Interview: Black Sherif Is Embracing His Truest Self

There’s always been something deeply personal about Black Sherif’s music. Even as his sound has grown and his world has gotten bigger, he’s kept making room for the feelings, ideas, and experiences that make his music feel like his own. With ‘Sun Sherif,’ that feeling is even more obvious. The project takes him back to the kind of music he says he wanted to make when he first started, giving him the freedom to be vulnerable, experiment and most importantly, have fun with it. 

Across the six tracks of ‘Sun Sherif,’ there’s no pressure to fit into a particular box. He’s simply making the music that feels most like him. “There’s a freeness to it, like a limitless air around the whole creation and the whole feeling that I put into the album, that’s the air around it,” he said in an interview with Apple Music’s Africa Now Radio. “I am so proud to be honest. Through my journey as a student of music–as a performer, as a dreamer of music–I believe this release of this and the creation and release of this particular tape, does something to me.”

This conversation has been edited for clarity. 

What inspired your new project?

This is the type of music I wanted to make when I started making music. When you go back to some of the first four songs that I ever made, they sound like this. ‘Sun Sherif’ sounds like a very arrived version of whatever I wanted to start at that time. I’ve been waiting my whole journey to make a tape like this, with this type of vulnerability, and this type of freeness. There’s a freeness to it, like a limitless air around the whole creation and the whole feeling that I put into the album, that’s the air around it. I am so proud to be honest. Through my journey as a student of music–as a performer, as a dreamer of music–I believe this release of this and the creation and release of this particular tape, does something to me. It makes me very emotional. 

How did you allow yourself to be vulnerable in the music?

It wasn’t difficult. I feel like it’s the easiest for me to be vulnerable with the music. I wouldn’t even love the music if I’m not vulnerable there but like how clear I make it this time is just so peak. That’s why I say there’s a freeness to it because it’s not even that I care. 
It’s deeper than just dropping the music. It transcends into how I’m even, it’s kinda affecting my perspective as a human right now. You know, the type of frequency I’m on. 

What does music do for you at this phase of your life?

I get to surprise myself every day, and that’s what this EP is doing for me. It’s bringing me back to why I started to make music. I just can’t wait for where it takes me. Even the whole experience of releasing this, experiencing this outside, experiencing people singing it, going outside to sing it to people, I can’t wait for where that will take me. I want them to understand that I’m really concerned about living well and loving each other. All forms of love and forms of comfort. Comfort as in harmony. That’s what I’m really concerned about: harmony, peace, good living, and loving. 

How do you not allow success to get to your head?

I am so aware that in my third year making music.  I was on a song with Burna Boy. In my third year making music, I was ranking number one in my country. I still see myself as being in my beginning years. If I go in straight thinking like, “Hey, number one in the country,” and start to try to play my cards as a number one, that kind of throws me off why I am making music. I am somebody that one thing that I look forward to from art is some of the fascination that comes from the simple things. 

How did you approach making “Jolie?”

It’s just fun to make. It’s so necessary for me to make that [type of] music, and the delivery is easy. So, that’s to let you know that, “Yo, it should be easy to say, it’s not tough like that.” There are times that I try to think I do not feel it. That’s me lying to myself. That’s me trying to cope. But I just have developed an antidote.

How do you reflect your roots and life through music?

The best card that I can play is to represent myself the most because I am whatever I think I am or wherever I am from. I am the cities that made me. I am the three years that I spent in Kumasi. I am the 15 years that I spent in Konongo. I am the one and half year I spent in Tema. I am the four or five years that I spent in Accra. I am the three months back and forth that I’ve been to Lagos. I am around the world that I’ve been. So, through that, I just represent myself the most. That’s why I believe everything I’m doing is very experimental because I am just representing myself the most. So, whatever comes out of it, whoever goes to read it, whoever goes to listen, consume it, will put their meanings to it. My identity will be seen in the music.

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