MJ Cole is one of the masters of commercial UK garage. He’s one of the genre’s first stars, and his influence is still felt in pop today. So much so that listening to his 2000 album ‘Sincere’ is almost like going through the current global top 40. At the very least, British pop hasn’t stopped sounding like ‘Sincere’ in 24 years.
Proof of this is that ‘Crazy Love’, the second single from that album, with its iconic chorus performed by Elisabeth Troy, has just been sampled in the Afrobeat of ‘Blessed’ by Bashy. Its proud chords already reached number 14 in the British Isles in 2000.
But it is the typical broken rhythm of UK garage from ‘Crazy Love’ and from all of ‘Sincere’ that continues to permeate the pop of our days. It is difficult to listen to it and not think that this album was the birthplace of PinkPantheress, NewJeans or Disclosure. In Spain even DELLAFUENTE, Natalia Lacunza or Alba Reche have used this sound. Not to mention that the entire base of ‘Bandelero Desperado’ was used in ‘Desperado’ by Azealia Banks. What good taste the rapper had.
In ‘Sincere’, Matthew James Firth Coleman showed the commercial possibilities of UK garage by enhancing its soul, R&B and jazz components, making use of the collaboration of guest vocalists such as Guy S’Mone or the aforementioned Elizabeth Troy. The sound of ‘Sincere’ was so refined that three decades later it still sounds current. It is not surprising that the Mercury Prize nominated it in its 2000 edition: it did not win, since the victory went to Bradly Drawn Boy with ‘The Hour of Bewilderbeast’, but it competed against ‘Parachutes’ by Coldplay, among others. Someone saw that this album was visionary, and so it is.
After ‘Sincere’, MJ Cole released two more albums, ‘Cut to the Chase’ in 2003 and ‘MJ Cole Presents Madrugada’ in 2020. Above all, in recent times he has lent his talent to productions such as ‘Nobody But You’ by Mary J. Blige with Sam Smith and Jimmy Napes or ‘Blue Eyes’ by Katy B, and has produced official remixes for artists such as Mariah Carey, Amy Winehouse or Alicia Keys. And, this year, he has released new singles such as ‘Stand Up’ or ‘Lay It on the Line’.
MJ Cole performs Today Friday August 9th at Razzmatazz in Barcelona, at the Fuego club, sharing the bill with ALVVA and Chicha. Tickets are still available at a price of 17 euros at the box office and 20 euros in advance.
