NME’s latest star of The Cover, Songer, has shared a playlist exclusively to accompany the story’s launch – check it out below.
The rapper is on this week’s (May 13) edition of The Cover, a renewal of NME’s commitment to supporting emerging talent across the globe on a weekly basis. Every week, a rising artist will feature on The Cover – you can read the profile of Songer here, written by Seth Pereira and featuring photography by Tom Oxley.
The playlist takes cues from Songer’s recent mixtape ‘The Price of Therapy’. Titled ‘Free Therapy’, it features 17 songs “to ease the mind”, as Songer said, by the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z, Nipsey Hussle and other rap greats – but also Sampha, Stereophonics and Amy Winehouse. Listen to the full playlist on Spotify below and on Apple Music.
The playlist reflects Songer’s “broad” music tastes, as he explains in our Cover story. “I was always into grime or rap music, but I also was never limited to it,” he tells NME. “I loved Oasis, I loved James Morrison and artists like that in all different genres… When I started making music I was pretty fearless in terms of what I wanted it to sound like, I could write a song that was grimey, but I could also write an R&B tune the next day.”
2024 has marked a breakthrough year for Songer, whose single ‘Toxic’ and third album ‘Skala’ both reached the UK Top 40. Reflecting on how lyrics for ‘Toxic’ were written years ago for an appearance on the Bl@ckbox YouTube channel, Songer laughs: “Those bars might be some of the most streamed freestyle bars ever. It’s a wicked part of my life to look back on, and I think ‘OK, well, at least if nothing else happens, that one’s pretty legendary.’”
Find out more about Songer in the full Cover story here and see who else has been on The Cover here.