L.A. Salami

In the organizer's words:

L.A. Salami's journey of self-discovery goes far beyond music. Lookman Adekunle Salami was born in Peckham to a Nigerian mother and an absent father. Due to various circumstances, he spent the early years of his childhood in foster care and felt like an outsider for a long time. "I always felt somehow cut off from my culture," he says. "If I had grown up with my mother, I would probably be speaking Yoruba now. Creativity was an instinctive outlet for Lookman, but he was never confined to one particular medium. Growing up, he wanted to combine everything: visual art, music, the written word - everything. "My first love was actually movies," he says. Spielberg became my hero and I wanted to be a movie director. Over time, he found himself drawn to poetry and music. "I started making music seriously after listening to Bob Dylan, because I wasn't a good singer. I realized it's not about how well you sing - it's about how honest you are and how much of your truth you can put into a melody." Since expanding his palette and loosening the definitions he applies to his own music, Lookman has looked to modern rap titans like Kanye West, Drake and Kendrick Lamar - especially the former's willingness to experiment. "That's why rock 'n' roll died: because all the great rock 'n' roll artists stopped being crazy and trying things out. This has given Lookman's music a new level of raw, instinctive beauty, often alternating between singing and a more spoken word-meets-rap performance.

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