Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorJames Blake is one of the most unusual and seemingly contradictory artists to arise in the past decade: an electronic-music auteur whose music is filled of all kinds of odd noises, but he’s also a balladeer with a spine-tingling voice, raised on Laurel Canyon singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young.
Most unusually of all, he’s probably best known as a hip-hop collaborator, having worked with Jay-Z, Beyonce, Kendrick Lamar, Frank Ocean, Travis Scott and other A-list rappers.
To listen to his albums, you’d never imagine him as a hip-hop go-to vocalist, but he even won the 2019 Grammy for Best Rap Performance for “King’s Dead,” his collaboration with Lamar, Future and Jay Rock.
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