Stormzy shares ‘Hide & Seek’, lead track from new album ‘This Is What I Mean’

Stormzy has shared his new single ‘Hide & Seek’, the first taste of his upcoming third album This Is What I Mean.

The third album from the London rapper is the follow-up to 2019’s acclaimed ‘Heavy Is The Head’ and will arrive on November 25.

‘Hide & Seek’ shows off a soulful side to the record, with subtle instrumentation and guest vocals being complemented by the rapper’s understated delivery on the track.

 In a statement earlier this week, Stormzy revealed how he recorded This Is What I Mean on Osea Island, a tiny island in an estuary north-east of London that’s only accessible by car a few hours a day due to changing tides.

Of recording the album, Stormzy said, “When you hear about music camps, they always sound intense and somber. People saying, ‘We need to make an album.’ ‘We need to make some hit records.’ But this felt beautifully free. We’re all musicians, but we weren’t always doing music. Some days we played football or walked around taking pictures. And the byproduct to that was very beautiful music. Because when you marry that ethos with world-class musicians and the best producers, writers, and artists in the world, and we’re in one space, that’s a recipe for something that no one can really imagine. You can’t even calculate what that’s going to come up with. And it came up with a big chunk of this album.”

The lead album track arrives on the heels of his big comeback track, ‘Mel Made Me Do It’. The song itself clocked in at just over seven minutes, while the even longer music video featured cameos from Usain Bolt, documentarian (and unexpected TikTok star) Louis Theroux, and footballing icon, José Mourinho.