You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
Sampha is a singer, songwriter, and producer from London.
His first album, Process, won the Mercury Prize in 2017.
He's collaborated with artists like The XX, Kendrick Lamar, Drake, and Solange.
If you saw the Song Exploder Netflix show,
Sampha was in the Alicia Keys episode for the song they did together as a duet.
This year, in October 2023, Sampha put out his second album, Lahai.
And for this episode, I talked to Sampha about the song Spirit 2.0.
Coming up, you'll hear the original demo and some early voice memos.
Sampha recruited some collaborators for the song, like producer Pablo Diaz-Raixa, a.k.a.
El Guincho, who won a Grammy for his work on Rosalia's first album,
plus Yeji and Lisa Kainde from Ibei.
But the song Spirit 2.0 first took shape when Sampha was by himself at home.
My name is Sampha.
I start a lot of songs off by like learning a new bit of gear or plugin that'll kind of get my brain firing and inspire something.
And so I bought a new synth.
It was like late summer 2019.
I was in a music store in the street called Denmark Street in London.