As HEADIE ONE bounds into the offices of Sony Music, deep in Kings Cross’ New Labourist renovations, he’s clumsily carrying bundles of CDs of his forthcoming album, The Last One. The gothic, glacial artwork twinkles against the room’s light as the 29-year-old explains that he needs to sign the scores of individual packages for fans who have pre-ordered the record, and that our conversation seems as good a time as any to undertake the activity.

There’s a sincerity to Headie’s manner – certainly not a guarantee with a major-label artist. He keeps his attention on me and holds mine with candour, successfully multitasking as he scribbles away at his autographical endeavours whilst presenting biographical details of his last decade to me. Nowadays he’s “feeling good,” although slightly melancholic about how quickly “time has just flown by” this year. He is excited about being granted a visa for a trip down-under for a mini Australian tour in October, which will be sandwiched between a series of UK and European dates. Before that, he’ll be shutting down Glastonbury, and releasing his new LP on 28th June, a few weeks after our catch up and Wonderland shoot, in which he can be seen wearing Christian Louboutin’s new RocknRun trainer.

The Last One is contextualised as the final tine of a trilogy that first began in 2018 with early career mixtape “The One”, and its sequel “The One Two” in the same year. “Obviously I’ve done a lot of music in between,” Headie briskly addresses regarding the six year gap between the second and third episodes of the sonic franchise. “But I felt like that phase had been left open-ended so I wanted to get more into that concept and close it off. [The album] is almost like a detailed description of what was happening in the past but from a different perspective. There’s a lot of reflection.” The new album is some of Headie’s most autobiographical writing to date, as he surveys the past like a fragmented canvas that’s in need of his specific brushwork. “I really could have [been] dead before my first album, let alone my second,” he marvels in “I’m Thankful”, the record’s irrevocable piano-tinged finale; there’s certainly plenty to delve into across the 20 tracks.

Tottenham born-and-raised with Ghanaian heritage, Irving Ampofo Adjei, then Headz, now Headie has always found a sense of belonging in his postcode, whether through OFB – his totemic Drill collective – or in the solidarity of the Broadwater Farm estate – his block. “There’s a lot of different cultures, lots of Eastern European, Caribbean, African,” he dissects. “And everyone’s mixed together in this place, just left to do what they want basically. But that created a real sense of community, especially the estate that I was brought up on, everyone was very familiar with each other and looked out for each other to some degree.” An all-too-familiar occurrence for young Black men with underprivileged backgrounds, in his younger years Headie was swept up in criminal activity and gang-violence, topics that he has regularly addressed in his lyricism. Music was never far from his mind though, and it was during teenage stints in juvenile facilities that he began to understand the preponderance of his love and talent for Rap. “I just used to enjoy doing it,” he remembers. “When I would get in trouble and go away for some time, I used to spend my time putting together songs. When I did [2014 debut mixtape under previous sobriquet Headz] “Headz or Tails”, I built off that. It got to the point where I wasn’t really good at anything else so I had no choice really but to keep it going, even though I was doing a lot of other bad stuff as well. It was the only thing away from the bad stuff I was doing. I feel like the music saved me, but also all the bad situations that I was put in saved me as well. If I wasn’t put in those situations, I wouldn’t have seen [the situations] as so negative. That’s what has allowed me to express myself through the music, so I’m thankful for that stuff as well.”

Watch Headie One’s “The Last One”…

To read the full interview, pre-order Wonderland Summer 2024 here.