An Interview with Samm Henshaw

Words: Alex Rednaxela

Photos: Frank Fieber

Samm Henshaw is a tease. The album was ‘coming’ in 2017, ‘this year’ in 2018 and yet by 2019's very own late March, long-form Henshaw remains an unknown to the massing fanbase and world at large. When I mention this collective expectation and ask whether or not we can be treated to a release date he breaks into a creased smile, leaning forward to deliver an "Honestly no - because I don’t know yet." It’s the kind of honestly, no you’d expect from a soul-popster of his calibre: slightly hoarse and curled in billowing clouds of gramophone warmth. It’s the honestly, no of an assured musician charting a steady rise and making stops only to shower in winning praise along the way.

And what a series of stops it has been - the jab, cross, hook and uppercut of ‘How Does it Feel’, ‘Broke’, ‘Doubt’ and ‘Church’ each landing to a loud fanfare played on horns of both critical acclaim and audience adulation. "It’s honestly just a story," he opines of the messaging of his latest Church, a gospel-charged stamper and ostensible Christian anthem.

"For me it was just trying to tell the story of a situation that happened in my life… but obviously I’m Christian and from my perspective, it is a pro-Christian thing."

His mother, lyrical catalyst for the song, and father, pastor/Nollywood actor (Youtube holds the delights of ‘Mirror in the Sun… a sort of Nigerian Eastenders’) are ‘loving it’ and it is hardly difficult to tell why. Anyone who might decide to write this track, or Samm’s music, off wholesale into the folder marked “Christian Music” would be erring on the wrong side of history, however - for as much as anything else Samm’s religious thematics serve as entry points deeper into the personal pool these singles suggest the upcoming album will draw on. Indeed, when the new single hit shelves ‘a mate came out and was just like - this song is so you, it’s so you.’

The kind of folded-collar discipline ‘Church’ turns into gospel pleasure certainly seems to have laced itself around Henshaw’s character. Before even his third year of Popular Music Performance at Solent, he "was getting deals coming through and loads of interest from labels," and had signed a record deal while graduation was but a tint of rose on the horizon. With little mirth, he recalls "I remember I got my publishing deal - and that on top of my student loan… I was like, I have a lot of money." Yet he remained to don the cap and carry away his certificate, victorious.

Asking what kept him from pushing open the campus doors and never looking back, he shot back that his "Nigerian parents… are very much 'listen, if you’re gonna start something, you’re gonna finish it' ". On a moment’s readjustment, though, his flawless humility allows for a single instance of applying due credit to himself. "Based on the stories I’d seen within the industry, it can be very fickle and you don’t know what could happen in the space of a week… in the space of a year, or two years. So I just wanted to be able to say I’ve got something that I can fall back on."

Some people, he reflects, tell you to never make a Plan B, but "no, I don’t think having a Plan B is bad. It just means you can have a plan even after Plan A is done. Even if it doesn’t go how you want it to." He makes of himself self-fulfilling prophecy in closing: "I don’t just wanna be the guy that dropped out because he got a record deal."

Youthful success has been cattle bolt to the heads of so many musicians over the years and I wondered how Samm views the cushioning of Record Company-urbia proffered so early in his career. He leans back in the loft-cum-studio housing our interview and sets his apple down on the table. "I graduated and everything was going so well…" he begins, trailing off. "So you almost can’t see anything wrong in what you’re doing… all this stuff is going so well that it’s almost as though you can’t lose at this point. Then you have moments where it’s pretty crap so it humbles you… you’ll have great moments and in your mind, you’re going "oh you’re great, you’re untouchable" and then you get hit pretty hard by the reality that no this doesn’t last forever.’ Picking the apple back up, he becomes philosopher-poet: "I think everyone has to go through that grinding period, no matter how it comes. So I started off great and then I had to… grind, to work to get to that place." It’s a question of catching up with success already earned. "I think it was growth and development and maturity that helped me write the music better."

All that growth and development and maturity have hardly gone amiss. In the last year, he’s put out a track with Wretch 32 - "I feel like people don’t really understand the level of genius of that man" - and fulfilled his comic-book dream of "just want[ing] to be a cartoon". First arriving at the label he put to them his love of animation, but they weren’t ‘“going to start off with that, you’re a new artist blah-di-blah.’” So to finally get the "music video where ‘I’m a cartoon - nothing tops that. And I’m a Dorito in it and… it doesn’t get better than that."

So where does Samm Henshaw see all this mad buildup leading? In an awed whisper he "would love to do a world tour" and there’s more of that shimmery gramophone cloud in his eyes as he sees the possibilities held in the gospel of Samm. "I’d love to go to China… do a tour in China… anywhere in Asia," he opines. "There’s so many things I want to do" and he remains ‘overwhelmed and just grateful’ for all the comment section enthusiasm and SoundCloud sharing. Nor is there’s any question an early career will end in early retirement. He’s got his ‘faith… family… people…’ to keep him going.

"There’s some days where you feel like you give up on the world because everyone’s annoying, everyone’s saying stupid things… but then there will be those few people that you meet that just give you hope and remind you we live in a world that is flawed but there are still a lot of… really lovely, great, caring people. That’s exciting and that’s inspiring for me. That’s what it’s about, really?"

He ends with a question and it’s enough to provoke me riposte:

Alex: Can we get a release date? Can we get an approximate release date!

Sam: Honestly, no - because I don’t know yet! We’re still churning out the music.

Alex: It’s all up in the air!

Sam: It is! It’s all up in the air. It is really up in the air.

We await its descent.

[Editor's Note: I'm writing this on the 9th of August 2020. We still don't have a release date]

Church is available now.