You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.

Samfa is a singer, songwriter, and producer from London. His first album, Process, won the Mercury Prize in 2017. He's collaborated with artists like The X, X, Kendrick Lamar, Drake, and Solange.

If you saw the Song Exploder Netflix show,

Samfa was in the Alicia Keys episode

for the song they did together as a duet.

This year, in October 2023,

Samfa put out his second album, Lehi,

and for this episode, I talked to Samfa about the song Spirit 2.0.

Coming up, you'll hear the original demo

and some early voice memos.

Sama recruited some collaborators for the song,

like producer Pablo Diaz Rysha, aka El Gincho,

who won a Grammy for his work on Rossellia's first album, plus Yeiji and Lisa Cayinde from Ibehi.

But the song Spirit 2.0 first took shape when Sam Fu was by himself at home. My name is Sam for at you.

My name is Sam for.

I start a lot of songs off by learning a new bit of gear or plug in that will kind of get my brain firing and inspire something.

And so I'd bought a new synth. I was like late summer, 2019. I was in a music store in the street called Denmark Street in London.

I bought like an Oberheim, O. B6. I'd also bought some semi-modular sims,

the Moog my mother 32s. I'm not super techie, but I do love to experiment and

spend hours and bits of music. And I was like, oh this has reminded me or something.

It's like a plucking of like a West African stringed instrument,

...