Not Waving, But Drowning

In 2017, Yesterday’s Gone established Loyle Carner as one of hip-hop’s more soul-baring, confessional songwriters. “I had to do a lot of work on myself,” he tells Apple Music. “I asked myself questions: Some were scary, some were cool.” We meet the south Londoner in a typically reflective mood on his intelligent, compelling and jazzy second album. This time, however, he’s zooming out. “I’m happier in myself, which means I'm able to look at what's stressful in the rest of the world around me,” he says. Explore these reactions with Carner’s track-by-track guide to Not Waving, But Drowning. “Dear Jean” “I was moving out, I’d fallen in love and my mum was finding it tough—as was I—for us to not be as close anymore. This song was just for us, but it was important for me to have it on the album once I made it. It was just something to keep her going, and me, to be honest.” “Angel” “The lyric ‘Like the fire needs the air/I won’t burn unless you’re there’ means a lot to me. It's from a 50 Cent tune [‘Hustler’s Ambition’]; the sample's incredible. It’s about people who hate you or you hate. You need them to stick around because they’re your angels that keep you working hard. If it isn’t to support your family, it's to prove to people who think you're s**t that you're not.” “Ice Water” “I was in a taxi on the way home from the single premiere of 'Ottolenghi'. The song came on and [I recorded on my phone] the driver saying, ‘What do you think of this?’ I'm not really in the habit of telling people that I make music, but I said it’s my song. It came full circle because he told his son—who’s a fan—he was with me. What you hear is me and his son talking and it going back to the song on the radio, which is cool.” “Ottolenghi” “I was reading one of [Yotam] Ottolenghi's cookbooks called Jerusalem. There's an issue at the moment with anti-Semitism through the context of Syria. I'm on a train and this guy says, ‘You can't read that Bible around here. There's no Jews here.’ I sa