What Do You Believe In? (Deluxe)

Rag’n’Bone Man wanted his third album to bring the joy. The Sussex-born singer-songwriter, aka Rory Charles Graham, came into the writing process in a good place and wanted to share that sense of jubilation. “I thought, ‘I need to make something that makes people smile’,” he tells Apple Music. “Even if I’ve got some deep and strong things to say on this record, I still want the backdrop to be something that’s uplifting.” It’s an approach that has resulted in Graham’s most euphoric collection of songs yet, blending soulful pop, stirring R&B and stark ballads—with his rich, aching croon lifting these tracks to exhilarating heights. The sense of celebration, he says, is a reflection of how he’s feeling. “I’m not a very introspective writer,” he says. “I give it to you on a plate, it’s always very representative of where I’m at in life at the time.” Let Rag’n’Bone Man take you deeper into What Do You Believe In? with his track-by-track guide. “The Right Way” “I wrote this four years ago with my keys player, Ben Jackson-Cook, and [UK-born, Nashville based singer-songwriter] Jamie Lidell on a random studio day before we played Bonnaroo Festival. It was a really good starting point, a bit neo-soul, a little bit of ’90s hip-hop, but also the feel of ’60s soul music samples, and I felt like that’s what I wanted to carry on through this record. It’s a song about people trying to tell you what it’s like to raise children. When you’ve got small kids, you sometimes have stressful scenarios, and you might ask for advice—but, like this song says, there’s no such thing as the right way to raise your kid. It’s got to be the way that you do it.” “Pocket” “This was basically a freestyle over a beat that [writer/producer] Jonny Coffer made. I used the metaphor of ‘Put me in your pocket and run’ as knowing someone that well that they know when you’re in an uncomfortable situation. If me and my missus go out somewhere, all I have to do is give her the look to say, ‘It’s time to leave