I heard MULIMBA’s music for the first time years ago, “Chasing Gold” one of those tracks that seemed to be everywhere on my socials for a while, the kind of viral moment where you keep hearing the same hook wherever you scroll until it lodges itself in your head. I can only describe that song as trapped out Hip Hop, Rock, drenched with Gospel, but there was something in the build of it that pulled me somewhere completely unexpected, straight back to Carl Orff’s “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana, that same relentless, almost operatic sense of fate closing in.

I didn’t know anything about him then. I just knew the sound had something in it I couldn’t quite name, that particular collision of styles that makes a track feel bigger than the room it’s playing in. Then, the way things go, he slipped out of my radar entirely. Life moves, playlists get overwritten and it wasn’t until I stumbled across his name online again recently that I realised how much time had passed and how much had happened to him in that gap.

What I didn’t know back then was that the person behind that sound was fighting a war most of us couldn’t see. MULIMBA was introduced to drugs and alcohol at fourteen. A difficult family life, layered with undiagnosed ADHD, pushed him toward London’s illegal rave scene, not for the thrill of it but because it was the first place that felt like relief. I understand that pull more than most people would guess. My own ADHD went undiagnosed for years, and I know exactly what it feels like to spend your teens and twenties looking for something, anything, that would make the noise in your head go quiet for a while. For MULIMBA, that search started far too young and it started in an environment that doesn’t ask questions about why a fourteen year old is there.

“The chaos, the impulsivity, the compulsive chase for anything that quiets the noise, thinking it’s a character trait, when really, it’s a nervous system asking for help in the only language it has.”

At seventeen he started a band. Early success followed fast, the kind that takes a teenager and drops him straight into a world built for adults who’ve had years to build up some kind of armour. They travelled, they got attention, and underneath it his addiction to sex, drugs and alcohol kept getting worse. He’s said it himself, plainly: he was “thrown into a very dark world, unprepared and unaware of the weight it carries.” This is the part of the music industry people rarely put in the press release. The glamour is the visible ten percent. The rest of it is a teenager with an undiagnosed condition, no map and access to absolutely everything that could make things worse.

“He was thrown into a very dark world, unprepared and unaware of the weight it carries.”

Fast forward to twenty nine. He’d just lost a friend to cancer, this type of loss will understandably strip away every distraction and force you to actually look at your life. After a two day bender he found himself sitting in his room, bawling and he did the only thing he had left. He prayed. “Lord, please help me get sober, because I can’t do it on my own”. He’d grown up in the church and drifted away from it years earlier, the way people often do, but that week his sister invited him to a conference at her church, the same week he’d lost his friend. He went because he needed something and NA and AA hadn’t worked for him. He was prayed over that weekend and he’s said he hasn’t looked back since.

“Lord, please help me get sober, because I can’t do it on my own.”

I find that part of his story genuinely moving, not because it’s tidy, recovery rarely is, but because it’s specific. It’s not a vague “I found faith” line dropped in for effect. It’s a man on the floor of his room, out of options, saying the only honest sentence he had left and something on the other side of that sentence actually held.

After a hiatus to reset, MULIMBA came back and released his “You, Forever” EP in March 2026, and it’s exactly the kind of record that could only be made by someone who’d been through what he’d been through. His sound has always blended Hip Hop inspired gospel beats with Daft Punk style hooks, an aggressively original soundscape built specifically to let his voice do something most genres wouldn’t allow. He’s British-Zambian and you can hear both halves of that identity in the record, rhythm and testimony sitting in the same track without either one softening the other.

He’s not slowing down either. He’s been relentless in the studio with FKA Twigs producer Manni Dee and he’s got more music ready to follow his recent EP as WHOOSH with Jelani Blackman, the Gorillaz and Kneecap collaborator, including a track called “Mirror Man” that’s ready to go. To understand where MULIMBA’s aiming, look at who he’s shared stages with, Friendly Fires, Tom Walker, Elderbrook and the rooms he’s sold out on his own, the Old Blue Last, Camden Assembly (now known as Barfly Camden), and a headline night at Paper Dress Vintage in October 2025. BBC 6 Music and BBC Introducing London have both backed the EP, and 2026 has him booked across The Great Escape, SXSW London and Bristol Harbour Festival, with a headline show at The Grace in Islington on Wednesday 16th September.

“Not a comeback. A continuation, by someone who was never actually gone, just underwater for longer than any of us realised.”

What is striking for me, sitting with his story, is how much of it will feel familiar to anyone who’s lived with an undiagnosed condition and spent years mistaking the symptoms for a personality flaw. The chaos, the impulsivity, the compulsive chase for anything that quiets the noise, thinking it’s a character trait, when really, it’s a nervous system asking for help in the only language it has. MULIMBA didn’t get that help until he was nearly thirty. He got it anyway. And now there’s a body of music that exists specifically because he survived long enough to make it.

That’s the story underneath the story. Not a comeback. A continuation, by someone who was never actually gone, just underwater for longer than any of us realised.

THE INTERVIEW:

Cheryl: You started a band at seventeen and were on the road almost immediately. Looking back with an ADHD diagnosis you didn’t have then, what do you now recognise as your brain trying to cope, that at the time just looked like you being reckless? 

MULIMBA:“Back then, our life consisted of constantly chasing dopamine, whether that was partying all night, fighting or looking for love in women – I never wanted to come down. The live show was a lot more hectic too; I used to throw myself off balconies, scaffolding, anything I could climb. Back then I thought it looked cool or got the crowd going, and there’s some truth to that, but deep down I was just chasing a high. Constantly.”

Cheryl:You went back to a church you’d fallen out of love with years earlier. Was there a specific moment that weekend when it stopped feeling like desperation and started feeling like it might actually work? 

MULIMBA: “It never felt like desperation; that’s the thing: if you seek God with your whole heart, it never feels like desperation, or a chore, or like a bunch of rules you have to follow. In the past, I tried to fit God into my life, into my agenda, my rules. That doesn’t work. That’s when it becomes more about religion rather than just a fruitful relationship with God. The truth is, on April 9th 2025, I surrendered. In prayer, I said, “lord please come into my heart and help me get sober,” and in the moment everything changed. Not because I was finally accepted by God, but because my heart posture was genuine. I admitted I can’t do life without Him, and since then my entire life has changed.”

Cheryl: “You, Forever” came out of a hiatus most people would’ve called disappearing. What’s one song on that EP you couldn’t have written before you got sober, not because of the subject matter, but because you didn’t have the focus to finish it? 

MULIMBA: “Really good question. Most of the EP was written pretty quickly, except one song. ‘Godspeed’ took years to finish. I didn’t have the focus and it’s also a song about saying goodbye to someone you love. I don’t think I was ready to accept that goodbye for a long, I just couldn’t go there.”

Cheryl: You blend Hip Hop, gospel and Daft Punk style hooks into one sound. Was that combination something you consciously built, or did it come out of just following whatever kept your attention long enough to finish a track? 

MULIMBA: ‘Definitely came out of just following the breadcrumbs. I’ve never thought about what I’m doing too much when songwriting. I’ve always gone off of ‘does it feel good’ and if I can see, hear or feel either Good, truth, beauty, or love in whatever I’m making, it’s a good record to me.”

Cheryl: If seventeen year old you, the one just starting that first band, could hear “You, Forever” today, what do you think he’d actually understand about it and what do you think would go completely over his head?

MULIMBA: “To be fair, I listened to my band’s music recently and realised that I was writing about the same things back then. Love, God, life, drugs, but just on a more surface level. I think he’d understand quite a lot of it, and I think he’d recognise that there’s been some growth too.”

See MULIMBA Live in London at The Grace September 16 2026 – Tickets Here

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