The Proverbial Nature of Rosier’s Music

Tucked down a side street just off the river Seine, under Paris’ blistering June sun, bodies pressed into every inch of shade – 50 or so people are causing a ruckus. It’s Fête de la Musique, the country’s annual celebration of sound. Held each year on the summer solstice, it draws the highest footfall Paris will see all year, with every square, alley and stretch of pavement thronging with live music. 

Once you found the right vantage point in the midst of all of this, adorning a Calvin Klein track top, sun glinting off his rhinestoned cap, London’s Rosier is making lightwork of the 35 degree heat as he torpedoes through a 20 minute set of heaters. The crowd are seemingly in a moment of collective catharsis as they clash into each other, bouncing to his signature echoes.

Rosier has never attached himself to just one categorisation. He can bend any given sound to his off-kilter will: one moment he seems grounded in the tradition of a drum machine, synthesiser, and some pitched up vocals, the next he buries a catchy melody or a mumbling falsetto into the mix. His songs are undeniably big, yet there’s an intimacy to the outcome. It’s a hard sound to pin down, but when my friend first shared some of his music with me I felt the same rush of being an early Jai Paul fan. His discography has a pounding heart, both propulsive and elusive, like mercury pouring out of a speaker.

We had spoken months before the Paris event in the peak of winter. Patching in from his home in Brixton, he was warm, candid and gracious in conversation. His insight was so complete, my role felt less like a profile writer and more like a messenger, carefully shaping his well-packaged wisdom into something that could be captured in a thousand or so words.

He’s reached a point in his art where he can grasp that sense of faith in his output. “I think the worst thing you can do is overthink something,” he begins, “sometimes it takes a while to understand that because you might want to be more intentional with it. It’s not always a bad thing, but I think when you get to a place where you trust yourself and your intuition, that’s a beautiful place to be in.” 

In the last couple of years Rosier has been refining the art of turning the complexity of one’s instinct into something that comes off totally natural. “A lot of the time, I start with an idea, work with someone to flesh things out, then revisit it repeatedly over time until it feels right. But 'MOVE' was different. We made it a while ago, but when we returned to it, there were no edits.”

By contrast, 2023’s 'Machine Friends' took a whole summer to complete. “There are about 60 versions of that song. I love that process just the same.” It began as a collaboration with Ian Mills, who sent a vocal idea hummed to different chords on a ukulele , singing, ‘I find peace with my machine friends.’ Curious, I asked what he meant. He explained how sometimes he’d leave a party early to get back to his computer. That was his machine friend. The video grew from a similar reflection on the many different ways we relate to technology.”

On his latest run ahead of that forthcoming project, beginning with “Monkey See”, made alongside PeterParker69 and tom huna, Rosier creates a track that feels like he is vanquishing his anxious demons one colossal riff at a time. Soon after, bright arpeggios spiral into focus, and a slightly higher-pitched Rosier sings the hook, “If you love yourself, someone’s going to love you too/ because we are monkeys and Monkey See, monkey do,” in an angelic falsetto. The song becomes a strange and affecting duet between two very different vocal approaches.

Rosier started recording in Toronto last year with a clear idea of his next project. But after using his time there to make some music outside of that record, his sound found new soil from which to grow. “I realised I don’t need to overthink what an ‘album’ is meant to be or sound like. I’m simply looking forward to releasing a collection of songs that people might like. But the sound is going to be different from song to song.”

A specific mindset in many musicians prioritises the single take, the beat banged out in fifteen minutes, the ability to knock down half a mixtape in one session. The idea is that these artists operate at an acute level of instinct. They know their own process and musical vocabulary so well that a spark of creativity can lead to magic, whether that happens in moments or over months of refinement. Building on that intuition is key to Rosier’s music.

 “I write all the time. I walk around and have random lines come to me. If I’m making music and sit down at my computer, or I’m in a session with Tom or Joe, it always changes. Some songs I’ve written with a story in mind. I might write it on the piano. That’s the foundation. But there’s times where we just run it in 20 minutes. If I’m finding a chorus or a verse, I like to freestyle it,” he admits. “The first ideas are usually best, especially with melody. Sometimes it’s hard to change it after that. Learning chords, playing my own progressions. It’s pure. That’s the ultimate goal: to get to a place where you can express yourself directly. There’s something about that direct expression, like with Prince or D’Angelo or Blood Orange. They play every instrument, sing, produce. It’s all them.”

“The consistent thing is my voice. I was releasing music on SoundCloud back in 2015, 2016. That real DIY era. Back then, I knew I needed to practice and just get better at recording myself. It took years until I felt comfortable enough to release something. And even now, my voice changes between songs. On 'Go,' I originally made the song three semitones slower, and then I sped it up and it sounded crazy. Some songs are rapped, some sung. There’s a foundation of rap in me, but I also got more comfortable with singing over time.”

Alongside refining his sound, Rosier quickly realised the power of a visual narrative to give his music a new dimension. “The visuals for that song were one of the first to come out.” Made alongside director and old school friend, Arran Ashan, who is a frequent credit in his videos. “He had this idea of me dancing in Southall in a suit. It's got a strong Punjabi and Muslim community. It was out of character for me at first. But then I understood the beauty behind it. Once I decided to release that video, there was no hiding it anymore. And even though people looked confused, I ran it.”

“I think a great thing about music videos is that they're their own interpretation of music.” Letting go of control has become part of the joy. “It’s cool to have input in the direction, but I think it can be even better when I don’t. When someone just hears a song and feels something or has ideas about what it means, and pushes forward with their own concept of it.” For him, that first video was a step into something braver. “Especially the first half of the video, it was about taking that leap into being okay with it publicly, not hiding it. I never used my real name. That was part of it, I didn’t want people to find it. Or my parents to find it.”

When I ask him how he experiences music personally, he describes it as something visceral. “It’s like a memory or feeling of nostalgia. When I first heard Channel Orange, that album hit me differently. But it wasn’t until about a year after hearing it for the first time that I noticed something new in 'Pink Matter' with the guitar. The music became something more.” It’s one of those moments that makes you fall in love with the mere experience of being human. “I want people to feel that same thing when they hear my music.”

In his late teens he left Leicester to study Politics and International Relations at London’s Goldsmiths (other alumni include A.G. Cook, Damon Albarn and James Blake). The nature of the course and those studying for the degree became a research in itself. “Many of them weren’t from London, or any kind of city.” It was a fascinating thing to witness: people with no direct connection to the lived realities of policy outcomes, debating theory with confidence. For him, it sharpened a sense of dissonance between textbook politics and the way it lands on real lives.

He's always had an affinity for that below-the-surface-level kind of thinking. “I loved poetry when I was younger. I used to enter competitions, started a debate club. I just loved expressing myself. As I grew older, music felt like the natural extension of that. It's the most holistic picture of me.” Now, Rosier’s music is like a thesis on surviving your 20s in the capital and a further study of being a first-generation refugee. “I wasn’t born in this country. And for most Somalis in the UK, that’s the case. Everyone is navigating what they know and what they’re learning. I just want more people to see music and art as a path. I love seeing immigrant people make art. That’s something I can't even describe.”

Somali culture has a beautifully rich culture of poetry and storytelling. “A lot of the songs I’m working on come from that. One is called ‘Sidii hogasha roobka,’ which means ‘like torrential rain’. It’s based on this beautiful Somali proverb. And even with my grandma, she’s my only living grandparent, and I’m trying to extract all these stories from her. A lot of our history is oral now because things were destroyed – universities, books, music. Some people buried tapes underground so they wouldn’t get lost.”

As I was listening back through our conversation, I came across this passage that Craig Castleman once wrote about New York graffiti artists in 1982. He spoke of the ways their tools and techniques evolved to leave a mark. Getting your name up in that scene meant more than just repetition. It meant finding new methods, new surfaces, new ways of scaling things up. Years later, a graffiti artist named Katsu reimagined what that kind of expansive thinking could look like. He modified fire extinguishers, filled them with paint, and used the pressure to spray massive tags across buildings in seconds. It wasn’t just a shortcut. It was a new strategy that opened up new impact and reach. There’s a similar hunger in Rosier’s process. A need to let the work grow beyond what it was first imagined to be.