Hi, I'm Jacob Banks
and this who I am.
♪ ♪
Growing up in
Birmingham is cool.
It's very gray,
it's England.
I started music a lot later-
I think I was like 20
when I started music.
At this point
I'd left Birmingham
to go to university
in Coventry.
I was studying to
be a civil engineer
and I just kind of
fell into music.
I think with my chance
I bought my guitar,
taught myself to play
off YouTube.
I was living with two of
my friends at the time
and our house got burgled,
and all they left
was the guitar,
so I was left to play
this guitar by force almost.
♪ ♪
I used to write poetry
from before,
so I figured people that
played guitar sang along too.
And then I just
started writing songs.
Writing poetry teaches you
how to tell a story
in a way of how to say
the most amount or the
littlest amoount of information
so I've always taken that
with me when I put pen to paper.
My biggest inspiration
for writing is to stay open,
just listening
to people when they speak,
people will string sentences
in a way that's wonderful.
I had this voicemail
from my grandma,
and she says at the end of
the voicemail, she said to me,
"When you hear the sound of my
voice, please call me back."
And I just thought
the way she put those words together is so sweet.
She could've just said,
"Call me back,"
but "When you hear the sound of
my voice, please call me back,"
thosee kind of stuff
inspires me.
When I hear people
string words together,
I just write it down in
my phone, or in a notepad,
and when I hit the studio, I try
to tell a story of those words.
This is so bad.
I hope my mum doesn't
see this shit.
Oh dear.
My parents didn't know.
So what I did was,
when I'd leave to London,
I told them I was taking
a year's placement
to work in
a civil engineering company.
I wasn't.
I was just gigging.
But I gave myself
that year.
I said, "if I couldn't make
a name for myself in this year
"and properly find my
feet, then I'll stop."
I probably would have
never stopped.
I used to shit myself
onstage, when I started out.
I used to sing a lot
in my bathroom.
The acoustics were wonderful.
So that's just the kind of place
I go to when I'm unsteady.
I just imagine it's me
and my guitar in a bathroom
and just the same amount of
effort I'll give when I'm alone
I try to give onstage.
As time went on, it just
starts to feel like home.
When I found music,
I found it all at once.
I found hip-hop, soul,
reggae, gospel-
and I could never
tell them apart.
Later down the line
I was introduced
to genres and all that.
I don't wanna sound like
an EDM artist singing over soul,
I want to sound
like a soul artist
whose taken modern elements.
It's a weird balance.
If one tips too much,
it can go left of center quite
quickly, so you need to...
so we need to learn
to always measure.
Like I always have to make sure there's more soul
than there is
the modern stuff
because if you have
too much of that,
then you're just like
everybody else.
So it's hard
to thread that needle,
but I think over the months,
we've kind of found
a way to gauge it properly.
The album's called The Village,
and it's based off the phrase,
"It takes a village
to raise a child,"
and it just
celebrates all the sides of me,
like I was born in Nigeria,
and then I moved to the UK
when I was 13,
and it celebrates
all those sides of me
that's contributed
to me being me.
♪ ♪
You know what?
The beanie just became a thing
over a couple years.
It's cold in the UK,
that's kind of how the beanie
came about, and um,
and I just kept
acquiring beanies.
And the thing is,
people think it's because
I'm hiding my hairline,
but the actual truth is
my hairline's healthy.
My hairline's cool.
I have a full head of hair,
like it's cool.
But it's just become a thing
and it just makes me
feel comfortable.
I feel like I'm going to work,
I feel like
I'm going to be Jacob Banks
when I put a beanie on.
I feel like I'm ready to perform
and just this is where
the Banks will perform.
And then when I get
home I take it off.
I have Corn Flakes and
watch Cartoon Network.
