He stayed true to the manifesto he wrote when he was 14, but the singer also found the real substance in his life must be love
At 16, I was trying to be Jimmy Reed. I’m the penultimate son of five boys and my brother Kole, who was five years older than me, was probably the largest influence on my life as a musician. He had an amazing record collection and still has excellent taste. So I grew up listening to the best of blues and modern jazz – Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Monk, Miles, Mingus, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, straight through to Ellington, Bird, Wes Montgomery, Oscar Peterson, Erroll Garner, Ella, the divine Sarah Vaughan, Mel Tormé, Little Richard, Fats Domino. That was the musical life that I grew up with, so I was very fortunate.
I’ve always been a serious person. At 14 I wrote my manifesto of what I was going to do with the rest of my life. It started with me thinking most people would do anything rather than evidence-based, critical thinking. Then I thought surviving is so tough for many millions, billions of people that perhaps they don’t have time for deep philosophical thought. I came to the conclusion that there was a group of people who took it upon themselves to think – as a duty, as a vocation – and those people would be philosophers and artists. I decided that I would be an artist-philosopher or a philosopher-artist. Somewhat to my surprise, it seems I stuck to my guns.
I was six the first time I saw a postcard in a window that said, ‘Room to let: No blacks, no Irish, no dogs.’ That was the first time I was trolled. I was brought up by the society I lived in. I was brought up to have very little self-esteem. I was brought up in a society that told me that as a man, I was supposed to be homophobic, racist, misogynistic and ableist. Because everywhere that I looked, that’s what I was being told was the right thing to be.
I gradually realised that everything I was being told about myself by the society and the country and the world I lived in, was a lie as a homosexual, black atheist artist. So I decided that my roots had to start with me and I have progressed believing that ever since. I’ve never had time for people who base their lives on what their ancestors did. Especially when what their ancestors did was nothing to be proud of.
I decided very early on in my life that I would search for and find somebody, make them fall in love with me and
