‘When you step into the limelight yourself, you have to be ready for anything’
Producer and songwriter to the stars, Fraser T Smith is striking out on his first solo album. Alex Green listens to it and talks to him
Fraser T Smith is the 49-year-old father from Buckinghamshire behind some of Stormzy and Dave’s biggest hits.
He’s worked with and written for an astounding variety of artists: Adele, James Morrison, Craig David and Tinchy Stryder to name a few.
In recent years Smith has found himself grime’s most sought-after collaborator.
Now he is releasing his debut solo album – a who’s who of the musical zeitgeist.
“It’s a combination of terror and extreme excitement,” the producer and songwriter says over video call.
“When you step into the limelight yourself, you have to be ready for anything. “You are baring your soul. Smith adds: “It’s my concept. I am obviously working with incredible collaborators here but it’s a very different feeling.
“You are really jumping off the edge of the cliff and hoping that the parachute opens.
“As a collaborator you are preparing the parachute and then wishing the artist well as they step out to release.
“It’s a very different feeling. But one that I’m loving.”
Working under the pseudonym Futura Utopia, Smith wrestles with 12 meaty philosophical and existential questions on the tellingly titled 12 Questions.
Poets Simon Armitage and Alysia Harris, former Black Panther activist Albert Woodfox, actor Idris Elba, and long-term collaborators Stormzy, Ghetts, Bastille, Kano and Dave sing, rap and recite about love, climate change, knife crime and the rise of AI.
Being the super-producer he is, 12 Questions takes in a dizzying variety of genres including – but not limited to – grime, progessive rock, jazz and spoken word.
“The concept was born out of some anxieties I was feeling about the way the world was heading in terms of AI and racial inequality and the wealth gap and the environment,” Smith says.
“I put down the 12 questions and then came up with the music to most of the tracks, and then invited these artists and luminaries and poets and singers to give their take on the question.
“But I didn’t want to censor or edit what they were saying. It was their take. I wanted to cast the net out as wide as I could to people I had never met before, to people I had never dreamt of meeting.”
One of those people was Woodfox who, in 2016, was released from prison after 43 years spent mostly in solitary confinement.
Smith travelled to his home in New Orleans to ask him: “What is the cost of freedom?”
“I wanted to set the scene and prepare as much as I could and then let the artist express themselves,” he recalls. “It’s important to say this isn’t a soap box type of record that is trying to push any particular answer. The idea is that there should be a sense of ownership for anyone who listens to it.”
For the most part, 12 Question was recorded before Covid-19 reached the UK but the intensely collaborative nature of the record threw up problems when it did.
“We still had some challenges,” Smith admits.
“I had a deadline in my head to finish the record so we ended up sending a hard disk recorder over to Tom Grennan’s house.
“He recorded Do We Really Care? in the back of his car.
“Kano obviously couldn’t come to the studio because we were in lockdown so said he was going to put something down on his phone as a guide. And then we ended up using that.”
Most artists are keen to stress that the pandemic has enhanced the deep meaning of their music but Smith actually has a case.
Do We Really Care? featuring Grennan, rapper Tia Carys and poet laureate Armitage resonates with our respect for the NHS.
Woodfox’s recorded words for What’s The Cost Of Freedom? reflect people’s sense of isolation.
“To be in the company of someone who has been incarcerated for so many years but to also hear his lack of hatred and his positivity and strength, it was something I will take to my grave,” says Smith.
His musical education came, primarily, from the most unlikely of places: progressive rock.
A variety of bands and pub gigs ultimately led him to meeting bona fide prog legend and Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman in 1992.
He toured with Wakeman, his son Adam and Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet before becoming a session player.
In 1999, he was introduced to the then-unknown Craig David and spent five years touring, writing and performing across the world.
Only after this did he start working as a songwriter and producer full-time.
“It has just been an amazing journey that has been so varied and I am so grateful for,” he says.
Across his career, Smith has worked with a bevvy of future stars. How does he know if they are destined for fame?
“It is always an amazing buzz to work with new artists because you feel like you are privy to this incredible talent that the world is yet to see,” he explains.
“When Arlo Parks put her vocals down on Stranger In The Night, that was an incredible moment.
“When Jelani Blackman put his verses on Am I Built Like This?, that was an incredible moment.
“When Lafawndah started working on Way Back When, she’s bringing something that is so unique and so fresh.
“Those are three great examples from the album, but throughout my career, working with Adele on her second album, or Stormzy on his record, working on Dave’s first EP Psychodrama.
“We started jamming together and wrote the song Picture Me. I was privy to that raw talent very early on when Dave was 17. To see him have grown into such an incredible artist is one of the best things ever for me.”
Smith has spent much of his career on the periphery of fame so 12 Questions remains a big step.
“There is nothing cynical in the way this was put together in terms of the headlines of some crazy collaboration.
“It’s really about who works and I learnt that from Stormzy in the way that he approached Gang Signs And Prayer. It’s whatever’s best for the music.”
● 12 Questions by Futura Utopia is out now