Falling upwards with Sam Akpro

It’s been two years since BEST FIT last spoke with Akpro. Since then, he’s been through some personal and external changes. Raised in Peckham and now living in Brockley, Akpro’s sense of place in SE London runs deep through his music. It’s an area that has spawned heaps of musical talent in recent times (King Krule, Wu-Lu, Yungen) – Akpro included. On the flip side, this has led to categorisations from the press, which Akpro is keen to shake off.

“I feel like before, some people have used [Peckham] as a selling point of what I’m doing, but it’s not,” Akpro shares. “I can feel [my music taking me further afield], but I want it to happen as well – I want to transcend. You can get stuck in a bubble of making music here, but can you sell out a show somewhere else? I want as many people to hear my music as possible.”

Akpro continues, sharing more thoughts on shifts within Peckham’s cultural community in the last few years. “People who claim to live here aren’t even from here,” he says. “If you want to talk about the class system and stuff, I don’t want to sound like a dickhead, but there’s a lot of art students who come here and try to act like this is their place, but it’s not. It’s not lost its identity, but I think people claim shit too much.”

Akpro describes himself as a quiet person. “I don’t say a lot; I just say what I need to say,” he summarises. Fuelled by ambience, his previous two EPs, Drift (2021) and Arrival (2023), laid the foundations of Akpro’s wholly alternative material, covering a heady fusion of alt-rock, dub, indie, jazz, and no-wave. Talking Heads to Dean Blunt, J Dilla to Sonic Youth – these names only scratch the surface of his diverse taste, affirming his refusal to restrict himself to one sound.

Akpro’s first musical experiences came with djembe lessons at primary school. He later gravitated towards beats and sampling in his teenage years, with his friends hosting local hip-hop nights. Watching the success of local peers like Jawnino instilled belief in Akpro that music could be something worth pursuing. But above all, the biggest influence on his creative pursuits was his first foray into skating.

“I used to chill a lot by myself when I was younger,” he reflects. “We moved house when I was around nine or ten, to an estate that’s opposite Peckham Skate Park. I met this girl, who was one of my friends, and we used to play football together. One day she took me to the skate park, and once I was there, I realised, ‘Shit, this is quite cool,’ you know? There were lots of different types of people there – some of them went to BRIT school, but all of them were creatively on it.”

Skating made Akpro feel like he belonged and was part of something. It remains a huge part of his identity; the same ethos of freedom and exploration that skating provides is inherent in his music. However, it also opened his eyes to the world around him. As a young Black man, he realised that, growing up, there weren’t many others doing the same things that he was. Now aged 26, he aims to utilise his experiences as a force for good.

“There weren’t a lot of Black kids skating when I was younger, but I learned how not to be scared of doing something that was different through skating,” he emphasises. “That crossed over into music, too, where again you wouldn’t necessarily see a Black person doing the types of music I’m doing. There’s always been Black people in alternative music, rock music, or whatnot. I would just like to show that and prove to others that you can do it. You can make different music. You can do different things.”

While skating has informed both his music and his life, when I read the description of Akpro’s new album to him, quoted in the press release as “an arresting document of the friendships and communities forged while growing up skating the streets of London,” he finds it reductive. How would he describe it instead? “What life is,” he ponders… “Life isn’t very exciting all the time, and that’s what I was trying to show. I like a lot of films, especially from people like Mike Leigh [Bleak Moments, Hard Truths], which cover a lot of mundane shit but bring it to life. I was trying to capture that kind of stuff.”

As a word, Evenfall – the title of his debut album – means the onset of evening, or dusk. As a metaphor, this is exactly what Akpro illustrates in his music. Moody, rich in atmosphere, it is both dream-like and grounded firmly in reality. Its inner-city soundscapes and languid lyrical observations evoke the hardships, loneliness, and stark realities that come with life in an unforgiving metropolis.

Opening track “I Can’t See the Sun” epitomises the album’s aura. Lush, reverb-laced guitars contrast against ominously distant saxophone shrieks, fostering a sense of unease. It’s no surprise that it was written as the focal point for the album, setting the tone for other high points, including the visceral, post-punky “Death by Entertainment” and anxiety ridden “Tunnel Vision”, as well as the more meditative “Baka”.

With tracks written at various times over a span of four years, Evenfall’s writing process was perhaps not as cohesive as other albums. Yet, there is a tangible coherence here. Recorded with a five-piece backing band, co-produced with Shrink and Finn Billingham, and mastered at Abbey Road Studios, it’s a noticeable step up from Akpro’s previous material – a fresh air of confidence permeating throughout – and it is undoubtedly Akpro’s most impressive output, too.

“I guess that the album is a mixture of all of the stuff that’s come before,” he posits. “It’s just been mastering the processes that I’ve been trying to use for the last four or five years, in terms of production. The songwriting is also a bit different… Once the naivety of making stuff wears off, you’ve quickly got to figure it out. It’s not every day that songs just fall out of the sky.”

The album’s title track is its standout moment. Despite only containing four lyrics, its siren-like opening and sprawling instrumental arrangement does most of the talking – a trademark of Akpro’s musical approach. “A lot of my favourite songs are the ones where artists say what they say, whilst allowing the song to breathe,” he says. “The lyrics are minimal, but the sound isn’t. It would be pointless putting more stuff in it, just for the sake of filling it up.” The track’s accompanying video, directed by Pedro Takahashi, echoes the theme of fading away in a city that’s difficult to live in. “Visually, the video really aligns with the lyrics, from the kerbs and steps to the cityscapes,” Akpro adds. “It’s fun working with Pedro. I just showed him the lyrics and explained the vibe, and he got it straight away.”

Indeed, the notion of fading away also speaks of Akpro’s own recent experiences. He mentions briefly about going through some “depressing times” over the last two years, keeping quiet on the details of this, but later citing “Chicago Town” and “Cherry” as the most personal tracks on the album, masking the lyrics in the latter to make them more widely relatable. While it “doesn’t solve any problems” for Akpro, his introspection forms a core part of his writing, and covering what’s close to his heart through his music is something that he finds cathartic.

“Saying things out loud and putting them into music helps you deal with things better than keeping them inside,” he says matter-of-factly. “When I hear another artist talk about stuff that they’re going through, that makes me realise it’s normal for me to feel these things too.”

Evenfall is Akpro’s first body of work since signing with ANTI- (MJ Lenderman, Waxahatchee). Interestingly, it’s here where he opens up more, explaining that signing with the label imbued him with the hope that he needed to continue making music and overcome doubts. “Before signing, I guess I wasn’t really thinking about doing an album,” Akpro explains. “After the first two EPs, I was trying to figure out what I was doing musically, and financially as well. I was just making shit and seeing what stuck. It was a bit up and down. But hooking up with the label and planning the album gave me some hope. They gave me the encouragement to create an album and instilled some belief back in me.”

Creating Evenfall must’ve given you some new insights about yourself, in that case? “Yeah, it did. Personally, I don’t know, man… having the time to work on this album has given me the energy to do more with my music. I understand now that it’s the only thing that I want to do. Now that I’ve done one album, I want to do another, and another. There’s more intention now behind what I’m trying to do, and what I’m trying to say.”

True to his word, Akpro is already making more new music. “This latest album was all written on my laptop,” he says, “whereas the stuff I’m writing now has all been written on guitar. It’s a bit softer, the new stuff, and more melodic too.” Change, evidently, is something that Akpro openly embraces. And while being regarded as a “genreless” artist can often come with a wide range of expectations, he feels that his own intuitive musical style will remain as his raison d’être. “I don’t want to be pinned down to one thing,” he states. “I’ve done enough for people to realise that I can do various different things with my music, and for it not to feel all over the place.”

For now, Akpro can celebrate the forthcoming release of Evenfall. He has an in-store gig lined up at Rough Trade East on Saturday 12 April, and a hotly anticipated headline show at Moth Club on Thursday 24 April. He can also revel in the mixture of emotions that comes with unveiling a debut album. Excitement, relief, nervousness – it’s all part of the process. But much like life, absorbing all of these emotions – the highs and the lows – is what makes it all feel real.

“I’ve never put out an album, so I don’t know how it goes,” says Akpro. “I was quite nervous to show people; I only showed it to three or four close friends at first, but they all liked it, which gave me some confidence. Mainly, I feel good about it. I’m just gonna make the most of it all.”