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Singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran will soon face a trial by fire once his new album Play comes out on September 12. Armed by singles like “Azizam” and “Sapphire”, the project will be Ed’s eighth studio album, and he has multiple platinum certifications to show for it. Born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, the singer came from humble beginnings. In an old interview, actor Jamie Foxx shared an interesting anecdote about Ed’s early days as a singer, before he shot to worldwide fame.
While appearing on the Graham Norton Show, Jamie had talked about how he ran into Ed while hosting a radio show, and it was a trial by fire that proved to him that the English singer had what it takes. He said, “Ed Sheeran slept on my couch for six weeks before he was famous. I was doing this radio show in LA, and he knew that we do a lot of music stuff there. So he came to the show and told me that he would love to play his music for me. So I bring him to my crib, and I have my home studio there. He plays, and I go, ‘You’re incredible. I know you don’t have anywhere to go, so just chill here.’ I was giving him food, and my daughter was like, ‘Who do you have here now?’ Because I was just always bringing around people, and I wanted to champion the artistes.”
He continued his story, “I told him, ‘Kid, I think you got it, but I still need to check you out.’ So I took him to this live show at downtown LA to see what he had. There were 800 Black people there, and it was just a room full of incredible musicians. So among all these Black rappers and singers, I go on stage and say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, here comes Ed Sheeran.’ He pops out, with his red hair and a ukulele. One of my friends who is an amazing guitarist looks to me and says, ‘Yo, Foxx, what are you doing? You have to read and respect the room.’ It was just like a movie, and I turned to him and said, ‘Well, let’s see what the kid has.’ He went out there with his ukulele and got a standing ovation in 12 minutes.”
Even though Jamie Foxx was one of the people who helped Ed Sheeran in his journey, the singer admitted in a recent interview that not everyone was like that. Talking about his own approach when it comes to supporting new artistes, he told Zane Lowe, “I definitely want to support the upcoming artistes. I mean, I just take them on tour. Any artiste that is coming through, and there has been a new singer-songwriter with me every single year. The first one was Shawn Mendes, and he was just 15. So he had the teenage crowd on lock, and I thought, ‘Either I can be weird about this, or we can be friends.’ We have been that way since 2013.”
He recalled his own experiences and said, “I want to root for all my contemporaries, and it’s easy to do that when you are nice to them. Lewis Capaldi is another one; we are really good friends. In hindsight, when I look back at the way people older than me treated me when I was new, doing things like selling stories, extorting me, or being weird to me, I realise that I would never f***ing do that, even if I never became famous.”
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