The heartbreaking story of how losing his mum to cancer inspired Sampha’s Mercury Prize-winning album Process
HE'S a true rising star of the music world, but that doesn't mean things have been easy for Sampha.
Last night, the south London singer-songwriter, full name Sampha Sisay, scooped the prestigious Hyundai Mercury prize for his debut album, Process.
One of the greatest triumphs on the album is the haunting track (No One Knows Me) Like The Piano, a heartbreaking single about grief and loss.
And the 28-year-old drew his inspiration from a dark place while he was writing his best-known song.
The track - and the album as a whole - was borne out of the artist's deepest fears, including the tragic loss of his mother Binty to cancer and worries about his own health.
Before her death, Sampha had been touring studios all over the world to record as a guest vocalist for iconic artists like Kanye West and Solange.
But the star was called back home to the London suburb of Morden in late 2014 to care for his seriously-ill mother.
One of five brothers, Sampha looked after Binty around the clock, only getting a chance to make music while she was in hospital or when he could snatch a few minutes with her piano.
The very same instrument is the subject of (No One Knows Me) Like the Piano, which opens with the line: "No one knows me like the piano in my mother's home."
Sampha's debut debut album was mostly written during the dark time between the end of 2012, when Binty's cancer first went into remission, and the autumn of 2015, when she died.
After her death, Sampha travelled to his mother's home country, Sierra Leone, to bury her, before retreating to a remote Norwegian island to finish the album.
This wasn't Sampha's first encounter with the disease: Sampha's father, Joe, had died of lung cancer in 1998.
And the influences of this trauma on his album are clear.
Even the title, Process, is a reference to coming to terms with his grief, as well as to the process of writing and making music.
Speaking on The Tavis Smiley Show, Sampha said: "I had moved out briefly to make music and, when [she was] diagnosed, I moved back home. Literally, I was just sitting on the sofa.
"We were watching TV and my mum was there. The line, 'No one knows me like the piano in my mother’s home,' just kind of came to me from thin air. And it’s just something that stuck with me.
"I think it obviously is an ode to my piano, but it’s really an ode to my mother.
"[It was] something that I sort of took for granted, you know, coming back home, being at mum’s house and my mum being there."
Previously, we revealed the heartbreaking stories behind Britain’s Got Talent semi-finalists the Missing People Choir.