I first interviewed Ady Suleiman for Fault magazine back in early 2018, when I was fresh out of university. He had recently released his first album, Memories, we talked about dancing to Giles Peterson, listening to Amy Winehouse and leaving Simon Cowell’s record label.

It was my first piece for a proper magazine, and I enjoyed it so much that I pushed for another interview in 2019, around the release of his mixtape Thoughts and Moments Vol. 1.

I’ve also really enjoyed listening to Ady Suleiman’s music in the years since. I’ve been an Apple music user ever since the streaming service launched in 2015, and in 2025 it gave me a ‘decade wrapped’ playlist. The only artists to have contributed two songs to my 30 most listened songs of the decade were Drake, Young Thug and Ady Suleiman – I Remember from his album, and Been Thru from his mixtape.

And then he just stopped releasing music, nothing came out from 2020 until mid 2025, when he finally released this fucking amazing single named Miracle, a really nuanced, emotional song that features the lyrics “it feels good to be back in the game again.”

I’m not a journalist anymore, I haven’t published a piece about music in years, but I knew that I had to talk to him again. I messaged Miles Holder – the Editor-in-chief for Fault who photographed Ady for our first piece back in 2018 – and a couple of weeks after Ady dropped his sophomore album Chasing, we were back on another call.

Fault: Is it good to be back?

Ady: It is good to be back.

Fault: The last time we talked was in March 2019, when you played Electric Brixton. How did you find lockdown?

Ady: When I was in it, I realised how stagnant the environment is, not being able to socialize, travel, have jam sessions. That’s kind of my source bucket for writing, and for everything. That’s life, to be honest. I was like, rah, you know, I’ve just written a couple songs about f**king being in lockdown. How many artists wrote songs about lockdown? Do you know what I mean?

Fault: The Koffee one was good.

Ady: Yeah it was.

Fault: Yeah, I mean I can sit alone and work on a laptop, it’s doable, but I will feel tired at the end of the day. And yes, I can still feel tired after day of collaborating with people, but it’s a nice tiredness.

Ady: It’s almost like physical. It’s more like a physical fatigue rather than a mental fatigue, I think I’m more creative when I’m thinking less. Especially because the way I write melodies, it’s all freestyle, I’m not really thinking. Then, lyrically I ask ‘What is the freestyle saying?’, and that’s what takes time. It’s gotta match the feeling of the music.

Fault: So if you were like an EDM producer, you could just release lots of stuff.

Ady: If I was a trumpet player, I would just solo all the way through and I’d be like, cool, that’s a wrap. We’re done. I’d make albums in f**king days.  But for me with lyrics, it’s important to get them right.

Fault: That’s why your music is so nuanced. Like with Chasing’s lead single Miracle, it gets into that weird thing of being able to see that life is a miracle, but that happening in the same day as feeling very lonely.

Ady:  Like I know that I’ve actually been given so much, I’m so blessed. But then there’s that guilt of like, but why do I feel a bit s**t? Am I allowed to? There’s a bit of that in there as well. I wrote it about being fearful of being social. You know, stepping out again after lockdown. And then, towards the end, it’s being like, actually this is really lovely.

Fault: Do you have any specific memories you associate with it?

Ady: You know what, the first verse I remember very specifically. I was going to a good friend of mine’s 30th in the park. I’d been living in Woolwich and I’d just been spent a lot of time by myself, because Woolwich wasn’t super well connected, before the Elizabeth line. Maybe this was around the time you could meet in groups of six or some s**t. I remember being really anxious, and it almost freaked me out that I was anxious. And it was because of fear, more than it being that I wasn’t gonna have a good time. When I write, it’s more the feeling that I’m trying to express.

Fault: Yeah you’re not going into the specifics of like, ‘I’m going to the park and Matey Boy was there’. What do you picture for the second verse?

Ady: It’s a mix of stuff. The euphoric moment, that was always like, I pictured myself like in the middle of a crowd of people.

Fault: Do you usually picture things when you listen to music? I often imagine myself doing it at karaoke, I can get quite emotional. Like, guys, I’m gonna just bring the tone down and sing Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap.

Ady: For me, I don’t have a clear image when I’m listening to stuff. It can be so simple as like, when I used to get the DLR back to Woolwich at night-time and I’m going through the city, I would always listen to Sonder [Brent Faiyaz’ group]. Some things have like a clear energy that come with them.

I’ve got songs that I might like, and then I’ll go through a situation and by accident this song comes on and I’ll clock the lyrics and be like, oh my f**king God. This is exactly what I’m feeling right now. I listen to it in a completely different way. When that happens, it does just feel like people are documenting your life, which is fantastic.

Fault: What events have worked for you, since lockdown?

Ady: I really love a lot of African diaspora events, I’ve really got into, like, black British nightlife, essentially. Everyday People, RECESS, OVMBR, I love what Odeal’s done. But yeah, Everyday People was an early one where I was just like, yeah, this is so lit. Music was great, people great, energy great. That was definitely a moment. I was like, yeah, anytime this is here, I’m going to come through. You’re making me wanna step out!

Fault: What was your first performance after covid?

Ady: I did Cross The Tracks with Kofi Stone in 2021. That was the first time I’d ever sung live with no live band, no rehearsals, just a DJ. So before coming onstage, I was just there with the AirPod in trying to remember where I come in. I mean it’s a very easy job singing a chorus, so it’s not me moaning, I love doing it.

Fault: I didn’t think you were moaning, I mean this was right after lockdown!

Ady: He’d asked me to jump on in the past and I always made an excuse. But this time I was going to the festival already, I was just like, f**k, I’m literally gonna be in the crowd, I can’t pretend that I can’t make it. So I called him and I told him all the worries I was having. And he was a really good friend, he was like ‘don’t worry about it, if you’re not feeling up to it on the day it’s fine, people are gonna be so excited to see you’. It made me realize this isn’t about me, it’s about this guy trying to do his thing, and me going to support him. He really cares about if I’m there or not, and that’s really lovely.

That show really put me in a different head space, because there had been moments in lockdown when I was like, I dunno how much I like this. But when I came off stage I was like, ‘I want this so bad’.

And there was this overwhelming feeling of, I dunno if pride’s the right word. Kofe supported me on tour, to see where he got to, I didn’t know how many people were gonna be there going crazy for him. He’d grown so much as an artist. We became really close friends off him helping me get back onstage, which has been a really lovely friendship.

Fault: That’s like a microcosm of growing as a person, right?

Ady: I think growth and progress is so essential to our wellbeing. At least I know it is for me.

Fault: I know for me, a lot of my sense of self-worth is tied to progress, doing things that matter to me, but I worry that it’s not stable. How are you with finding peace? It’s important to know that you’re allowed to just be.

Ady: Absolutely, I’m much more in line with the last thing that you said than I’ve ever been in my life before. I think growth for me is more about fear. It’s a different voice that I’m trying to give myself. And that allows me peace. It’s not that fear isn’t there anymore, it’s just more like, how do you manage it?

Fault: Is that about changing habits?

Ady: I mean, I find meditation helpful, I have the Headspace yearly access, I would love to meditate more. I do the guided stuff on there, if I ever do it. And just some of those outlooks are good.

It’s a mix of things. I did a couple of therapy sessions that really helped. Cry, on the album, that is basically an epiphany of me realizing that the way I was speaking to myself wasn’t helpful. And that’s why it’s this kind of euphoric. People had told me ‘you’re so self-critical.’ But I believed that I needed to, if I don’t, who else is gonna do that?

But honestly, when you go through things in life, we are always learning. Sometimes it can take longer than others. The music probably was allowed to be finished because I was feeling more at peace. It’s tough when you work on something a long time. It makes it much harder to finish.

Fault: When did you finish the album?

Ady: Before 2025. Now that it’s out, and I’m hearing what songs people like, I’m enjoying it. I actually listened to the album a couple times, it’s been good.

Fault: Thank God, you deserve it.

Ady: Sometimes you’ve gotta sit down and be like, let’s make peace with this. I’m proud of myself man.

Fault: Quite right, it’s an amazing album. I’d love to finish on a light, simple note; what have you been enjoying in the last 7 years, any tips?

Ady: I can’t even lie, I’ve been enjoying The Night Manager. I waited for the second season for so long. The last book I really enjoyed was called Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson. For some reason I never thought about reading romance.

Fault: Yeah, it can be so amazing and intense. I think it’s usually not marketed to men.

Ady: I love how it’s written. I went to a great play named Shifters, this was a while back but it’s also a black romance, set in contemporary London. I’m really enjoying seeing other people articulate these times.

Fault: I’m obsessed with that, we’re still making sense of how things are, we have different needs now.

Ady: Yeah you can relate to the characters. I also just bought Mario Party.

Fault: F**king right!

Ady: So there’s four things I’ve done! Oh okay, one thing I really enjoyed, right, before I went home to visit my parents for Christmas, an old friend was gonna give me a lift down, so I was staying at his place. And I’ve not owned a games console for God knows how long, because it’s always felt like a bit of a distraction. But we used to game quite a lot, so we rented a games console for that evening, and we just f**king played Halo till like 4 in the morning.

Fault: Splitscreen?

Ady: Yeah we played co-op mode until 4 in the morning, and then drove home for Christmas.