Jorja Smith on identity, working with Drake and being recognised at the local shop

Jorja Smith is a born performer, even when not on stage. In between takes for our cover shoot in a Kensington studio, she flits between playing insouciant starlet (‘I don’t smile. I chipped my tooth in the bath when I was eight. It’s why people think I’m a bitch’) and a down-to-earth young woman who loves a party.

But it’s only when we sit down after the shoot and the rails of feathered Preen and Joy of Sex-inspired Christopher Kane dresses have been packed away that I meet the real Jorja Smith. Back in her civvies — black sweatshirt, leggings and a pair of Chanel snow boots (‘I bought them as a treat for myself last week’) — she is warm and chatty. The only giveaway that this is one of Britain’s hottest music talents is the publicist lurking in the background, tapping on her iPhone with one ear on our conversation.

This has indisputably been Smith’s year. Hot on the heels of winning the Brits Critics’ Choice award in January, she released her debut album Lost & Found, to critical acclaim. She was then duly nominated for the prestigious Mercury Prize. Fashion loves her, too: Smith has fronted campaigns for Nike Air Force One and she sat front row with Jared Leto at the Gucci SS19 show.

When we meet, she is halfway through a sell-out UK tour and still getting used to being recognised, even in tracksuit bottoms on her way to the off-licence near the west London flat she recently bought. ‘I’ll say, “Lovely to meet you but, no, I don’t want to take a picture,”’ she says of the endless selfie requests. ‘I don’t have to, they’re not entitled to it. That’s life, though.’

Well, that’s not actually life for most people, but Smith is used to adapting. The 21-year-old talks honestly about growing up mixed-race in Walsall in the Noughties, where she never felt like she fitted in. ‘You can’t say you’re white,’ she recalls. ‘You can say you’re black... but then black people will be like, “No, you aren’t”. When I was younger, I just wanted to be paler because all my friends were white. I felt like that because no one else looked like me when I was growing up.’

A mixed-race role model was Alicia Keys, and music became Smith’s way of exploring her identity. Having grown up in a song-filled home with her father Peter, a benefits officer of Jamaican heritage, and her mother Jolene, a jewellery designer with roots in Yorkshire, Smith learned her craft on a music scholarship at school. She started gigging at 15 — ‘a few little shows in the pub around the corner called Shimla Peppers’ — and putting out home-made videos on YouTube. A 2012 cover of Alex Clare’s ‘Too Close’ got her spotted and signed to a manager and, at 18, she moved in with her aunt and uncle in Sydenham, finding herself slap bang in the middle of south London’s burgeoning grime scene. One of the self-penned songs on Lost & Found, ‘Blue Lights’, samples Dizzee Rascal’s ‘Sirens’ and alludes to the fear of the police that is instilled in guiltless kids: ‘If you’ve done nothing wrong/Flashing blue lights should just pass you by’.

It feels prescient today with the rise of drill music; earlier this year Met Police commissioner Cressida Dick accused drill music of contributing to gang violence in London, and YouTube responded by taking down dozens of provocative videos. ‘It’s not fair for the artists,’ she says, explaining that she writes to express her own feelings and is not responsible for how the listener might interpret it.

This rebel streak does not appear to have harmed her stratospheric career trajectory, with high-profile collaborators including Stormzy and Drake. But, she insists, all this attention doesn’t necessarily convert into mainstream commercial success. A Brit award is often considered a springboard to the next level — it certainly was for Adele, but ‘I haven’t noticed [a surge in sales],’ she shrugs. ‘I don’t think I’m a charts person. With the charts there’s a certain sound; quite Afrobeats. The closest thing I’ve got to that is my song “On Your Own”, which is a bit dancehall-ish.’ In any case, she is not interested in being the hot new flash in the pan: ‘I want to be classic.’

Lost & Found jumps between R&B, pop and good old-fashioned soul jams. Heartbreak is a recurrent theme. On the track, ‘Teenage Fantasy’, she sings: ‘You weren’t the boy I thought I knew/Maybe I was blind/I was young/I didn’t have a clue.’

‘I wrote the songs from the age of 16 to 20,’ she explains. ‘When I was young, I never knew what love was. I can’t say I’ve ever had my heart broken.’

Smith is surprisingly open about her love life, becoming animated when she talks about musician Joel Compass, whom she has been with ‘for a year and a bit’. Collaborating with Drake on 2017’s More Life, and then on his Boy Meets World tour, fuelled speculation that the pair were more than friends, but she laughs it off. ‘The annoying thing is that people want to talk more about Drake than me,’ she says. ‘It’s always the same: how did you meet him? How did you write? Was it cool working with him? I know that’s how it is, for any small artist who works with a bigger artist. You’re associated with them, because that’s how people find out about you, like clickbait.’

Smith is keen to clarify that she was putting out music before Drake came calling. ‘I did two tours in America before I was on More Life, and they were sold out. I didn’t need him. I’ve already got fans over there.’ But she did learn from him the value of thinking big. ‘He wants to be the greatest ever. On the Boy Meets World tour he had a huge light installation, like a sun. He wanted that, so he made it happen. Whatever he wants, he does.’

As you may have realised, Smith is not afraid to speak her mind, and social media trolls are next in her line of fire. ‘I get loads of horrible comments on my pictures, saying I look pregnant because I have a fat stomach. It’s just my body shape. It’s how I look,’ she says, insisting that she doesn’t let it get to her. ‘If that was said to me when I was 15, I’d be so upset,’ she concedes. ‘Kanye [West] said recently he thinks Instagram should take away the numbers of likes and comments [on posts].’ It’s easy to see why that would appeal. Not all parts of celebrity life are as easy to adapt to.