Young Brits Doing Bits: Jerome Thomas
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Music
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YOUNG BRITS DOING BITS: JEROME THOMAS
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Words by Ashe De SousaArtwork by Tom Shotton
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Neo-soul, nu-jazz and all kinds of spliced categories try to pinpoint London’s sound in 2020 but Jerome Thomas has an antidote to what is really indefinable. FOE - Freedom of Expression/Fusion of Everything explains the hybrid nature of his music, never being bound to one particular sound. But the common thread is his liquid voice, cutting through undercurrents of soul, jazz, trip-hop and RnB. Thomas won’t let medium clip his wings either, weaving spoken word into his 2019 EP, Mood Swings (Vol. 1) and using poetry as a gateway to what can’t be said. In light of his new release “I Don’t Need” and upcoming EP, we met to talk about jazz, nirvana and the strange and beautiful story behind his afro-futurist grindhouse video for “Bruises”.
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Early on in your new release “I Don’t Need” you say that you’re “coming into your own” - does this track mark some kind of personal transformation?
JT: I’m not where I thought I’d be, but I’m a lot further than I thought I’d ever be in my personal growth, I’m kinda starting to feel my sauce a bit, like yeh, bitch I’m me. I recently came out of an 11 year relationship. When you’re with somebody for so long you kind of forget who you are so I spent a lot of that time trying to find myself again, find who Jerome is, what makes me tick, what are my turn ons and turn offs about myself.
How does your personal mantra FOE bleed into your music, and for the uninitiated what is FOE?
JT: FOE stands for Freedom of Expression/Fusion of Everything and it kinda stems from me being influenced by all types of music. I feel like soul is at the core of my sound. The way I grew up, there was my mum, that’s the core, that’s the soul. And then it branches from that. There was my uncle, that was the hip hop, my auntie, that was the house and then my grandma was the reggae and soca influence. That’s kinda my foundation and my roots in music, and it plays out in my life where I’m just constantly trying to find ways to express myself in it’s truest, freest form.
BB: What do you hope FOE gives other people? Do you see it as a movement or something more personal?
JT: I see it as a movement, something people can relate to and it’s something that this new age has kinda been doing anyway, where there’s less rules, less boxes. Anderson Paak, he’s FOE - where you can’t put him to one sound but you know his sound. Kendrick Lamar, FKA Twigs, they’re FOE, they’re paving their own way. It’s a thing that everyone can and should be on. Gotta get on my marketing shit.
BB: When you work with producers with such distinctive sounds, how do you maintain your FOE?
JT: I feel like the one thing I have in common with those producers is that we all grew up listening to the same kind of things so there’s an innate connection. It’s always natural and there’s always an undertone of jazz. I’m not really sure where my love of jazz came from, I guess it’s in the hip hop and Disney films, like Aristocats was my favourite, even TV ads.
BB: Jazz touches so much - and that Tarika Blue sample on Mood Swings is just so good, the way it bridges the two tracks.
JT: Oh yeh, the first time I heard the sample was obviously on the Erykah Badu tune and my friend was like that’s actually a Tarika Blue sample, and I was like who? But then I checked out Dreamflower and then I checked out all her stuff and I was like wow, I’ve been missing out. Those two tracks, Maxwell Owen and I made it our thing to like segway this and make it seamless.
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"I FEEL LIKE IN THIS JOURNEY OF FINDING SELF, THAT IS WHAT I’M TRYING TO FIND OUT - ASIDE FROM MUSIC AND ART, WHAT MAKES ME HAPPY"
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BB: A lot of your lyrics touch themes of transcendence, nirvana and peace of mind, especially on Conversations. Where do you find your nirvana?
JT: It’s funny, I feel like in this journey of finding self, that is what I’m trying to find out - aside from music and art, what makes me happy? And I don’t know yet, if I’m honest, I’m still trying to figure that out.
BB: What do you think of when I say home?
JT: Dalston, Mum. Roti. Music.
BB: How has growing up in East London affected your music?
JT: It’s weird, growing up there was a distinct time where I could have gone one of two ways. And like I saw the friends I was with in my area stay out, and for a while I stayed out. I guess I went introverted and I went to this community centre where they really embraced the arts. They allowed me the space to write and perform and to get out all my energy but not in the ways that my other peers were getting it out. But I was still around a lot of poverty - it was hard growing up around East London. We didn’t have a lot of money a lot of the time so music became and escapism as it does for a lot of artists now. It just gave me space to create outside of the shit that was internally going on.
BB: I heard that ‘1989’, ‘Didn’t Know’ and ‘Stranger’ as a trio are about the breakdown of a relationship and they feel representative of the really intense honesty in your lyrics. Is this something you have to push for or does that vulnerability come naturally?
JT: Yeh, it’s funny, because at the time I was in a relationship, so it was like some self-prophesying shit. I feel like I have this innate trait of empathy - I’m a Pisces and rising Sagittarius and my moon’s in Sagittarius, so I feel. Even if I haven’t necessarily gone through the thing myself, my friends and my family are very close to me. The people that I encounter in my day to day, we share a story, I can feel your emotions, as cliché as it may sound. If I say I get you, I really do get you and I feel like I can portray that in a song. I feel a lot. There’s some things that come to my head which aren’t necessarily my story but that are my feelings.
BB: The video for Bruises was described as a “grindhouse Afro-Futurist Western” by its director - how much influence did you have in its creation and conception and what does the story mean to you?
JT: So Dumas and his team came to me with the concept so I didn’t have as much creative input but I didn’t need it because I trusted the people, that they’d see the vision and the vibe. The way I interpret it, it’s myself, having to kill a part of myself in order to move on and be free, and in that sense, the other part of the self kills me and the other person that I was attaching myself to.
BB: What can we expect from you in 2020?
JT: More music, I’m gonna be dropping some singles, honestly I have hundreds of songs so I’m gonna see what catches. I’ve got a collaboration with Jamilah Barry coming - get to know, she’s amazing. I wanna see more of the world this year, if that’s by way of music or RyanAir, that’s what I’m looking forward to, just seeing the world. In 2019 I was choking the shit out of music and it wasn’t making me feel any better. It wasn’t propelling things. So yeh, I feel like this year I’m looking forward to just being.
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CONTEMPORARY CONVERSATIONS
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