Kojey Radical has been plotting a heist. Or, rather, the East London artist has been trying to see if he can encourage someone else to do one. “I’ll go out with my friends that are in the game – way more famous than me – and I’m the one that’s gone off on a solo adventure,” he grins over video call. “I’m in the smoking section trying to figure out how to rob a Post Office with this random stranger and I’m like, ‘You can do it on horseback.’”
His characteristic enthusiasm is infectious. Soon, we’re chatting about the logistics of the horse stables in Brixton, how he is happy planting the seeds for chaotic ideas he has no intention of being complicit in himself and how disappointing it is checking the news to see no news of a horse-riding crusader. “He bottled it, man, he wasn’t serious!”
Certainly, it’s an amusing insight into what one of the UK’s most consistently compelling artists means when he says, “I have to live some stuff in order to have something new to talk about, I’m just not really good at just rapping about nothing.”
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It’s been three years since the release of Kojey’s debut album, Reason to Smile, and he will be the first to tell you it was one of the best releases that year. This is not a conceited take – the record was highly acclaimed, finding him shortlisted for the Mercury Prize and nominated for album of the year at both the MOBOs and the GRM Daily Rated Awards. Indeed, across the past decade, between that release and the four superb EPs that preceded it, Kojey has cemented himself as one of the most captivating and exciting British rappers going, leaning into the unknown and weaving his music with a love of poetry, R&B, funk, jazz and a soulful, melodic richness that imbues it with glorious feeling. This year will see him return to music with a new album on the horizon – and it’s another work which he reckons will be a contender for record of the year.
He says he’s been taking his time with the new music, which is notable given he mentions that Reason to Smile only took him about 30 days to make. While, in the most literal sense, Kojey Radical isn’t interested in sitting still – on our video call, he is constantly moving, clad all in black aside from a fuzzy leopard-print beanie, limbs folding and unfolding from the sofa in his front room – figuratively, it’s a little more complicated. We’re speaking at the end of January, and, now that he’s getting ready for the new music campaign that lies ahead, he says he never felt pressure to immediately put out a second album.
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Maybe that’s because Kojey, 32, has always seemed wise to the whims of the music industry, uninterested in rushing to stay on trend, releasing Reason to Smile nearly a decade into his career. He is more concerned with producing detailed bodies of work that reward repeat, intentional listening than being a singles-based artist. He is also apathetic to any need to jump through TikTok hoops, saying, “I would never let it change my process or how I move.” He recognises that, in some ways, this is the advantage of having been around for a while. As much as he’s picking up new fans still, “a lot of my fans have grown up already, so I can rely on the fact that we’re all grown to not have to do stupid shit to appease them.” He points out how social media has also warped the concept of who is listening. “I think people don’t have faith in audiences anymore because the audience that’s the most vocal are the ones with social media accounts. In the comment section, you start to think that’s all of your fans.”
As such, it’s important to him to try and share his knowledge with a younger generation of artists coming through, “breaking down the science of the game” because he can see how the industry lets them down. “We set really high standards for people with very low XP,” he says. “They’ve got no experience, they popped off the other day and now we want them to make the most incredible pieces of music and tell these really beautiful, nuanced stories but like last week they was on the block!”
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When Kojey invites newer artists to take part in his studio sessions, he knows that it might not be the track to get them a million streams guaranteed, but it’s about connecting on a creative and human level, he says. “It’s giving people that love that wasn’t shown to me, because I know when I finally got it how much it elevated me and how much it made me go, ‘Yeah, OK, cool, I could do this.’”
Kojey’s been elevating in different ways lately, too, hosting the Fashion Awards for the last two years running, something that seemed an impossibility back when he was a student at London College of Fashion and he and his peers were taken to watch it from “the nosebleed section”. Plus, he was a hugely popular guest on a special New Year’s episode of beloved comedy series Taskmaster last year – his energy made him so popular, in fact, that on the show’s subreddit there’s a petition to get him back on for a full season.
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All the same, Kojey is not especially intrigued by celebrity or shaking the right hands at industry parties. Mainly, he says, he’s been chilling, enjoying the fruits of his labour. That means playing Beyblade with his son, shopping for and listening to his ever-growing record collection (lately he’s been playing Tokyo Riddim 1976-1985, a compilation of Japanese reggae songs purchased on a recent trip to the country) and cooking, though he concedes he’s only used the new slow-cooker he bought once so far (“but it banged”).
Raised in Hoxton to Ghanaian immigrant parents, Kojey keeps his oldest friends close to him. “I’ll be on Discord all day with my friends from my primary school, secondary school, college, just talking,” he says. “They work regular jobs: one’s a doctor, one works in a school, one works for Sony PlayStation, one’s a manager of a restaurant. Regular jobs. I like tapping into that, hearing what’s going on with the world. I’m very grateful for the fact that I get to express myself for a living, but at the same time there does have to be some disparity between doing that and then living your life,” he says. “Because of what you do, people put you on a pedestal and there’s an idolisation that comes with that which means that you’re constantly being fed things that indulge your ego – and over time, that’s probably the most toxic way to live.”
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For Kojey, the antidote to these potential pitfalls is staying close to his family and friends, as they’re “the first to celebrate me and the first to roast me,” he laughs. Last year, the lifelong Gooner was interviewed on the Emirates pitch by the official Arsenal social media accounts. “I enjoy that I could be at Arsenal Stadium on the pitch with the players and my son doesn’t give a monkey’s!” He laughs, “I showed him the pictures and the videos, and he says, ‘You’re not wearing an Arsenal kit’ and then he walked off. I’m like… that’s what I need in my life. That is balance.”
Early on in his career, Kojey was often described as a political artist, putting out songs like Open Hand, a pensive rallying cry for a revolution of race, and Kwame Nkrumah, honouring Ghana’s first PM, and then president, following independence from Britain. These days, he’s less sure about that label, wondering aloud whether artists are really the people who should be looked upon to give insight into politics. He references an old Dave Chappelle gag about the world needing Ja Rule’s opinion when things go awry. “When I was first writing or getting into dropping my stuff, it was more politically charged or focused on social topics that were current. It’s because I was a young man experiencing those things for the first time and I was also discovering my voice for the first time.”
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He could see the temptation to follow that path, high on the attention, but he realised it wouldn’t be sincere, especially as he’s gotten older and his perspectives have become more nuanced. “I know how I respond to feeling like something is being forced upon me in terms of an opinion or like how everyone should act or move, I’m the first person to reject it,” he says. “I never wanted my music to feel like that. I want my music to feel like when you’ve met somebody new and have a really insightful conversation and you’ve walked away thinking about things differently, seeing the world differently, but in a positive way, because that person just shifted your perspective a little bit.”
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This is the aim with the music that’s coming. There’s no need for horses or heists for the record to be bold and exuberant in its vision (there’s mention of a 13-piece orchestra for a six-second transition). Though he’s been taking his time and chilling these last couple of years, make no mistake that in 2025 Kojey Radical is about to be shining. A thoughtful, chaotic but conscientious artist for our times, he’s rewarding us all by taking his time with it.
Taken from 10 Men Issue 61 – MUSIC, TALENT, CREATIVE – on newsstands March 24. Pre-order your copy here.
LOUIS VUITTON: GET RADICAL
Photographer ADAMA JALLOH
Fashion Editor GARTH ALLDAY SPENCER
Talent KOJEY RADICAL
Text TARA JOSHI
Hair VERSINI VICKERS at Studio Phase Hair and Beauty
Make-up BIANCA SIMONE SCOTT at Forward Artists
Photographer’s assistants HARRIET TURNEY and NADINE SCARLETT
Fashion assistants GEORGIA EDWARDS and ALEXANDER BEAN
Hair assistant KAREN MESSAM
Make-up assistant COURTNEY SCOTT
Production ZAC APOSTOLOU
Special thanks to PAUL GUIMARAES and MARSHA KWARTENG
Clothing, accessories, shoes and bags throughout by LOUIS VUITTON SS25
On the cover Kojey wears LOUIS VUITTON
