Sampha performed a reworked rendition of Steve Lacy‘s ‘Bad Habit’ for BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge Month.
The singer-songwriter chose the 2022 hit as the cover for his Live Lounge Mouth appearance last week, during which he sang and played the piano over a sizzling, pared-back drum beat.
He also played his own song ‘Only’ from new album ‘Lahai’, which came out last week.
Check out the performances below.
Sampha’s rendition of ‘Bad Habit’ is one of many covers to come out of BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge month, which also saw Usher cover Daniel Caesar and H.E.R.’s ‘Best Part’ and Troye Sivan rework Billie Eilish‘s ‘What Was I Made For‘.
Doja Cat was the final guest for the month-long segment this October, who covered Hiatus Kaiyote’s ‘Red Room’.
Ahead of the release of Sampha’s new album, he opened up about how he wanted to “interrogate spirituality” on the LP.
He started working on the album in 2019 before “a lot of things happened” and he welcomed his first daughter in 2020. “I became a dad,” he explained in a recent Q&A. “I was just wondering about life and big questions, feeling the need to hold onto something or portray a bird’s eye view of my life because I felt like every day was going into every day.”
With ‘Lahai’, Sampha said that he wanted to “interrogate spirituality” and was “questioning” everything at the time of making the album.
“It’s quite existential becoming a father,” he said. “I feel like, for me, music is just a place where I can go to find out how I’m feeling on certain things. It’s a therapeutic thing for me.”
In July, Sampha surprised his fans with the release of his first single in six years, ‘Spirit 2.0’. It marked his first release since his 2017 Mercury Prize-winning debut album, ‘Process’.