Apple Music Home Session: slowthai

“Not gonna lie, my setup at home is a bit over the top, but I’m used to it—I started making music from my bedroom, so this wasn’t much of a change,” slowthai says about recording this Apple Music Home Session. The surroundings might have been familiar for the Northampton rapper, but the results are anything but ordinary. Closing out his second album, *TYRON*, “adhd” was already a deeply personal and impassioned cut, but here it gains even more intimacy. “Needle in the Hay,” meanwhile, is a reinterpretation of Elliott Smith’s 1995 single. slowthai first encountered the song on the soundtrack to *The Royal Tenenbaums*, opening a gateway to the late singer-songwriter’s music. “The lyrics to both tracks mean a lot to me,” slowthai tells Apple Music. “‘adhd’ because I feel it’s inward-facing, and ‘Needle in the Hay’ because that song has got me through a lot of down days.” Like all of us, slowthai has experienced his share of these down days during lockdown, but he’s resolved to make the best of the situation. “\[I’ve\] learnt that you’ve just gotta act on all experiences—negative and positive—and improve as a human,” he says. “It’s been up and down, but I try my best to remain positive. It’s definitely encouraged me to push forward \[as a musician\] but I’ve equally found it hard to be inspired. Staring at the same four walls every day isn’t very exciting. But I did finish my album in this time, so something good has come from it.”