Before Elmiene became the mesmerising singer whose voice lingers between confession and composure, captivating the world as one of Britain’s most exciting new acts, he’d only pictured a life of quiet simplicity. Born in Frankfurt to Sudanese parents and then raised in Oxford, the 24-year-old says matter-of-factly that he “wasn’t that smart” growing up. “I thought I’d probably just be a security guard. Do that in Oxford. Live day by day.” Singing, to him, was more of a party trick than a calling – something to flex on cousins at family gatherings. “My uncles and aunties did the classic thing of saying I should go on Britain’s Got Talent,” he reminisces, “but I never really believed them.”
But as it turned out, he was subconsciously fluent in the language of soul. Before music, Elmiene – real name Abdala Elamin – loved to write poetry, an outlet for his imagination to run wild. Poetry, he says, is indulgent and rule-free – a place to “vomit on the page” and find meaning in the mess. Songwriting, by contrast, is discipline: melody, hooks, repetition, restraint. Learning to move between the two taught him how to refine feeling into form and gave him the space to tell the truth. “Poetry lets you fly,” he says. “Songwriting helps you land.”
Elmiene on The Cover of NME. Credit: Tamiym Cader for NME
Elmiene’s sound is featherlight and transcendent. Delicate keys and twangy guitar coax you into easy relaxation, then you hear his voice, one that recalls the spiritual clarity of Sam Cooke and the hypnotising temperament of D’Angelo, that slow-burn intimacy where the ache sits in the spaces between notes. It moves with such natural, divine authority while telling tales about the little moments in life, and you realise that he’s more than just someone who relies on nostalgia.
Elmiene didn’t take music very seriously until 2021, during his second year at Bournemouth University, where he studied creative writing. He credits an offhand inquiry from his friend and then-housemate Aila as the eureka moment where he realised he had more than just a good voice. “One day, [she] asked me, ‘How good do you think you sing compared to your favourite artist?’” he remembers. “And I was like, I’m alright. I’m me, and they’re them for a reason.” That question, alongside Aila’s obsession with acoustic performance videos, would lead to the duo recording stripped-back covers around town and uploading them onto social media.
“Poetry lets you fly. Songwriting helps you land”
Those early clips were loose and informal, but a standout cover of D’Angelo’s ‘Untitled (How Does It Feel?)’ in 2021 marked a turning point for Elmiene. The cover travelled far and wide on TikTok and Instagram, reaching and being shared by the likes of Missy Elliott and Pharrell. His phone began lighting up with messages asking him to “come meet labels”, and he soon started making his own music as the “logical next move”.
That push led to ‘Golden’, his rough-yet-heartfelt debut single that catalysed everything that followed. The song is warm, bright and lived-in, with a soft vinyl-crackle glow and shimmering melodies that mirror its name. His voice, rich and velvety, searches gently for shape rather than control, prioritising feeling over finish. It’s a song rooted in instinct rather than execution, capturing Elmiene at the very start of understanding how to translate emotion into form.
Credit: Tamiym Cader for NME
The power of ‘Golden’ transcended Elmiene’s own expectations, even before its official release. A chance meeting in the studio with DJ and producer Benji B – then Music Director for Louis Vuitton Menswear – led to the song being heard and chosen by the late creative polymath Virgil Abloh to soundtrack what would be his final runway show in November 2021. As Elmiene’s profile began to rise, so did the quality of his craft and the accolades that came. In the years following ‘Golden’, he released four critically lauded EPs – ‘El-Mean’, ‘Marking My Time’ (2023), ‘For The Deported’ and ‘Anyway I Can’ (2024) – documenting an artist steadily refining his instincts.
“I was really comfortable being niche,” he admits. “I imagined I’d be allowed to write eight-minute songs and just exist in that space [where the] music makes people go, ‘Oh yeah – that’s real music.’” But, of course, real music garners real success. In 2024, he appeared on the BBC Sound Of… list and the BRITs Rising Star award shortlist – recognition that has kept growing since. He’s in the running for the Outstanding New Artist award at this year’s NAACP Image Awards, and has been nominated for both Best Male Act and Best R&B/Soul Act at the 2026 MOBOs.
“As a kid of an immigrant, you don’t think it could be you,” Elmiene says plainly now. “It’s nice to know that it’s possible for someone from Sudan to have an impact in the mainstream world. I’m surprised it’s me. But it’s good that it’s someone, at the very least, who can raise the flag and say: ‘This is me. We did this.’”
Credit: Tamiym Cader for NME
By the time his debut mixtape ‘Heat The Streets’ arrived last September, Elmiene had started trusting his instincts more. He leaned further into pop-conscious R&B, loosening his grip on solemnity and letting more of his personality surface across warm, groove-led songs. Its deluxe edition, ‘Heat The Streets Some Mo’, expanded that world further, bringing in collaborators such as Jordan Ward, Muni Long and Ghostface Killah who reflected the breadth of where his sound could travel.
“Those were the songs I knew my R&B fans would gravitate towards,” he says. “I learned that I could tap into that, too. I don’t have to always be miserable. I have fun as well.” More than just a stepping stone to a long-awaited debut album, the biggest lesson he grasped was how to balance lightness and depth at the same time – a principle that now underpins everything he does.
“It’s nice to know that it’s possible for someone from Sudan to have an impact in the mainstream. I’m surprised it’s me”
After years spent nailing down his sound and expanding his mind as a musician, Elmiene is on the precipice of his debut album, ‘Sounds For Someone’. Last year, he previewed the LP with ‘Crying Against The Wind’, a heart-tugging two-part ballad shaped by his father’s death that has become the backbone for the record. Here, Elmiene is on a “search for completeness”, as if he’s reordering his life in front of the world with this newly honed version of himself.
Elmiene’s signature yearning for introspection and stillness can often be misread as melancholy. Even his mum tells him he “sounds really sad” on his debut album – a contrast to the funny, nerdy “I think of everything in terms of One Piece” personality he displays in real life. On closer listen, he’s singing with a smile in his own dreamy world. “I guess the lyrics are saying sad things,” Elmiene explains, “but I didn’t feel sad writing them. Sometimes when I listen back, I just have to shut up and go: ‘I like the groove, I like the bassline, I like the drums.’ Don’t notice the sadness too much.”
Credit: Tamiym Cader for NME
‘Reclusive’, his latest offering from ‘Sounds For Someone’, shows off this Trojan horse-like duality. “For the first time, it felt like I was actually telling people how I really am,” he says. “Like: ‘Break my routine… wake up, play video games…’ This is what I actually do.” The feel-good song alchemises a debilitating bout with sickness that trapped him in his house for 14 days. One morning at 5am, he just got up and walked “a long walk” – from Shepherd’s Bush to Alexandra Palace – in the pouring rain because he simply “missed the outside”.
He told this story to producer Jeff “Gitty” Gitelman, who was adamant Elmiene mine it for “an autobiographical song” because he’s “a weird guy, man – you need to tell the world. You need to let them know what it is to be you”. That’s the selling point of soul for Elmiene. To him, it’s the world’s “most honest genre ever”: “You’re not confined by what you’re supposed to talk about. I’m just writing what my soul is telling me to write.”
“You need a movement to make a movement – or else, what’s the point?”
And he’s well aware of the deep history behind it – how Black music holds everything at once: desire, doubt, grief, humour, ego, tenderness, faith – and its start with legends like James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding, Nat King Cole and more. His appreciation for the genre encompasses the Britons that crossed over too: Sade’s restraint, Soul II Soul’s futurism, Craig David’s “underrated” melodic instinct. He jokes that his “neeky” obsession with canonised main characters of the genre – and the lesser-told underdogs that influenced them – flavours the “secret sauce” he uses every day. That history comes full circle on ‘Sounds For Someone’, with the guidance of decorated producer No I.D. and soul OG Raphael Saadiq – the latter also playing bass across the record, including on ‘Light By The Window’ and ‘Special’.
Now, Elmiene is ready for his turn, and as part of the new class of British R&B take on the global scene. For him, that’s something he can’t do by himself: “I feel like that’s why R&B and soul haven’t really had a moment in the last 12 years or so – because it’s been people trying to fight the fight alone. You need a movement to make a movement – or else, what’s the point?
“We need each other to make the impact we’re making now. Because now our names are just ringing out – here, and here, and here. We’re all just kind of like” – Elmiene swiftly pushes his hands, mimicking an explosion with his mouth – “pfft, at once. Now it’s inevitable. You can’t stop it now.”
Elmiene’s ‘Sounds For Someone’ is out on March 27 via Polydor/Def Jam Recordings.
Listen to Elmiene’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.
Words: Kyann-Sian Williams
Photography: Tamiym Cader
Styling: Cara Hayward
Glam: Marie Reitner
Label: Polydor/Def Jam Recordings
