Sekou Talks New ‘Catching Bodies’ Single, Working on Justin Bieber’s ‘SWAG’ Album: ‘It Was Friendship First’

After a year and a half of self-discovery, Sekou tells Billboard that his upcoming nine-song project is a deliberate departure from his previous music, evolving from emotional piano ballads to something more vibrant and upbeat.

With his love for dancing and uptempo music, it was time to switch things up and finally find his real sound. In celebration, he says he threw a bigger-than-expected listening party with Puma that turned into a live show he described as the “kind of chaos I wanted.” 

The new era of Sekou’s music has been bolstered by a series of high-profile credits in 2025 alone. He provided vocals on “TOO LONG” from Justin Bieber‘s recent album SWAG and “Limitless” from Central Cee‘s album Can’t Rush Greatness. What’s unbelievable is how many of these opportunities came to be: through direct messages on Instagram.

Sekou candidly shared that his approach to DM outreach is driven by a bit of “delulu,” but has ultimately blossomed into some deep ties between him and some of his favorite artists.

Read the full Q&A below. 

It seems like you have a lot going on at the moment. Tell me about your recent listening party… 

The listening party was meant to be a very intimate playback. I’ve done it before, and I wanted to do it again for this project. I haven’t released it for two years, and I wanted people to hear it early. We did this sign-up sheet and there were 4,000 entries, and it was kind of overwhelming… but I was just like, why don’t we just do this 500-capacity venue and invite everybody? It was kind of the chaos that I wanted. It wasn’t crazy, like harmful. It was the right chaos.

That sounds like an iconic night…

It wasn’t meant to be! It was just meant to be a playback, just talking intimately. But I thought, “why don’t we just play the first couple songs off the project live and let people hear it?” I’ve never really played with a band before. It would normally be a piano, but there was trumpet, saxophone, or the whole, you know, brass section. So it was kind of mad.

So tell us about the new project, what’s this rollout going to be like? 

I’ve been working on this music for about a year-and-a-half. I’ve mentioned before that I really struggled with finding myself, and I think as an artist, you have a lot of pressure to really know who you are really quickly when industry people get excited. I think I just lost myself, so I needed to figure out who I was.

I worked with two guys called Tiron and Jeff Kitty. They’re incredible songwriters and producers. I just wanted to do something that I’ve been saying from day one. I love to dance, I love uptempo music, and I just love something that makes my voice feel big and all this new music is very that. And there’s a real artist in it. I used to hide behind the piano quite a lot, and I feel like that’s not really what it is anymore.

You’ve worked on projects by Central Cee and Justin Bieber recently – how do you land these spots?

It kind of all happened at the same time. But honestly, all of them were through Instagram. I love DMing people all the time because I always like to have my eyes on everything, that can be a good thing and a bad thing. The Justin stuff just happened by Instagram… but it was friendship first. I didn’t go into it thinking, “I want to write with him.” I’d obviously love to, but we built a friendship first, and then music started to come around. And I was working in that household for like, a month, and it was just scratching ideas on everything, really.

What’s your opening line when you speak to these artists?

I think that they’re never going to reply! It’s a little bit of “Delulu,” you know? I think I said, “I’ve been a fan since 14. You’re such a legend, you’re my king” and stuff, obviously. I sent that DM the end of 2023, so the DM had been sitting there. I woke up one morning and he replied, but I literally thought it was a scam. When you speak to someone that’s that successful and that famous, it feels like you’re talking to a robot from an online perspective. But no, it was very much real.

Tell us about “TOO LONG,” the song you worked on for SWAG.

We did loads of stuff, and that was the first song that I put my vocal on. I didn’t go crazy on that song, I just sang and did the backing vocals on the chorus. We did loads of things, and I think there’s more that will come out, not to say too much, but, yeah it’s really exciting.

And how did you connect with Central Cee?

His friend DMed me and passed on the message. I went to the studio that they work at, and their whole team was there – that was a really quick and easy process. A lot of artists work in so many different ways. Sometimes you get artists who are like “I’m a fan. Would you do this?” You give it to them, you don’t hear anything. And then you’ve got an artist like Justin who’s there every step of the way and gives you advice and notes.

You also toured with Reneé Rapp. What did you get from that tour?

Being on that tour was so fun. She’s such a nice and caring person. I really like it when an artist really stands on what they mean. It’s not just for social media or just to be respected, actually what she says online and in her music, she really believes, and I think that’s really cool.

It was a very LGBTQ crowd – which I’m part of – and it was really nice to perform in front of our audience, because I think they are the most diehard fans. That’s the most important thing any artist could ever ask for. It was so fun that she, again, was so caring and really let me have my space. There were fans after the show waiting to see me as well as her.

Another huge show with SZA and Snoh Alegra at BST Hyde Park. That’s literally a dream lineup… 

That show was incredible. I’ve met a couple big artists who are really tapped into really underground, smaller artists, and SZA is really tapped in. I think she also has had a similar journey to a lot of these artists, and faced a lot of rejection early in her career, and, you know, took a while to have a moment. Everyone on that show was incredible: Snoh, SZA, Elmiene, all of them.

How did you and Fred Again – who you were spotted with in the studio with lately – mesh creatively?

I always gravitate towards people who really care about the art, and I think Fred & Skrillex, they really care about the creation and the process of art. Working with Fred was such a dramatic moment, because I didn’t really know what to expect. And you think you know going into a room, a singer in my world, I know exactly what I’m going to go in there and come out with. Someone like Fred can come out with 500 things and they will be very different. I think that’s just the fun part. When I was working with them, everyone was like, “What’s going on? Like, this doesn’t make sense,” but really down to the music it does.