Stormzy announces ‘intimate’ new album This Is What I Mean

The album comes three years after the release of ‘Heavy Is The Head’

Stormzy has announced the name and release date of his much-anticipated third album.

On Instagram Wednesday (12 October), the rapper – who had been on a long social media hiatus – shared a simple photo of an envelope on a doormat with the words “this is what I mean” written on it.

He captioned the post: “This Is What I Mean. 25th November. Pre-order link in bio.”

In a second image on the reel, Stormzy shared the tracklist, which features 12 songs entitled:

1. “Fire + Water”

2. “This Is What I Mean”

3. “FireBabe”

4. “Please”

5. “Need You”

6. “Hide & Seek”

7. “My Presidents Are Black”

8. “Sampha’s Plea”

9. “Holy Spirit”

10. “Bad Blood”

11. “I Got My Smile Back”

12. “Give It To The Water”

The album announcement comes three weeks after the grime artist released his first solo single in nearly three years, “Mel Made Me Do It”, the music video for which featured over 35 influential figures, including Dave, Little Simz, Gabrielle and Jose Mourinho.

A press statement describes the new album as “an intimate love letter to music and one that showcases intensely personal and lyrical themes which lay bare the vulnerabilities, regret, frailties, healing, joy and triumph in a manner and to an extent that reframes the notion of what rap artists traditionally might do and be.”

It revealed that much of the music was written in a music camp on the remote Osea Island in Essex.

Speaking about the album-making process in the statement, Stormzy is quoted as saying: “When you hear about music camps they always sound intense and sombre.

“People saying: ‘We need to make an album.’ ‘We need to make some hit records.’ But this felt beautifully free. We’re all musicians but we weren’t always doing music. Some days we played football or walked around taking pictures. And the bi-product to that was very beautiful music. Because when you marry that ethos with world class musicians and the best producers, writers and artists in the world, and we’re in one space, that’s a recipe for something that no one can really imagine. You can’t even calculate what that’s going to come up with. And it came up with a big chunk of this album.”

This Is What I Mean is released globally on 25 November.