Ezra Collective Discuss New Album 'Here Because of Hope' and Olivia Dean Collaboration

When listing recent success stories for British musicians, Ezra Collective deserve to be celebrated alongside Sam Fender , Olivia Dean , Lola Young and other hitamkers. Their story encapsulates everything that the U.K. music industry should be championing: sheer determination, superb talent and a community-led mindset.

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The jazz five-piece formed in a youth club, Tomorrow’s Warriors in Enfield, north London, before growing steadily into a must-see live act and cultural leader. In 2023, they broke cover with Where I’m Meant to Be , the first jazz album to win the prestigious Mercury Prize , seeing off competition from Arctic Monkeys, RAYE, Olivia Dean and Fred again.. 18 months later, they bagged a BRIT Award for group of the year at the 2025 ceremony; they have done so while remaining fiercely independent.

New album Here Because of Hope is Ezra Collective’s most complete album to date and is currently tracking to land the band, signed to Partisan Records, its first-ever U.K. No. 1 album. The fivepiece – Femi Koleoso (drums) TJ Koleoso (bass), Ife Ogunjobi (trumpet), James Mollison (sax) and Joe Armon-Jones (keyboards) – traverse an array of musical genres on the LP, ranging from funky house and U.K. Garage-inspired tunes to traditional African and Caribbean genres such as zouk and highlife.

The band’s live shows, which are already formidable and utterly joyous, will soon take in some of the most impressive venues of its career at New York’s Webster Hall (Nov. 18), and a four-night stand at London’s historic Brixton Academy (March 18 – 21).

Bandleader Femi speaks to Billboard U.K. about Ezra Collective’s role as the U.K. jazz scene’s leading band, its new LP and collaborating with Olivia Dean ahead of her meteoric rise.

Your debut EP Chapter 7 came out 10 years ago in 2016. Does it feel like that long ago to you?

I feel like I started the band as a child, and now I’m in a band of adults. The scale of our growth is beyond understanding; Ezra Collective is huge now compared to where we started. Like, just recently, we put a show at London’s Roundhouse on sale [Sept. 16] and sold it out in a single day. When we did that back in 2019, I vividly remember spending most of the year convincing my friends to buy tickets and only selling out the day before the show! So yeah, It’s been a really incredible evolution.

What’s changed the most among the band?

The beauty of being a child is you just have so much time. You know, gone are the days of rehearsing Fela Kuti joints all day. Gone are the days of saying, “let’s just hang out.” It’s quite intentional when we’re together — but then I guess part of being an adult is you kind of seize opportunities better than children.

Back then, were there particular milestones you were shooting for?

The original one was headlining [London jazz club] Ronnie Scott’s. That was like the youth club dream and felt as seismic as things would ever be. Then you do it, and you look at the next stage, and you’re like, ‘This is what I want next’. That’s never really left us. I wanted to play Glastonbury’s West Holts stage, and then maybe in Japan, Brazil and Nigeria. They were all dreams, but they only started to manifest after we took down the first pub or the first club.

Even today, I look at that big dome at The O2 or the shiny Pyramid Stage [at Glastonbury] and think that I want to do shows there. You never really lose that kind of ambition trying to do all these magical things that you thought were impossible.

Was there a moment of inspiration that kickstarted the Here Because of Hope journey?

A seismic moment for us was when Channel One Sound System remixed “Ego Killah” from [2023 LP] Where I’m Meant to Be . I handed them a dub plate of the song at [London venue] Village Underground, and hearing my favourite sound system play that remix to a dancing crowd was powerful. It inspired us to capture the beauty of Caribbean music and culture on a record, as well as its foundational links to African culture and in the U.K..

The band’s growth after Dance, No One’s Watching was really beautiful. We were doing more tickets than ever, and it wasn’t Enfield’s little secret no more. That record contributed to a BRIT Award win and came after a Mercury Prize win, and all those things. What people had in common was they were coming to our shows to experience joy, and so waking up and playing a show, knowing you’re there to be a producer of joy for all of these people, was such a beautiful thing.

But we also had to be honest about when you feel pain, and during some of those gigs in particular, things were happening that were painful both personally and collectively. The question then became: how do you bring joy to people when you’re feeling pain? And I guess the journeys of Black people between Africa, the Caribbean and the U.K. brought pain and joy, but the answer in the middle became one of hope.

Was tapping into pain a difficult place to go when writing and recording?

Not necessarily, because pain is something that I’m dealing with every single day. As a world we’ve collectively become numb and desensitised. When you see some of the things that are happening to children in Gaza, how can you not feel pain? When the debate comes up, I almost feel like saying, “I’m not here to debate anything. I’m just saying, ‘Does that not break your heart?'” Or when I look at the things that are happening in the north of Nigeria, where Christians are being executed. I’m a Christian Nigerian. Can you imagine the pain of reading a story like that?

So we’re consistently balancing pain and joy. When you look in history, humans have always been doing that, and that’s where the birth of all this different music comes from: afrobeat, reggae, calypso, dancehall, garage and U.K. broken beat. All of these things are humans’ ability to juggle those two things at the same time.

Music plays a huge part in this, right? People are able to express and connect with different emotions through creativity…

It’s such a mad and precious thing and why music is so sacred. It’s why having places to play music is so important and why musicians are so valuable. It’s why AI is so dangerous, because replacing the soul of music with a clever computer, you’re tampering with what it’s actually initially made to be for. Those things are so important to be preserved. I’m very blessed to be a contributor to people’s mood shifting through the medium of music.

What way did you approach the research for where you wanted the sound to go on Here Because of Hope ?

When researching and writing and working on the record, I was very much impacted by like different scenes and different countries and getting deep into things like Gambian and Senegalese music for the first time. I wanted to understand the nuance, the differences between soca, bashment, zouk and all of those kinds of genres. It wasn’t a case of finding specific artists, it was about learning about movements of music and trying to do them justice.

Did you feel pressure to go into those spaces and get it right?

I think that, in some ways, it’s a Black privilege. If I was an English white boy, it would be slightly trickier, but, like, I’m coming to them as a Nigerian. There was never an intention to be like a voice for anyone or to be an authoritative tastemaker. It was always essentially a loveletter to the influences that these places have had on our music. So in that sense, there’s nothing to get wrong, you know?

Actor Letitia Wright narrates the journey in this LP. Why did you choose her for this role?

She ultimately embodied the whole journey of the album in that she is so Caribbean but she is so London, and a lot of people – including me – thought she was African because of her role in [Marvel film] Black Panther . The lineage of Africa to the Caribbean to the U.K. was so eloquently embodied with her, but also the beauty of it. She grew up in Tottenham, and you couldn’t grow up in a more narratively-representative place of London than Tottenham. It’s been such an integral birthplace for so many grime tunes, and played a big role in jungle and garage music.

But then it’s also emblematic of a number of issues that impact working class families, like knife crime and addiction; she grew up in the area that represents so much of that, so it just felt perfect. There’s lots of people it could have been, like Idris Elba or Daniel Kaluuya… but then Letitia’s my mate, so then it makes sense.

Former X Factor winner Leona Lewis also provides vocals on “All I Need.” What did it mean to have someone with such pedigree on your record?

The journey of the Windrush generation, coming from the Caribbean to the U.K., brought all of these beautiful things such as Lovers Rock [a subgenre of reggae that originated in south London]. The sound of Lovers Rock is defined by where it’s made – if it’s made in Jamaica, it’s reggae, and if it’s made in the U.K., it’s Lovers Rock. So I wondered, who’s an iconic voice that the whole nation knows? It was so much about the voice, and then I remember going through my DMs, and every time Ezra posted anything, Leona would message and say, ‘I love your music so much. You guys are so special. Keep doing what you’re doing.”

Then I thought, “There’s no one more iconic than Leona.” She embodied the narrative of “All I Need” and the story behind it – she’s from Islington, with Caribbean parents, and grew up in the U.K.. Her career trajectory represents so much pain, but she found joy because she built such a beautiful career and everyone knows her music. I’m just proud she’s on the record, man.

Olivia Dean is featured on the last record on the song “No One’s Watching Me,” your most-streamed song on Spotify…

It’s the most perfect A&R moment I’ve ever had! Like, if I asked two weeks later, that tune would not have happened. If I called it up today, bruv… it’ll be love, but that is not happening. With her, I think music rewards organic growth and humble beginnings. I found out about Olivia because I was mentoring this kid who plays drums, and they were like, “I’m on drums for this singer.” I was like, “Great! I’m going to follow the singer’s journey just like I follow yours,” and she was playing 100-capacity venues here and there.

A few years later, she started to blow up and she’s doing her thing, got a Mercury-nominated album [ Messy, 2023], and I remember she was on before us at festivals and stuff, so we’d come out and watch her show. I asked her, “Do you want to jump on a tune?” Which she did… and then I went to bed, woke up, and she’s the biggest star in the world! Winning Grammys, got Gucci deals, performing at Madison Square Garden, and the rest of it. I’m just so happy for her.

10 years down the line, artists now reference you as an inspiration. How do you feel about that?

It’s beautiful because people only can aspire to be that if they think it’s accessible and possible, and that’s how I want to come across all the time. Because that is the truth: It is possible for everyone, and you never want to be the rapper with the you know 100-grand chain that lets you know this is for me, not for you. I don’t want to come across like that. I want you to leave our gigs feeling like this is possible, and that’s the best. I’m grateful. And long may it continue. Long after we stop writing records, I still want to be inspiring people to make music.

_Originally reported by [Billboard](https://www.billboard.com/music/features/ezra-collective-here-because-hope-olivia-dean-leona-lewis-1236341533/)._