Sampha delivers a tender, emotional reflection on his childhood with his new single “(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano.” Sampha and Rodaidh McDonald co-produced the track, which originally leaked several months ago before its official release earlier today.
The song is an ode to the piano that Sampha grew up with in his home in south London. He sings about how it helped him develop as an artist:
No one knows me like the piano in my mother’s home
You assure me I have something, some people call it soul
And you drop-top the sky, oh you ride, when I was three years old
No one knows me like the piano in my mother’s home
He also sings about the death of his mother on the second verse:
An angel by her side, all the times I knew we couldn’t cope
They said that it’s her time, no tears in sight, I kept the feeling’s close
And you took hold of me and never, never, never let me go
The singer revealed in a June 2016 Fader interview that he wrote this track after moving back in with his mother in late 2014 when she was diagnosed with cancer for the second time. She passed away a few months later.
Sampha’s long-awaited debut album Process is set to drop on February 3. Although he’s been around for a while—and gained tons of name recognition from working with Drake and Kanye West—he’s never released a full-length project until now.
You can read all the lyrics to Sampha’s “(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano” on Genius now.
