JORJA SMITH @ BRIXTON O2 ACADEMY LOST & FOUND TOUR

Last week, Jorja Smith’s 2018 Lost & Found Tour brought her to London for two highly anticipated nights of incredible live vocals at the O2 Academy in Brixton. With two sold out shows and incredible guests, Jorja came through with an unforgettable performance, leaving the crowd anything but disappointed.

The show was opened by support act Mina Rose, a south-London songstress and true musical enigma. With a unique sound spanning several genres, including ska, house and reggae, she couples this with socially conscious and reflective lyrics. For her half hour set, she put on an incredible high-energy performance which featured some of her best tracks including Ghost Rider.

Jorja came onto the stage just after 9pm, opening with an incredible performance of the album’s title track Lost & Found and setting the mood right with this slow-tempo, melodic, soulful track. This worked as the perfect intro to Jorja’s set, bringing the audience into the more peaceful and melodic vibe that her music tends to exude, and enabling Jorja to flex those vocals and really show off her incredible talent.

After a peaceful intro, Jorja kept the vibe mellow, performing hit tracks off her Lost & Found album including Teenage Fantasy and February 3rd. As well as performing recent songs from the album, Jorja also included in her set tracks from some of her other, and earlier, projects. This included Carry Me Home from her 2016 Project 11 EP, as well as I Am; her track with Kendrick Lamar produced for the Black Panther soundtrack.

Throughout the night, Jorja treated O2 Brixton to a few special performances with some unexpected surprise guests. These guests included Ezra Collective, a 5-piece new-wave jazz group from the UK, to perform their track Reasons in Disguise which Jorja features on. Jorja also brought out Maverick Sabre to perform a dream duet of their track Carry Me Home. To top things off, Jorja surprised the audience with an unexpected guest performance from talented Loyle Carner, putting on an incredible duet for Lifeboats.

To put a perfect end to the night, Jorja finished the show with an incredible encore. Here, she gave the audience the biggest surprise of the evening by bringing out none other than Stormzy to perform their track Let Me Down, leaving the night on a high. The continued good vibes were were also reflected in the final song of the night, On My Mind, which had everyone dancing along until the very end.