Stormzy Announces New Album This Is What I Mean

Stormzy has announced that his third studio album will arrive later this year. This Is What I Mean is due out November 25 (via 0207 Def Jam/Interscope). The 12-track release, according to a press release, was mostly written during a retreat to Osea Island, a small island in the Blackwater Estuary that’s accessible by car for only a few hours each day due to the rising tide. In a statement describing the recording process, Stormzy said:

When you hear about music camps, they always sound intense and somber. 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 byproduct to that was very beautiful music. Because 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. You can’t even calculate what that’s going to come up with. And it came up with a big chunk of this album.

This Is What I Mean follows 2019’s Heavy Is the Head and 2017’s Gang Signs & Prayers. Stormzy has continued to release new music in the interim, most recently dropping the song “Mel Made Me Do It” with a nearly 11-minute video featuring guest appearances from Usain Bolt, Louis Theroux, José Mourinho, and more.

Revisit Pitchfork’s Rising feature “Stormzy: Grime Heavyweight.”

This Is What I Mean:

01 Fire + Water
02 This Is What I Mean
03 FireBabe
04 Please
05 Need You
06 Hide & Seek
07 My Presidents Are Black
08 Sampha’s Plea
09 Holy Spirit
10 Bad Blood
11 I Got My Smile Back
12 Give It to the Water