Ezra Collective announce fourth album ‘Here Because Of Hope’ out September 18 via Partisan, sharing new single ‘Only Love’ feat. Pa Salieu
Ezra Collective are back with something to say. On May 29, the London five-piece announced their fourth studio album, ‘Here Because Of Hope‘, due September 18 via Partisan Records, and dropped its lead single, ‘Only Love’, a euphoric collaboration with Gambian-British rapper Pa Salieu. The announcement came fresh off the group’s headline slot on the New Music Stage at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend, where Salieu joined them to perform the track live for the first time.
The timing is deliberate. Ezra Collective, made up of brothers Femi and TJ Koleoso, Joe Armon-Jones, James Mollison, and Ife Ogunjobi, arrive at this record following one of the most decorated stretches in recent British music history. They became the first jazz act to win the Mercury Prize, claimed the BRIT Award for Group of the Year in 2025, sold out Wembley Arena, and contributed to the War Child charity album ‘Help(2)’ earlier this year. ‘Here Because Of Hope’ is where they process all of it.
A Journey From Pain to Joy
‘Only Love’ is the clearest statement of that intention. Built around West African-inspired grooves, with a bassline Femi Koleoso crafted after spending time studying Gambian music specifically, the track finds Pa Salieu delivering deeply personal lyrics drawn from a difficult period in his own life. The match between these two artists, both shaped by diasporic identity and the insistence on finding beauty inside hardship, is not incidental. Femi traces the collaboration’s origin to a specific night at Wembley Arena in 2024, looking into the crowd and spotting Salieu celebrating with his friends. He knew then they needed to make something together.
The pair eventually linked up in Wood Green, North London. “His stories started to flow,” Femi said of the session. “He came with a bunch of lyrics that he had from a really hard time he went through, but in those lyrics were so many stories of pain but also beauty, joy and love.” That tension is the engine of the song.
It is also the engine of the whole album. ‘Here Because Of Hope’ is a 17-track double record conceived as three distinct spiritual and geographical movements, tracing the movement of Black people across continents and decades. The arc runs from the music of Africa through the rhythms of the Caribbean and lands in the streets of London. BAFTA-winning actress Letitia Wright reads spoken word passages across three interludes threaded through the tracklist. Features from Lila Iké, Leona Lewis, and Libianca extend the album’s reach across the diaspora.
Britain’s Most Vital Band, at Full Volume
The band described this record as a maturity shift. “It feels like our first records were really Ezra Collective as children; this one really feels like Ezra Collective as adults,” they said. That is not a small claim, but the evidence supports it. The central question the album poses, why so much Black music born out of pain sounds so joyful, is one they answer with their own history. Hope is their connective tissue. “This album is the journey from that pain to joy,” Femi said, “and the connective word in the middle is hope.”
The album’s release will land just weeks before Ezra Collective co-headline the new twin-city Australian festival Move My Way, on a bill that includes Freddie Gibbs, Kokoroko, and Sampa the Great. Between now and September, they will appear at a series of UK and European festivals, including Lincolnshire’s Lost Village. The record is available to pre-order now.
