RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Beabadoobee , Jorja Smith and Nemzzz are returning to their roots for a run of new intimate live performances with Spotify.
Dubbed Hometown , the three-part series launches next month, with Smith kicking things off in her stomping ground of Walsall, near Birmingham, on Sept. 6. Nemzzz follows in Manchester on Sept. 12, while Beabadoobee will close out the run in London on Sept. 17. Venues for each show are yet to be announced.
The shows will give the trio an opportunity to perform in the cities where their respective musical journeys began. Top listeners of each artist will be invited to attend the performances, which will later be released as exclusive concert films. Spotify will also partner with each artist on supporting local community initiatives, including donations to youth organisations.
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Smith, who releases her third studio album What Are The Odds this Friday (Aug. 21), said in a press release that “Walsall is where I first started writing and recording music as a teenager.” She added, “It’s where my love of music began and the people, experiences and sense of community there continue to influence my creativity today. It’s home, home is where my heart is and home is where I found my voice! I hope it’s a moment that inspires the next generation to believe that big things really can come from Walsall.”
Independent rapper Nemzzz, meanwhile, is gearing up to drop new record Locked In on Sept. 4. “I’ve always made a point of celebrating Manchester and representing where I’m from, so getting to do Hometown with Spotify feels like a natural extension of that,” he said.
“There’s a pride that comes with doing it at home, around the people and places that have been there from the beginning. No matter where this takes me, I’ll always find a way to bring it back home.”
Beadoobee will follow with her forthcoming LP Pylon on Sept. 18, marking the follow-up to her twice BRIT-nominated 2024 album, This Is How Tomorrow Moves . As part of her Hometown event, she will support The Avenues, a specialist social care charity in west London.
“London has always felt like home to me, it’s where I started finding my people, making music, playing tiny shows and figuring out what I wanted to do, so Hometown feels really special,” she said. “It’s also really cool that we’re also able to give something back to the community with [west London social care charity] The Avenues and support young people locally, that part feels really important to me.”
The Hometown series also follows a recent run of Spotify live projects that put U.K. artists and their biggest fans in more intimate settings. In May, the platform brought Skye Newman to Hackney Church for a special performance celebrating her SE9 project, with the resulting show released as an exclusive live film.
Speaking to Billboard U.K ., Andy Sloan-Vincent , managing director at Spotify (U.K., Ireland, and Netherlands) explained the streaming platform’s approach to supporting homegrown talent via live initiatives: “Skye is a [Spotify] Radar artist in the U.K., which means we’ve made the commitment to develop her. She has an incredible voice; when you go into the room with her, everyone wants her to win,” he said. “I think the reason we want to get behind artists like that is because we want the artist to win. That’s our outlook on things.”
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