Up a steep flight of stairs in a high-ceilinged art studio by London Bridge station, Finn Foxell is flexing his creative muscles. Not in the usual way, though – the West London rapper and vocalist is hosting two group painting sessions, one for fans and one for journalists. Canvases are spaced out across a T-shaped communal desk, brightly coloured acrylic paints splashed onto white palettes around the room. Concentration breeds quiet, punctuated by relaxed conversations about his forthcoming debut album, which plays softly in the background.
“Sitting down and making art with people who like your art, you feel like you’re stepping into each other’s minds,” Foxell tells NME a fortnight later. It’s a warm, fuggy day and we’re sat holding frothy coffees on the roof of his studio and rehearsal space in west London. “It felt very connected when compared to other interactions with fans, when people might be waved or a bit overwhelmed. This was super wholesome.”
That word aptly captures the general mood of his debut album ‘Mamas Boy’, a warm, family-first collection of ruminations on “the change from young man to adulthood”. Having dropped cult underground UK rap singles ‘Ericsson’ and ‘Buddha’ back in 2016 and 2017 respectively, he’s been making music in the public eye since he was a teenager.
Known at first for soothing, low-energy baritone bars, he’s showcased a growing interest in guitar music as the years have passed. His politically-charged punk tune ‘Leaders’ displayed that shift in 2022, and since then a steady succession of singles have strengthened his position as one of several exciting UK artists exploring the relationship between rap and rock music. He views those two sounds as being “cut from the same cloth – anti-establishment, coming from a place of struggle, screaming and shouting with the same energy”.
On ‘Mamas Boy’, the 25-year-old builds on this reputation by carving out an intriguing fusion of high-octane bars, angsty, punky chants, and more melodic, vulnerable vocals that showcase how much he’s worked on his singing. “I had to do vocal coaching after I toured because I was doing punk songs where I was just screaming with no method, and I nearly fucked my voice,” he admits.
Having “learned about the different corners of my voice”, he’s able to take certain tracks to the next level: The moody breakup anthem ‘Him & Her’ is peppered with pained reflections like “You didn’t tell the full story to your mum and your dawgs / Left me pranging if you were safe while you were up in his yard”, and those confessions are made even more potent by the strained, high-pitched hook that accompanies them. Belting out “Him and her, him and her, him and her, him and her!” at the top of his lungs, or singing “Guess we all got problems / Don’t know what’s happening inside” in an impressive falsetto on ‘Her Way’, it’s clear Foxell is wearing his heart on his sleeve across ‘Mamas Boy’.
In recent years, Foxell’s projects have tended to capture a time and place. There’s the slick, ambient stoner rap of 2019 EP ‘Good Tea’, and the summery hip-hop of 2021’s ‘Alright Sunshine’, which featured collaborations with Lord Apex, Louis Culture, and other members of his collective Elevation Meditation. But he sees his debut as being far more expansive, its 13 tracks glued together by running themes of parenthood, growth, youthful hedonism, romantic intimacy and betrayal, and the power of harnessing your inner child. Back when he was producing chilled rap music, Foxell found it difficult to explore these issues with the honesty and authenticity he wanted to; transitioning more into the world of guitar music helped him accomplish this shift.
“Wholesomeness and chaos, that’s ultimately what the album is”
“A lot of my other music is self-indulgent because it’s me working stuff out, but here, I feel like there’s more vulnerable reflection on who I am, and the only way I can do that is shedding light on who I am to the people around me,” he says. On tracks like ‘Mamas Boy’ and ‘Alive’, he explores his relationship with his parents, examining the traits they helped foster in him such as the “hustler mentality” of his hard-working, risk-taking mum to the love of music and unflinching commitment to creativity inherited from his dad. Crucially, he captures the chaotic nature of this mish-mash: “I wanna feel sad, angry, happy, glad / Excited, delighted, inspired and mad / A walking product of my mama and dad” (‘Alive’). These lyrics highlight another key concern of this raw, energetic record – the value of relishing the sheer humanity in every experience, positive or negative.
“Wholesomeness and chaos, that’s ultimately what the album is, a blend of those two things,” says Foxell. “Alongside the music, we’ve captured that blend in the videos for ‘Alive’ and ‘Headspin’, and I’m getting better at adding to the visual Finn Foxell world. Over the last two years, with the sound being so experimental, there was so much to draw from and I feel like I didn’t hone in as much as I could have. Now, I’m piecing things together.”
Foxell’s recent decision to dive deeper into family relationships in his music felt all the more serendipitous when he found out that he would become a father himself. “It’s mind-boggling, me having this reflection of self, then calling the album ‘Mamas Boy’, then realising I’ve got a little boy on the way,” he smiles. “It made the album mean 10 times more – my two babies come out at the same time!”
“My son being on the way has made it a lot easier to deal with the losses”
How does he feel about this major change in his life? “It’s applied a bit more pressure because life is real and when you have a family, you’re not just doing it for yourself anymore,” he reflects. “But I’ve already been doing this for my family, so that’s not a foreign idea to me. As a musician, it’s easy to have this main character syndrome, but it goes deeper than that. There are so many other characters and people that influence the journey, and very soon my son Elijah will be one of those integral characters. I’m excited to share that with Eli, and hopefully make him proud.”
Foxell understands that he’s bringing his son into a scary world. The racist attacks and rioting that took place across the UK last summer reflect a widespread shift towards the far right among large sections of the population. The west London artist is fully aware of the rising levels of bigotry and hatred that are bubbling over the surface in his country.
“When you acknowledge the way the media and government have stoked the fire over the past 10 to 15 years, placing blame on immigrants and asylum seekers, [recent events] become inevitable,” he says. “I’ve always had the privilege of being in an extremely multicultural environment, seeing that people with different backgrounds and skin colours can coexist and live a good life together.
“But not everyone grows up understanding that,” he adds, “and in this day and age, there’s so much disinformation and fear, people can be so easily misled. It’s really disheartening to know there are people in this country who can be pushed into violence, and it makes it hard to have pride in your country.”
Despite it all, Foxell is still optimistic about the future. There seems to be an inherent positivity to his character, although there’s no denying that much of this optimism comes down to the new parental role he’s moving into. “I really hope and pray that we can see a change over time – I think it’s dangerous not to have hope,” he says. “In the past few years, people have fallen out of the mix, I’ve lost people to drugs, people have died. Before Eli, that was all harder to deal with, but my son being on the way has made it a lot easier to deal with the losses. It’s made what felt like a really unfair world seem much more balanced. He made it all make a lot more sense.”
Finn Foxell’s debut album ‘Mamas Boy’ is out April 25