Music / 4:44
How a Bristol band featured on Jay-Z’s latest album
When Jay-Z dropped a surprise album on Sunday, jaws around the world dropped. His fourteenth LP, 4:44, wasn’t just exceptional because its release was unexpected – this was also the iconic rapper’s most vulnerable recording yet. On one particularly revealing track, also named 4:44, Jay seemed to admit to cheating on his wife Beyoncé, something she had infamously alluded to on her smash hit visual album of last year, Lemonade.
But while the album’s release came as a shock to most, it would be fair to say that a Bristol band, Hannah Williams & the Affirmations, were even more astounded. It wasn’t until 4:44‘s release that they found out their soul-filled number, Late Nights & Heartbreak, was used as the backing sample for the album’s central track.
So how did this small band from Bristol end up on one of the groundbreaking album from one of the biggest stars in the world? We caught up with Hannah Williams & The Affirmations’ musical director, James Graham:
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Did you have to keep this feature a secret? Was that hard?
Yes, because it was yet to be released. We only found out what was really going on once the album dropped. I didn’t really believe it before. I just thought, ‘I’m going to believe it when I see it.’ It was ridiculous.
And when it did come, it was bigger than I even ever imagined. I thought that maybe the song would be used for five seconds on one of his tracks and that would be cool, but the song is the basis of the whole album. Our song is in The New York Times interview with No I.D, who’s Jay-Z’s producer, and he said that he showed Jay-Z our track before he went home. At four o’clock in the morning, he woke up and called his recording engineer and said, “I’ve got some verses for this.” Our song was how he wanted to show the world the things that were happening between him and his wife, Beyoncé.
And how does that feel?
It’s massive, and we’re extremely blessed to been chosen for this purpose. It’s unfathomable for someone like me – a musician in Bristol working locally and playing little gigs and little pubs around town. I’ve gone on tour and stuff, but there are a lot of people like that out there and there’s only one Jay-Z. For us to be working with him is still hard to believe even though it’s already come out. We’re a Bristol-based band and for us to be in the limelight like this, it’s not only big for us, it’s big for Bristol. It’s not only big for Bristol, it’s big for the UK.
Jay-Z opens up about his adultery on 4:44
What do you think of the finished track?
How he used the sound is incredible. Not much has gone into production, just some post-production on the drums – the bass is the same, drum beats the same and everything else on the track is the same. It samples out the whole track. He didn’t change much. The way that he’s cut the sample is quite slapdash but it’s five seconds of gold that he pulled from our album and put on that track. Those five seconds are the seconds that he chose, No I.D. chose, and they represent what Jay-Z is trying to say.
Have you noticed any increased attention to the band’s music?
The YouTube views on the song have gone up quite dramatically, and I’ve noticed that our names have been dropped in a few publications like The New York Times and Rolling Stone. That’s thrown a lot of people towards our band. I don’t know if there’s going to be an influx of Facebook likes and Spotify and things like that.
It’s early days, very early days. We’re clinging to the hope that people in the hip-hop industry have heard our name. We just have to build these connections and hope it takes Bristol soul to a global level.
Hannah Williams
What’s coming up next for Hannah & the Affirmations?
We’ve got a few gigs in the diary. I think we’ve got some, playing a very small but very Bristol-related festival called Fieldview Festival in August, and we’re also going over to Spain, but we don’t have much else in the diary. We know Jay-Z is performing at V Festival, so we’re hoping that maybe Hannah might get a call – but we don’t know. It’s speculation. Our main focus right now is to look for the right people to represent us so I think our energies will be going on that rather than booking more live shows. I guess that will be a result of the exposure that we’ll hopefully receive.
Follow Hannah and & Affirmations over on their Facebook page, and hear their album Late Nights & Heartbreak in full on Bandcamp
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