With his signature black frames and mohawk, Daley’s image already surmises his budding status as soul impresario for the 21st century. At only 24-years-old, the homegrown UK singer-songwriter is on his way to redefining the way R&B/Soul not only looks but sounds and feels.
“If you’re expecting the same old soul singer, that’s not necessarily who I am,” the prodigy divulges as perhaps the most telling description of his work. “I call my sound ‘future throwback soul’ since it’s what people love about old soul music, that throwback sound… but I bring it into the future.” Growing up in Manchester, he put in his time studying the soul greats of yesterday and today, developing his sound as a teen through bedroom recordings and making his name performing on Britain’s underground urban stages. “It was tough fitting into the Manchester music scene which had always been really focused on guitar and dance music, the urban scene was almost non-existent… so, in making those recordings in my bedroom, I figured out how I wanted to sound…It was my training ground. Everything really began there for me. It was the first step in becoming the artist I am today.”
He first perked mainstream ears accompanying the Gorillaz on their 2010 chart hit, “Doncamatic,” after a mutual friend introduced the group to his music at one of his many London shows. He released the single, “Smoking Gun” in 2011 to impressive airplay, gaining ground as an independent artist on BBC Radio 1xtra and being listed as one of the station’s ‘Sound of 2011’ honorable mentions. He later fueled Wretch 32’s “Long Way Home,” for which he co-wrote.
His gradual ascent didn’t come easy, however.
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