Joshua Idehen

Lately, it feels like the world is one endless bad news cycle. Joshua Idehen isn’t here to pretend otherwise – but on the spoken word artist’s new album, I Know You’re Hurting, Everyone Is Hurting, Everyone Is Trying, You Have Got To Try, he provides a phenomenal sonic, poetic space. Made with his creative partner, musician Ludvig Parment, the album (out 6 March 2026) is an urgent but transcendent collection that holds you through it all, filled with grief, euphoria and hope.

I Know You’re Hurting… comes after the virality of Idehen’s track Mum Does The Washing, a wry and whipsmart poem examining how the world works (which started life as a Twitter thread), set to Parment’s spacious beats. The song has seen the pair propelled beyond Idehen’s wildest dreams this past year, with support from the likes of Jamz Supernova and Huw Stephens leading to sold-out shows and packed out festival performances including rammed crowds at Glastonbury and Green Man, an appearance on Later with Jools, and a support slot on Baxter Dury’s European tour this winter. For Idehen, this is all so special because it marked a new era of his career after around two decades of writing poetry. “In a nutshell, the song has changed my life,” he says.

British-born Nigerian Idehen had been more interested in film as a medium when he was younger. In fact, poetry was something he actively disliked back when he was studying at Hackney Community College and working in a bar in the West End. But one night when he got home from work and switched on Channel U, he was struck by Dizzee Rascal’s Vexed. “It had me in a trance, that kind of first person rant, stream of consciousness monologue, whatever you want to call it – but it sounds like him just pouring out, venting into the void.” And so, Idehen began to write, and over years of open mic nights and new connections, he became a need-to-know name in London’s poetry circuit.

Inspired by his peer Scroobius Pip, he quickly became intrigued by setting his poems to music, and so began work with bands including LV, Benin City and Calabashed, alongside recording guest features with the likes of Sons of Kemet and The Comet is Coming. Touring with these bands and “swirling around the UK jazz scene” helped build up Idehen’s confidence as a live performer in the late 2010s – but, around the same time, he was experiencing turbulence in his personal life, including his divorce and several suicide attempts thereafter. The Covid-19 pandemic began and Idehen moved to Stockholm, where he had the space to process all that was happening in his life.

“The calm and sedateness of Stockholm was exactly what I needed at the time,” he explains, “It helped me see the totality of myself. I was tired of being sad and ashamed, and mournful of the past, the life I'd had, feeling like the villain in my own life. My daughter was born and I reached a point where I didn't just want to make sad music anymore. I didn't just want to make music that was me feeling sorry for myself, or feeling sorry for the world.”

And so, Idehen began to contemplate pairing his poetry with something more uplifting: specifically, with dance music. “There has to be light at the end, something to hold onto,” he says. It was around this time that an old friend he’d met in London, Parment – also known as producer Saturday, Monday – reached out. The pair began a back and forth on what would become Don’t You Give Up On Me, a single which eventually became the opening song on their 2023 mixtape, Learn to Swim. For Parment, writing apart and then feeding back to each other made for a fruitful collaboration: “I would say we have kind of a sibling relationship…or an old couple, as some say. We’re very straightforward and aren’t afraid to fight for our creative ideas, but at the same time we really do listen to each other and are okay with being wrong sometimes. I love it because I always get to pursue my ideas, but I know there is a guard-rail if I get lost – and I think that goes both ways.”

Idehen compares their work together to Sade: the name of the band may be Joshua Idehen, but it is the two of them making the songs. This symbiotic collaboration continued into what would become I Know You’re Hurting…, a release which looks both inward and outward for redemption, trying to capture and store the moments of positivity that sometimes feel fleeting and assert that better times have to be coming. As they began to play shows with the new music, the direction they needed to take became clearer.

“When we started working together we had some idea of what we wanted the message to be and what kind of inspirations to draw on, but we didn’t really have a clear idea on how it would be consumed,” explains Parment, “But as we started touring we started learning a lot about the project; we realised that we prefer a standing audience to a sitting one, and we do want to make them dance at some point. So I think a big point for me was to make music that had depth and fit the themes of Joshua’s writing – but still make it danceable.”

Across the album, that means uplifting choirs, cozy samples and exuberant, sometimes house-tinged beats. “I am personally drawn to music that transports you to a place, or scene or mindset,” says Parment. This is topped with ruminative musings on morality and human connection; about the longer loves in life – like friendships, family – that sustain us. These come from Idehen and Parment, along with a host of friends and collaborators, including writers Leone Ross and Charlotte Manning, and vocalist Amanda Bergman, to help expand on the topics of the record without sounding preachy. Similarly, there are musical guests including saxophonist Pete Fraser and Shabaka Hutchings on flute, each helping to imbue the album with a rich warmth.

From the opening track You Wanna Dance Or What?, there are poignant stories about the possibilities of human connection – here, a memory of a stranger approaching Joshua when he was feeling low at a club in Leicester Square – set against Parment’s freeing beats. There are memories of sunrises on Hampstead Heath (It Always Was), celebrations of the liturgic power of the club (This Is The Place), affirmations that kept Idehen afloat in a particularly dark time (Brother), all dotted with his observations and notes from past conversations with people from all walks of life. On Choose Yourself, Idehen is not so interested in the hokey bath bomb self-care that has dominated discourse the past few years, but in reinforcing self-belief and self-worth – all while never getting too mawkish (see: lines like “Choose a balanced diet/Eat the rich!”). Everything Everywhere All At Once is a stunning exploration of the sliding doors moments of our lives, contemplating all the universes that exist within his daughter, followed by a choral reprise, singing a melody composed by Idehen. “I’m not confident with singing or songwriting, so when the choir sang something I had made and brought it back to me, I had proper tears.”

After years of honing his craft, I Know You’re Hurting, Everyone Is Hurting, Everyone Is Trying, You Have Got To Try finds Joshua Idehen’s pen reaching the next level. This is work that is truly arresting – but simultaneously, thanks to Parment’s soundscapes, it often makes you want to wave your arms in the air and dance. In these bleak times that try to push us all further apart, it’s a beautiful, powerful manifesto for hope and collectivism. As Joshua puts it: “There's a likelihood that we might be planting seeds that we won't get to see harvested…but the planting is good. The planting is just as important as the watering and the tending and the harvesting. We all have to play a part so that we can have some redemption.”