The prolific rapper bares his psyche for a powerful debut album. “I was never really a perfectionist in my creative process,” Joe James tells Apple Music. “I would make an EP over a few days and then release it at the weekend.” The Essex-born rapper spent the better half of a decade as one of the most intriguing new voices in grime with his “stream of consciousness, I’ve made this, I feel good about it, I just put it out” approach to making music. Seven mixtapes, six EPs, and countless loosies later, he was running out of ways to challenge himself. For this project, he decided to do things differently. “This album’s been two years in the making,” he says. “For the first time, I sat with my producers and musicians and we actually built every element of the tracks piece by piece, from start to finish.” Featuring guest appearances from heavyweight stars including Dave and Loyle Carner, with production handled in large part by emerging talent Remy Jones, The Ends, Never Ends marries mellow, genre-flexible beats with James’ immersive storytelling, narrated in textured tones. The lyrical content presented yet another challenge. “My friend said to me, ‘You’re very good at writing stories and because you can paint them pictures so vividly, you hide behind that. You’re not actually saying how it made you feel,’” he recalls. But allowing himself to be vulnerable wasn’t the difficult part. “It was more just finding the feelings. I’d maybe suppressed them or didn’t understand them. Looking inwards to find out how that made me feel—that was more challenging.” Cornerstone tracks “Back Together,” a bluesy excavation of childhood trauma and “All I Wanted,” which traces the loss of his innocence, were the keys to unlocking a deeper emotional awareness, empowering him to open up about other sensitive subjects. The result is an unflinching portrait of a neurodivergent artist who understands the value of honest expression. “I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was four and autism when I was eight and I didn’t want anyone to know these things,” he says. “I think there’s a lot of unrepresented kids that might not feel heard or they might feel like they’re a failure because they’re a bit weird and naughty in school. I wanted to be a voice for them.” Here, James takes us through the album, track by track. “Who Is She?” “My mum wrote this poem. She showed it to me one day, and I really loved it, so I just asked her to read it out in the car and recorded it on my phone. I think women are the start of everything. The womb is the source of everything. So I wanted the album to start with my mum’s voice. I think there’s something comforting and blissful about closing your eyes and hearing an album start and it’s a woman’s voice, rather than just coming in and immediately rapping.” “Back Together” “This song is just a narration of experiences I’ve had. In the background you can hear a sample saying ‘put me back together’ and that inspired me to think about me and my mum feeling distant from each other for a period of my life and the reasons we arrived at that place, and then the beauty in rekindling [our relationship] when we connected again.” “Fully Submerged” (with Astrønne) “If I close my eyes and visualize [this song] it’s like being plunged into certain environments, certain experiences. I speak about being diagnosed with autism and being put on different pills as a kid, and my grandmother looking in my eyes and saying, ‘They took away your glisten.’ I had started behaving better in school but I was so lethargic, I was like a zombie. I felt like I was underwater.” “Bitterstreet Symphony” “Obviously a nod to the original ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ by The Verve. My initial idea, which we didn’t fully explore, was to create an orchestra of police sirens or the sound of people fighting, but I wanted them to come together in a way that’s pleasing to the ear, like a symphony of chaos. That’s why I’m narrating the story of a night out and things are transpiring: bottles are flying, people are getting hurt, women are screaming…like a typical night on the town, basically. But I wanted it to sound beautiful as well.” “Papercuts” “‘Papercuts’ was weird. I’ve never made a song like that. Straightaway, the pulse of it made me think of a heartbeat, and I just started writing. I wrote it in, like, 15 minutes. Sometimes I write songs and I can’t even realize how I’ve done it or what I’ve done. I like how the beat builds up gradually. It gets to a point of stress, almost, it’s like a stressful listen. Then it all calms down and it’s like a release.” “Waterloo” (with Hak Baker) “When I was a kid, my grandma used to take me on holiday to London. We’d stay in a hostel and then we’d go to Waterloo and walk along the river and watch the skateboarders. I just remember the magic of that place for me, as a six- or seven-year-old kid. They’re talking about knocking down that area of the South Bank where everyone goes skateboarding but this song is basically me saying, ‘What will I do when I lose my grandma?’ because she’s been such a rock in my life. That’s what I mean when I say ‘What will I do when they take Waterloo?’” “206” “Some unapologetic rap stuff. I just think this one has a nice pace to it. You can bop your head to this one.” “Black Cabbie” “London taxi drivers have to learn ‘The Knowledge,’ which is where they learn the map of every road in London by memory. I thought that was a nice analogy for the experience of navigating my own life that I’ve attained over the years. Knowing you don’t know everything is very important. Knowing that you can’t do everything by yourself. Knowing to be cautious, but not letting the negative things that have happened to you poison your love for the world.” “OBE” (with Lancey Foux) “Another banger. This song was originally on a different beat and there was a point where there was three of us in the studio all locked in on making different versions of this song. One was more abstract, one was straight trap, the other one was a weird, alt type of beat. All I knew is, we needed to strip it back more because it was so busy and noisy. There was no space in there. That works sometimes—that’s how a lot of Lancey’s productions are—but I wanted him to be heard on something more stripped-back so you can hear what he’s saying with clarity.” “Never Ends” “A straight boom-bap, jazzy song. It’s similar production to a song I made years ago called ‘Tour de Ends,’ and this song is almost a sequel to that. It’s quite self-explanatory. If you like a jazzy, hip-hop-type thing, you’ll enjoy this song.” “Why I Luv U” “This is just about someone I love and listing the reasons why I love that person. And how you learn to love all the imperfections that someone has as well. I enjoy the feeling of looking after a woman, I feel at peace when I’m doing that.” “Ignorance Was Never Bliss” (with Loyle Carner) “Everyone always says ‘ignorance is bliss’ and I just don’t agree with it. It’s that simple. I’m speaking about things that I think about in deep thought sometimes, and I keep circling back to the saying, ‘ignorance was never bliss to me.’ I feel like people hide behind that statement. It’s good to be aware of things. I finished it and sent it to Loyle, and he told me he wasn’t doing any features. Then he messaged me the next day and said, ‘Oh, I’ve just listened to this and this has actually inspired me, I’m gonna come to the studio tomorrow.’ He’s a good lad, man.” “Same Emotions” (with Dave) “This is like a campfire. It’s just a guitar playing and two people rapping to each other almost for the sport, the fun of rapping. I think there’s something very beautiful about people just rapping over a guitar. I’ve always liked that. I even like just rapping over a bass guitar sometimes.” “All I Wanted” “Initially, this song was 15 minutes long. It starts from a child, going through all the things I wanted, and by the time you’re 75 percent of the way through the track, it’s weapons and it’s like, ‘Wow, how did we arrive here?’ I went all the way from the day I was born up until the present moment, but obviously that’s difficult for people to listen to, so we stripped it right down. We’ll do part two another time.”