Stormzy's new album This Is What I Mean is coming next month

Stormzy at Glastonbury — (Image credit: Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Stormzy has announced the follow-up to his 2019 UK number one album Heavy Is The Head. This Is What I Mean will be released on November 25 via his own 0207 Merky Records label in the UK, and 0207 Def Jam globally.

The new album is described 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."

Much of the record was written in the rapper's specially-convened 'music camp' on Osea Island in Essex.

"When you hear about music camps they always sound intense and sombre," he admits. "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.”

The tracklist for This Is What I Mean is:

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

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A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.