If this was schoolyard basketball, we would pick James Blake first.
Within a decade, James Blake has gone from being a dubstep DJ from Enfield, London, to being the hottest collaborator on the American rap and pop scenes. He moves effortlessly between electronic music, R&B, pop, UK bass and post-dubstep, and with the ability to constantly reinvigorate his sound, James Blake has become the boundless maestro of electronic music.
The debut record James Blake from 2011 introduced his fragile vocals and simple productions to the world, while its successor Overgrown from 2013 secured him the Mercury Prize and made him one of the most innovative songwriters of an entire generation.
James Blake isn’t known only for his solo work. He is the man behind a slew of megahits. His contributions to Beyoncés Lemonade and Frank Oceans Blonde as well as his vocals on Travis Scotts Trying To Be God is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to his revolution of the sound of modern music.
With a unique sense of finding the intimate in the grandiose and the complex in the simple, James Blake finds himself in a class of his own.