'Trying Times' is James Blake's first album since going independent

“I think what makes a good release is when the right songs get the love they deserve,” said James Blake, during a call Friday night. He is in the midst of releasing another album, one of many in his storied career.

It's the part that artists can fear, but he doesn't seem to have too much of a problem with it.

“I've really built a community… I feel like I know the people I'm giving this record to,” he continues. “It shows in the metrics; we just sold out a UK edition in less than a minute, we sold out the damn New York show in pre-sale… I've never done that before.”

“To be honest, it's a little emotional for me to see that they haven't forgotten me,” he adds, laughing.

“Trying Times,” out Friday, feels like a return to form for Blake, who first came onto the scene in 2009 with the release of the 12-inch EP “Air & Lack Thereof,” followed by three more EPs. The following self-titled album in 2011 reinforced his success and artistic ability.

He spent the next decade receiving similar recognition, even earning a Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance for his work on “King's Dead” in 2018. The hit song emerged from the “Black Panther” soundtrack and saw him work alongside Kendrick Lamar, Jay Rock and Future.

But he was also floating within the maze of major labels, which often came with financial expectations that put artistic expression on the back burner.

In April 2024, he finally left that system behind, announcing on Instagram that he had left his label and, for the first time in just over a decade, had signed to an independent label in Los Angeles-based Good Boy Records.

“It's scary to become independent, but here we are,” he wrote at the time. “I'm simply trying to free myself from the controlling art of the algorithm gods.”

This coincided with another transition in which Blake left Los Angeles. The UK-born artist had lived in the city for more than a decade, almost as long as he had been under major labels.

“The whole time I was in Los Angeles, every call, every conversation I had about my music, I felt like people were excited that there was someone famous in it,” he recalls. “That's not just because they're obsessed with fame, but also because they're taking care of shareholders.”

When she first moved to Los Angeles, it gave her a “slowness” and a less demanding pace of life than in other cities. Perhaps that's what Los Angeles is best known for, but its other, more infamous traits began to show over time.

“At some point I realized that Los Angeles was for me (and for many non-Native people) a kind of rehab that I had to go to to make things right,” Blake continues. “It also comes with the corrupt value system of Hollywood, the music industry… It's a place where there's a system in place to basically financially drain any talented person who gets there, right? You just plug into the matrix and that's it. You're just plugged into the machine.”

Despite having a very “privileged” version of the Los Angeles lifestyle, he still couldn't shake his scruples. This became especially evident during the pandemic, when many artists in the city, including himself, began to paper over the cracks and were perceived as living as usual.

“I basically ended up paying everyone else's bills. And then I thought, 'How do I pay mine?'” he recalls.

And that's when home beckoned.

“Coming back to London was great for me because the industry here is not the same and it's easier to live cheap,” he says.

He also clarifies that the industry and work machine of Los Angeles are completely different from the real city and its people: “I have had some of the happiest times of my life in Los Angeles. I am very privileged and I feel very grateful to be able to live there.”

But he quickly found himself back at square one; go back to where it all began. His path had taken him to London, the same city where he began recording music from his bedroom while studying at Goldsmiths University of London.

He says he was in debt from paying other people's bills after becoming a freelance artist. Finally, he was able to “steady the ship” and “Trying Times” was born.

“I'll stand on the rooftop and scream about it, probably forever. I feel like I never want to stop promoting it,” he says of the album.

The album reflects all the turmoil and subsequent tranquility that Blake found in music. This is perhaps most evident on “Rest of Your Life,” which is more reminiscent of his previous EPs, like “CMYK,” than the projects he’s released in recent years.

It begins with a Dusty Springfield sample because, simply, “I love it.” But the rest of the song is anchored by Blake's production and lyrical prowess.

“It's about playing with that kind of mantra, where it's just one thing that's repeated over and over, going around and around,” he says.

This is always present in his music. If you look at his debut, we find it in “The Wilhelm Scream”, where he repeats “I don't know about my dreams / I don't know about my dreams anymore / All I know is / I'm falling, falling, falling, falling / I might as well fall.”

For “Trying Times,” Blake looked to his past and was inspired by “The Color in Anything,” which he released a decade ago.

(The Tyler Twins / For The Times)

“By the way, they're not even my lyrics, they're my dad's lyrics,” he points out with a smile. “I love those lyrics because they're pretty ambiguous, but they're also something we can apply meaning to.”

Two years later, in “Life Round Here,” he repeats: “Everything feels like landing on a rainy day.”

“What the mantra form does is that you don't really have to worry about summarizing things,” he explains.

“Sometimes that can be really powerful, because you're allowing the brain to shut down and allowing feelings to arise without stimulating thought. You can let people be in their bodies. You can let people just live in their emotional self and not have to calculate what you're trying to say.”

It creates a hypnotic sound that makes songs flow rather than jingle, especially when backed by Blake's mesmerizing production.

“The Color in Anything,” an album he cites as a strong inspiration for “Trying Times,” contains “Choose Me,” perhaps the pinnacle of this practice. In the middle of a looped vocal recording, Blake distortedly declares, “I'd rather you choose me.”

That retrospective came down to a conversation with his longtime girlfriend, actress Jameela Jamil, who, after Blake spent countless hours studying historically successful albums for reference, suggested that the answer to creating “Trying Times” actually lay within himself.

“You contain within you the response to this record,” he told him.

What emerged was a much more concise album: “All meat, no fat,” he says, before pausing.

“I've said this before, but I'm a vegetarian, so I don't know how to use that phrase correctly,” he jokes.

A particular highlight is “Days Go By,” about the inability to be present in life, something Blake has struggled with in the past. In particular, your previous decisions to adapt it to other prevalent life circumstances.

“I can't keep blaming the city / I can't keep saying I'm busy / The days go by / And nothing gets done,” he sings, as an electronically-drenched “I love you” plays in the background.

“One of the interesting things about Los Angeles was that when I moved there, I couldn't blame the city anymore because I wasn't in an oppressive place,” he recalls. “It's a perfect encapsulation of 'I… I need to grow up, I need to figure this out, and that's not going to happen by just following life the way it is.'”

But perhaps the best thing about the album was that Blake was able to “solve some puzzles” that had plagued him for quite some time.

“I started down the path of building a plan for what the next phase of the music industry will look like, partnering with all of these companies and discovering new revenue streams for artists,” he says.

It's something he's been involved in and championed for a long time, even participating in the launch of direct-to-consumer music platform vault.fm as a flagship artist in an effort to address royalty issues.

“I'm working on something right now,” he says, careful not to reveal too much. “It's just about centralizing all the different parts of the roadmap that I've been trying to build for myself.”

Now, it looks like this roadmap may help pave the way for newer artists striving to take the most logistical steps in their careers.

“I'm not someone who's going to try to lead anything… I'm just pointing at things and saying, 'That's transparent! Oh, that place isn't trying to own your masters forever!' I say, 'I think this is good, they have the right ethics and morals.'”