music. It was an acoustic version, just her and the piano, which I thought was a really beautiful song. So when I was given the song, I loved it. I loved how it started, and that's the part that always gets me: the beginning, and how a song starts. We worked on it, and I involved Sun-El Musician. And it was then night and day—he added so much warmth and took it to greater heights.”
Wish You Were Here (feat. Msaki)
“We lack songwriters in South Africa—we have so many singers, but we don't have enough writers like Msaki, who is dangerous with the pen and how she uses English. This track makes me happy, you know? It has its own life.”
Drive (with David Guetta, feat. Delilah Montagu)
“This took us to different kinds of listeners and became a win-win, because [co-writer and producer] David Guetta is also trying to live beyond EDM. David sang a melody and said, ‘This is what we need to work with. This is the song.’ Some producers will bring a tool, some will bring a loop, some will bring a melody—and he came with this loop, which formed the main hook. I felt like we'd got the production right, but the texture of the voice was more on the EDM side. So we found Delilah. I sent it to David, but he wasn’t into it—the vocal was too jazzy for him. However, he was the bigger person and said, ‘OK, we'll go with this one.’ That shows his power. This is why he wins. He's human before being a superstar.”
Never Gonna Forget (with Diplo, feat. Elderbrook)
“This one surprised me. I just felt like it was almost on the cheesy side. It almost didn't make the album. But when it came out, how people received it, it just blew me away. It gave the album that balance that I felt we needed. Diplo is one of the sharpshooters of the industry. You find him on everyone's albums and he's consistent. He's always super versatile and he knows how to place himself. He knows how to always be on the right side of history, musically. And Elderbrook has a really amazing energy; he’s a talented guy, and super energetic onstage.”
Lost (feat. Jinadu)
“'Lost' is a song that originally was created by my friend [Greek artist] DJ Angelo. We spent some time in Italy and one day we were out on a boat; we had lunch and he played a song he was working on. And it just blew me away. It was even more minimal than it is now. So I was like, 'Man, my album is full, but if I wasn't done, I would take the song.' It just belongs in the stories that I'm trying to tell, because I'm trying to include all of these different elements. I always felt like I needed an open, slow-tempo house song. I just added the elements that would make it have my presence, but without overwhelming the song.”
You Need Me (feat. Maxine Ashley & Sun-El Musician)
“Sun-El Musician gave it that feel. I was telling my management, there's a guy that I think can change this around. I have done everything else on the album and I'm not getting the song right. I'm not doing justice to Maxine and what she had done on the song. So we sent it to Sun-El and it just became the way it is, so different, how it builds up and that the groove that he created, still using some of the elements that I used, but different. It's one of the most beautiful songs I've ever been involved in and it just lives in its own place and I love that.”
SBCNCSLY (feat. Sabrina Claudio)
“This is a new-age Black Coffee sound, and it represents what I'm trying to be, and the space I want to be in. I'm turning 45 this year [2021]. By the time I'm 50 I want to have a discography of beautifully written music. Some of it will even have no drums. I want to make stuff with an orchestra and a singer. This one is so clean, it's so spacey and so nicely arranged. And the groove is not trying to be in your face; it's not trying to make you move. This is why it became the title track, because I wanted it to have some kind of focus.”
I’m Fallin’ (feat. RY X)
“RY X is an Australian singer, songwriter, producer. I sent him a groove and then he wrote on it. I often send artists a groove, and I know for a fact that it's not going to be the final one. But he got married to it. I wasn’t so sure. So it took a lot of back and forth. At the end, I just felt like it also came down to being African and artists understanding rhythm differently. I had also been playing the song already in my DJ sets and people were loving it as is. I kind of had to put my foot down. But I love everything about [that journey], because he's a producer as well. He edited so many elements on this song that just made it so full and very emotional. Before he even starts singing, I was in awe. That's what I wanted [for this album]: each song to just be independently beautiful.”
Time (feat. Cassie)
“This is one of the first songs that we did, and it just set the mood for what I was trying to do. So we did what we did with Cassie and we got other songwriters to help and just add stuff, so that it's like a fuller song.”
LaLaLa (with Usher)
“We [originally] worked with Lucky Daye, who I see as a younger version of Usher. I was listening to that version for so long that I wondered if Usher would be able to do it better. And he truly did. His experience came through. It was so cool to do a song like this with an artist like Usher, who I grew up idolising. For this, it took a while to get to that space of being unlimited by genre, because the first time we spoke on the phone, his thoughts on what we would do were different from mine. And that's why eventually it was misquoted [in the press]: ‘Usher says Black Coffee's not African enough.’ I just wanted to do it different. You can go online now and search for Afro, pop, whatever. It's going to give you that new tempo thing. And so it was hard to explain what I'm trying to do. It was hard to explain that [the expected African sound] was actually not what I wanted to do.”
.
Flava (feat. Una Rams & Tellaman)
“I was in the studio with Swizz Beatz in New York and played him this. He pulled me aside and told me he wanted the song for his own album. The guy's very persuasive! He was first planning on putting Chris Brown on the track, then a few months later he told me Alicia Keys wanted the song with a Justin Timberlake feature. Time passed, and I sent a Swizz a text message: ‘Bro, I'm taking my song back.’”
10 Missed Calls (feat. Pharrell Williams & Jozzy)
“Jozzy is one of the most gifted songwriters of all time, and yet people don’t really know her. In the studio, she just started mumbling the melody, which was so beautiful to watch. She said, ‘Put me in the booth,’ and mumbled the entire song, beginning to end—just the melody. She came back, played back, turned the mumbles into lyrics, and created a story out of the mumbling. And went back to the booth and sang the song. I was like, ‘We have to keep you on the song. I don't see anyone else.’ Then Pharrell comes in right at the end. We kept trying different things and we’d go home thinking, ‘Okay, this sounds good, but let's work on it.’ And my management just thought we should just send Pharrell what we'd been doing. Pharrell is like a magician when it comes to bridges in songs.”
Ready for You (feat. Celeste)
“Some collaborations kind of fall into my lap. Celeste was done with her album, and this was a song that didn't make the cut and she didn’t want to work with electronic music. It was an acoustic version, just her and the piano, which I thought was a really beautiful song. So when I was given the song, I loved it. I loved how it started, and that's the part that always gets me: the beginning, and how a song starts. We worked on it, and I involved Sun-El Musician. And it was then night and day—he added so much warmth and took it to greater heights.”
Wish You Were Here (feat. Msaki)
“We lack songwriters in South Africa—we have so many singers, but we don't have enough writers like Msaki, who is dangerous with the pen and how she uses English. This track makes me happy, you know? It has its own life.”
Drive (with David Guetta, feat. Delilah Montagu)
“This took us to different kinds of listeners and became a win-win, because [co-writer and producer] David Guetta is also trying to live beyond EDM. David sang a melody and said, ‘This is what we need to work with. This is the song.’ Some producers will bring a tool, some will bring a loop, some will bring a melody—and he came with this loop, which formed the main hook. I felt like we'd got the production right, but the texture of the voice was more on the EDM side. So we found Delilah. I sent it to David, but he wasn’t into it—the vocal was too jazzy for him. However, he was the bigger person and said, ‘OK, we'll go with this one.’ That shows his power. This is why he wins. He's human before being a superstar.”
Never Gonna Forget (with Diplo, feat. Elderbrook)
“This one surprised me. I just felt like it was almost on the cheesy side. It almost didn't make the album. But when it came out, how people received it, it just blew me away. It gave the album that balance that I felt we needed. Diplo is one of the sharpshooters of the industry. You find him on everyone's albums and he's consistent. He's always super versatile and he knows how to place himself. He knows how to always be on the right side of history, musically. And Elderbrook has a really amazing energy; he’s a talented guy, and super energetic onstage.”
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