Jamie xx

Jamie xx has left a distinctive mark on modern music through inventive production, both as a core member of the Mercury Music Prize-winning group the xx and in his independent work. With the xx he shaped a nuanced fusion of indie, R&B, and dance elements that led to high-profile remix requests from Adele, Florence + the Machine, and Gil Scott-Heron, most notably on the 2011 release We're New Here. Working alone, he expanded beyond the measured style of his band projects by embracing dance music's capacity to stir movement and emotion, evident on the 2014 single "Under One Roof Raving," the 2015 album In Colour, the harder-edged 2020 track "Idontknow," and the 2022 festival-oriented single "Let's Do It Again," all of which prepared the ground for the 2024 album In Waves, where he continued to merge accessible rhythms with introspective textures.

Born Jamie Smith in Putney, he first played drums before an Akai MPC expanded his creative range and enabled both stage and studio performance. In 2006 he joined schoolmates Oliver Sim, Romy Madley Croft, and Baria Qureshi to establish the xx, adopting the name Jamie xx by 2009, the year the band issued its Mercury Prize-winning debut on Young Turks, an XL imprint. Beyond reworking the xx's material, his atmospheric treatment of Florence + the Machine's "You've Got the Love" drew the attention of XL head Richard Russell, who commissioned a remix of Gil Scott-Heron's I'm New Here; the resulting February 2011 album We're New Here was noted for the fresh layers it brought to the source material.

Also in 2011 Smith issued his first solo single, "Far Nearer/Beat For," which reached number 128 on the U.K. singles chart, produced the Rihanna-featuring title track for Drake's Take Care, handled remixes of Radiohead's "Bloom," and co-produced Alicia Keys' "When It's All Over" for Girl on Fire. The xx followed in 2012 with the more refined and restrained Coexist, after which Smith's remixes of "Reconsider," "Sunset," and "Missing" appeared. Returning to solo work in 2014, he released the sleek, driving Young Turks single "Girl/Sleep Sound" and the "All Under One Roof Raving" tribute to 1990s rave culture. March 2015 brought two further singles on one day—"Loud Places," featuring Madley Croft, and the instrumental "Gosh"—both included on the June 2015 debut album In Colour, which also featured Oliver Sim, Four Tet, Young Thug, and Popcaan, peaked at number three on the U.K. Albums Chart and number 21 on the Billboard 200, and earned a Mercury Prize nomination, a Brit Award nomination for British Album of the Year, and a Grammy nomination for Best Dance/Electronic Album. That same year he composed the score for Wayne McGregor's ballet Tree of Codes, drawn from Jonathan Safran Foer's novel.

In 2017 Jamie xx rejoined Sim and Madley Croft for the xx's third album I See You, which topped the U.K. chart with its richer arrangements. Following the score for Roman Gavras' 2018 film The World Is Yours, a 2019 live collaboration with the Avalanches, and production on a Headie One and Fred Again mixtape, he returned in April 2020 with the faster, more assertive single "Idontknow," then delivered his first BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix in nine years, incorporating tracks by Koreless, Philip Glass, and Peter Gabriel. The Bobby Barnes-sampling "Let's Do It Again" arrived in April 2022, succeeded by standalone pieces such as "Kill Dem" and "It's So Good." April 2024's "Baddy on the Floor," a Honey Dijon collaboration, introduced his second solo album, In Waves, which followed festival appearances and a London residency at Venue MOT with guests including Daphni and Charli xcx; the September 2024 release presented a more propulsive sound than In Colour and featured contributions from Robyn, Panda Bear, Sim, Madley Croft, and the Avalanches.