Most artists say the music has always been there. Not Sam Akpro. The South London musician remembers the moment music started. He was studying biomed at university in Kingston, a full-on insomniac, often sleeping through his lectures in the day. He’d previously played the violin in secondary school, and had a stint rapping and producing as a teenager, but nothing stuck until he saw the Gorillaz play in 2018. Akpro spent the rest of his student loan on his first guitar, and hasn’t looked back since. Suffice to say, he didn’t last much longer at uni.
Akpro was 20 at the time, but he had long been absorbing inspiration. He’d spent much of his youth staring out of train windows, linking up with artists, graff and skate crews across the city. He met Sub Luna City cult heroes Jadasea and MC Pinty in skate parks as a teenager. He was there when next-gen grime crew Ammi Boyz were making waves on the streets of Peckham in 2017. He was a fly on the wall of rap-surf rock alchemist Masterpeace’s early studio sessions, and partied with Brit school alumni way before he ever knew about chord progressions.
There are traces of all of these experiences in Akpro’s debut album, Evenfall, released last week. With one foot in grunge, and the other in experimental rap-adjacent production, the project speaks to a lifestyle prevalent among his South London cohort: of days spent hiding from a sky the same colour as the concrete, and sprawling nights spent prowling the city. “Woke up just to wake up again,” he sings through gritted teeth on “Death By Entertainment”. “I can’t see the sun, just another day done,” he repeats elsewhere.
“In 2023, I was definitely quite depressed. I had no money and was just trying to figure out what to do with my life,” Akpro says of the period in which he wrote Evenfall. “I’d just got a job in a pub. You go there, start at 6pm, work till 1am, you’re there in a lock-in till 3am, and then you cycle home at 4am. When I was living in that weird time zone, it was easier for me to describe that than, say, a sunny beach.” There’s no sunny beaches in Peckham, that’s for sure.
But, buried within the project is also a glimmer of hope. “Just promise me you won’t waste another day. For Christ’s sake. Don’t sit in front of another screen,” read exclusive liner notes from dub poet James Massiah. Having since escaped his nocturnal lifestyle, Akpro echoes these sentiments: “Just being outside is refreshing as a human being, you know? Even when you don’t want to, just going on a walk, having a cigarette or whatever, you might bump into someone and they might say something that makes you feel way happier. You never meet anyone inside.”
Below, Akpro dives deeper into the experiences that inspired his debut album, Evenfall.
Evenfall is quite a striking title for the project, where did it come from?
Sam Akpro: I was just trying to describe that period of time when the sun’s going down, and you’re just about to leave your house. I was Googling it and ‘evenfall’ just came up. It just rings nicely, you know? And once you cement something in your mind, it just consumes your way of thinking.
It sounds like you were really nocturnal while making the project.
Sam Akpro: Yeah, I always feel like that. The first EP I made was called Nights Away. That’s when I first started making music, and I was writing it at like 2am, because I was living at my parents’ house. I didn’t want to be noisy so I wrote when everyone was asleep. No one’s gonna call your phone or shout you and be like, ‘Yo, let’s go get a drink.’ It feels almost spiritual when I write in the night time.
What did the daytimes look like?
Sam Akpro: It’s all a bit of a blur, to be honest. A lot of it was just chilling at home trying to write music, or walking around by myself. I like to ride the trains by myself as well, especially when I was younger. I used to do graffiti, painting trains and stuff. So, the daytime would be spent stealing paint and shit, just figuring out the day until you can meet up with everyone at night time. A lot of it was just trying to pass time, really.
Were there periods where you felt trapped inside?
Sam Akpro: Yeah, probably like 2023, during the summer time. I was kind of lost. I get a lot of social anxiety, the punishment of doing a lot of drugs in the winter and then just feeling weird. I was like, ‘Fuck, I don’t have any money to do anything.’ And then, looking at Instagram and seeing people doing all these things, I’m just like, ‘What’s the point?’ I’m a very inside person, but I’m not at the same time. It’s hard to explain.
Feel like I’ve got lumped into the band circuit, which is predominately white bands. I feel like maybe people have overlooked me as a person, just being some token thing. Evenfall is me as a sound – Sam Akpro
How do you feel about the album coming out?
Sam Akpro: I’m excited, I feel like it’s my most mature sound. Previously, I feel like I’ve got lumped into the band circuit, which is predominately white bands. I feel like maybe people have overlooked me as a person, just being some token thing… But I feel like [Evenfall] is just me as a sound, you know? It’s nothing to do with that other stuff.
It’s funny, when I spoke to Paris Texas the other week, they said a similar thing. They felt like people wanted to project significance onto them.
Sam Akpro: Yeah, people always use the headline, ‘It’s like Joy Division meets J Dilla.’ I said that once in an industry meeting and people just ran with it.
The project does feel more expansive than just one sound, it’s almost like the disembodied voice of south London.
Sam Akpro: I just bounce around a lot of different things, graffiti, skating, the people I choose to be around. I’ve had a wide perspective of people, how they view things, what they like, what they don’t like. That’s helped me inform my own decisions.
What you got planned for the rest of the day? Is it still no music until night time?
Sam Akpro: [Laughs] I’ve been doing it during the daytime, I feel a bit better now. I’m not an insomniac anymore. I’m in more of a routine. I wake up, go outside, do stuff, drink a hot drink or something, and then get on with the music.
Evenfall is out now.
