walking upstream…
Labrinth
Timothy Lee McKenzie grew up in a large, devoutly religious Hackney household where gospel was the only music allowed and church harmony was his first classroom, before he broke through as a producer for Tinie Tempah and then topped the UK chart himself with 'Beneath Your Beautiful' in 2011. He has since built a genre-blurring solo catalogue (Electronic Earth, Imagination & the Misfit Kid), become an in-demand writer-producer for artists like Beyoncé and The Weeknd, co-founded the trio LSD with Sia and Diplo, and composed the Emmy-winning score for HBO's Euphoria.
the sound in question
2011
Beneath Your BeautifulLabrinth
walk the tributaries ↓
Kirk Franklin1990s · Gospel / Contemporary gospel / Christian hip hop
Labrinth has said his devoutly religious Hackney family 'weren't allowed to listen to secular music' and mostly played gospel, naming Kirk Franklin as one of the artists who shaped his ear before he ever had formal training — Franklin's choir-over-hip-hop-beat template gave Labrinth his own move of stacking massed voices into a euphoric climax, most nakedly on the gospel-inspired 'All for Us.'
listen: upstream & heresource: Sound on Sound — Labrinth on his religious Hackney upbringing, Kim Burrell and Kirk Franklin, and learning music through church ↗
2011
I SmileKirk Franklin
2019
All for UsLabrinth
listen forListen for the call-and-response build and the moment the low end drops out so a full choir stack can swell back in on a key change — that's the Nu Nation-era Kirk Franklin arrangement trick, transplanted almost directly into 'All for Us.'
Prince1980s · Funk / Pop / R&B / Rock
Labrinth has described his teenage listening as 'Wu-Tang, Flipmode Squad, Prince — a kind of mixture of classic and modern black music,' and it's Prince's do-everything model — singer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, equally at home in falsetto balladry and electronic funk — that let Labrinth treat genre-agnostic production as a single continuous voice rather than separate lanes.
listen: upstream & heresource: Synth History — Labrinth on Wu-Tang, Flipmode Squad, Prince, David Bowie and Massive Attack as formative influences ↗
1986
KissPrince
2014
JealousLabrinth
listen forListen for the airy, held-back falsetto floating over a spare synth-and-piano bed before the arrangement finally opens up — the same tension between vulnerability and control Prince rides on 'Kiss,' echoed in the stripped piano verses of 'Jealous.'
David Bowie1970s · Art rock / Glam rock
Labrinth has said that once he got to school, after his church-gospel childhood, 'that's when I got into David Bowie, Massive Attack and loads of other electronic and rock bands' — Bowie's genre-hopping theatricality gave him license to treat a pop song as widescreen scene-setting, an aesthetic that carries straight into the orchestral-electronic scale of his Euphoria-era work.
listen: upstream & heresource: Synth History — Labrinth on Wu-Tang, Flipmode Squad, Prince, David Bowie and Massive Attack as formative influences ↗
1971
Life on Mars?David Bowie
2019
Mount EverestLabrinth
listen forListen for the hushed, almost spoken verse that suddenly detonates into a string-and-synth-swollen chorus — the same theatrical scale-shift Bowie built into 'Life on Mars?,' redrawn with drum programming and choir stacks on 'Mount Everest.'