For Wesley Joseph, music is just the beginning
As Wesley Joseph prepares to release his long-awaited debut album Forever Ends Someday, he speaks to EE72 about the three-year process behind it, his beginnings in film and animation, and why he’s chosen to move at his own pace.
Wesley Joseph is the definition of a cultural polymath. Born in Birmingham and raised in Walsall, the 29-year-old started out dabbling in animation, then moved on to art, before making short films soundtracked by his own music created at home on his laptop. Even when his roving eye focused on music via 2020’s jazz-tinged debut single Imaginary Friends, he let his visual flair run riot, writing, directing and scoring his own short film, Pandomony, and lensing some of his early videos.
It’s a creative restlessness that suffuses this month’s genre-hopping, long-on-the-making debut album, Forever Ends Someday, which features production input from the likes of Nicolas Jaar (The Weeknd, FKA Twigs), Al Shux (Kendrick Lamar, SZA), and Romil Hemnani (Brockhampton), plus guest spots from gonzo US rapper Danny Brown and childhood friend, Jorja Smith. Growing up the pair were both part of the OG Horse collective, before Joseph moved to London in 2016 to study film. That passion for cinema bleeds into the music, too, with Joseph’s supple singing voice and detailed, descriptive raps transporting the listener into a world where genre restrictions don’t exist.
Despite having travelled up and down the country playing shows, shooting videos and talking to an endless lineup of journalists, Joseph agreed to meet in a north London pub for a chat about his journey to now.
How does it feel being on the cusp of your debut album coming out?
Honestly, I’m kind of just like in go mode, so I haven’t truly reflected on how it feels. When I first made the album it was this labour of love, super intensive thing where everything was about finishing it. It was my pain, my joy, my sadness, my therapist, everything. Then it was a case of world building. Now it’s about to come out and it’s promo, press, all this stuff. It’s almost like a prolonged period before you give someone a gift that you’ve made. You’ve made this thing and you cared about it the whole year and every little detail but then it’s just been in a box in your house and you’ve just been waiting for the birthday. So maybe post-birthday party, I’ll have some reflections.
It feels from the outside that it’s taken quite a while to get to this position. Did it feel like that for you?
Yeah, it did, yeah. I just wanted to make it true to itself – I’ve never released music when it doesn’t feel like I’ve done my best. One of the things I’m really proud of in my career is I know when I’ve dropped music it was me doing my best work. It’s never been a thing where I’ve shied away from that for the sake of momentum. The first two projects [2021’s Ultramarine EP and 2023’s Glow EP] in many ways was me working out how to be an artist in so many ways. But if I’m not excited by something, I don’t want to put it out. I feel like a timeless record is a timeless record. I’d rather make something I believe people will listen to in 50 years than rush for two years in 2026. It’s just how I am, and how I feel about the stuff.
Your music is so varied in terms of genre, where did that come from? Have you always been like that?
I’ve always kind of been an in-between kid, even culturally. A lot of my friends listened to grime and rap music, and I was just around people writing bars and in that type of pocket of music. But then my dad didn’t stop playing soul music, funk, just like vibration melodic music in the house. Then I found guitar music and I went through like sad boy era shit when I was a teenager. Then rock music and then dance music, electronic. Like I’ve always been in-between. I was kind of a kid that would just float around everywhere. When I was in school, I would obsessively draw, but then I also loved playing sport, or I’d go chill with the kids smoking cigarettes on the top of the field. I would be floating around because I appreciated all the parts. That’s kind of how I am with the things I make.
When I first made the album it was this labour of love, super intensive thing where everything was about finishing it.
Wesley Joseph
PHOTOGRAPHY OLLIE HEFFERNAN
Do you get really geeky about music?
I’m 100% a nerd. But not in a way where it’s like I have a glossary of knowledge. I’m not like that. But I’ll know and feel and recreate a metallic tone on a fucking delay for three hours because I heard a Phil Collins snare once. I’m like that. So I’m obsessive in that way. And many other ways. I would lean into the nerd category for sure.
I’m 100% a nerd. But not in a way where it’s like I have a glossary of knowledge. I’m not like that. But I’ll know and feel and recreate a metallic tone on a fucking delay for three hours because I heard a Phil Collins snare once. I’m like that.
Wesley Joseph
What does the album title, Forever Ends Someday, mean to you?
I just started feeling, for the first time really, that I was getting older. And I don’t like that feeling. I was becoming aware of the weight on my shoulders a lot more. I’m seeing things fade. I had loss in my life and all these different things which made it more soberingly aware that youth is borrowed. Also, after making a record for [three years], it becomes like a coming of age thing because it’s a direct entrance point for your escape and your internalization of life. For three years you’re growing up and you’re putting it down on paper every day. But the overview of the title’s sentiment is that it isn’t over yet and you’re still in your forever. Life is fickle, enjoy it and be aware of this moment.
Pre-streaming era an artist who wasn’t cracking the charts couldn’t necessarily see how well a song was doing. But now with streaming, you can sort of see, ‘Oh, This one’s gone viral and it’s got 30 million plays’. Does that ever feed into your creative process? Like, ‘this is what people want from me, I should do more of that’?
Oh, shit… It’s interesting, because some of the songs that I didn’t expect to be big, went big. But you can never second guess it. There’s some songs that I think have easier access points, but I didn’t think about that when I made it. I don’t de-purify the process by thinking like that first. I’ll make what I make to the best of my ability and then look at it and I’ll go, ‘oh shit, that one slaps’. There are songs that did really, really well where I was like, ‘This one’s a low-key one for the heads’ or ‘This is for the nerds that like listening to Burial and shit or whatever’, and then boom, it’s bigger than the one with the big hook. I love that about my music, actually.
You’re not going to be on TikTok doing a dance to get a hit?
I mean, shit, I’m getting pushed a little bit to entertain that but I’m not ever doing that stuff. I’m utilising the platform, but in a creative way. I want to be able to make things and do things with integrity and I want to do it for a long time. Not to say I’m not trying to blow up, or I’m not trying to really do my thing right now; I’m giving my everything to make sure that can happen, but ultimately I’ll be happy knowing these things are done with care first.
If this album was a film, what genre would it be?
It would be shot on film for sure and it would be a coming of age, dark drama. Hilarious but not obviously, it’s just got a tone of comedy. Then it would have like sci-fi romance at the end in brackets.
Do you have a Letterboxd account?
Yeah, I do. I love that. I love looking at what other people are watching. If one of my friends thinks something’s terrible, I have to watch it. I’m like, ‘Yo, I have to know why it’s half a star because I thought that was going to be good’. And then I’ll watch it and I’ll be like, agreed.
The album features a song with Jorja Smith, who you’ve known for ages. Did it almost feel too inevitable that you’d have a song together?
I didn’t really think about it. I didn’t go into the album thinking ‘I’m going to get Jorja on it because she’s my friend’. She’s like my sister. We’re from the same place. Going through life in a completely different way but connected at source from our childhoods. And the song, July, is about getting older and all of the beauty and turmoil in between. And the rejoicing of it. It’s obvious [she’d be on it]. I remember making the song and she got in touch in general about life, and music, and she was like ‘oh we should make music soon’ and I said ‘you know what’s crazy, there’s this song I’m making right now and I swear this is the one’. She was like ‘okay cool I’m down’, before she’d even heard it. She’s like can you come back home to Walsall, we can record it there. I was keen to play it to her beforehand but she wasn’t having it.
You should have pranked her by playing something awful.
I swear to God, I did do that. I think I played some really bad beat that I made or something.
How does it feel when you go back to Walsall now?
I like going back now. I have a different relationship with the place, because when I was leaving, I was leaving for the right reasons. I felt like I had to in order to protect my dream and honour what I wanted to do. But I’m at a place now where I’m like, ‘oh man, that place has really shaped a really special part of who I am’. That’s literally the hands that moulded me as a place. I feel like a lot of the time people have this idea that if you’re from a small town where nothing’s really happening then you don’t have ideas, or don’t dream, when actually for me it was the inverse of that. I feel like a lack of colour and grey skies makes you paint in your brain. I always found refuge in anything that would help with that, including music. Just something that allows me to create a space where people can get lost in. Because that’s what excites me a lot.
What are your hopes for the album?
I haven’t even thought about that. What are my hopes for it? Two Grammys, four Brits, a number one? I’ve always wanted a Mercury [Music Prize]. That’s not why I make music, but I’ve always had a vision of a Mercury for some reason. I think that’s just one of those little taglines of success I’ve always had in my brain. But what I’d actually want the album to do is way different to that. I’d love for it to be a catalyst point for people to experience so much music. I’d love the record to represent an expansion point or a power adapter in terms of opening people’s minds.
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