Poppy Ajudha

Poppy Ajudha has adopted the label “alternative pop” for the fluid style she continues to shape, an R&B-centered approach that draws in contemporary jazz, drum’n'bass, Afrobeat, and left-field rock while addressing romance, mental health, liberation, and wider sociopolitical themes. The South East London artist has issued nearly all of her work independently, among them the 2018 EPs Femme and Patience, the 2022 full-length The Power in Us, and a series of standalone tracks. Her reach extends to Tom Misch’s “Disco Yes” and Moses Boyd’s “Shades of You,” both of which she co-wrote and sang.

Growing up amid the classic R&B and reggae records that filled her South East London home, Ajudha began writing and performing as a teenager. She later pursued the subject formally, completing a BA in Social Anthropology and Music at SOAS University of London. Her first commercial release arrived in 2015 with “David’s Song,” issued on the Indigo Soul imprint and later remixed by labelmate Tom Misch. Operating completely on her own by 2017, she issued the single “Love Falls Down,” which Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings selected for that year’s Brownswood Bubblers Twelve compilation. Femme and Patience followed in 2018, featuring the atmospheric “Tepid Soul,” the Kojey Radical collaboration “Spilling into You,” and the acoustic piece “When You Watch Me,” each surpassing one million streams. Misch’s buoyant “Disco Yes” proved even more prominent, earning a place on Barack Obama’s “Favorite Songs of 2018” playlist.

Between 2019 and 2021 Ajudha continued releasing singles such as “Devil’s Juice,” the Mahalia duet “Low Ride,” and the self-produced tracks “Black Joy. Black Peace. Black Justice.” and “Weakness.” Jazz FM named her Best Soul Act of 2019 during this stretch. She also appeared on “Shades of You” from Moses Boyd’s Mercury Prize-nominated album Dark Matter and contributed “Watermelon Man (Under the Sun),” a lyrically affirmative reworking of Herbie Hancock’s original, to the Blue Note Re:Imagined project. “London’s Burning,” a pointed examination of British colonization and Brexit, closed out 2021 and served as the lead single for her debut album The Power in Us, which appeared in April 2022.