body of work, not bits and pieces here and there that were glued together.” Ferdy Unger-Hamilton is more straightforward in his assessment. “Let’s just simplify it,” he says. “How many global artist breaks are there, and how many are there out of the UK? There’s not many and if we’re not reaching for that, what are we doing all day? I love a banger as much as the next person, but trying to develop an artist who has a career and makes a tangible imprint on the canon of music is what it’s all about and what we’re all trying to achieve. “Rory and the label are lucky enough that he’s made one step on that road and here goes the second one. That’s what you try and do. As the landscape becomes more fractal and it’s more of a global competition, it doesn’t get easier. It’s harder. We are even more appreciative of having any possibility of global artist breaks.” Considering what would constitute success for the record, Unger-Hamilton doesn’t reach for a number, rather, he hints at blanket reach. “We want to get these songs heard by everyone, everywhere; it’s very simple isn’t it,” he says. “How you want to count that in numbers I don’t know, but I feel like these are songs that will stream in the hundreds of millions and that’s very much our intent. We’re not soft. Worldwide success is a must. I think the album’s going to be incredibly successful globally and that’s our aim and desire. I want the world to hear these songs and to know the second chapter of Rag’N’Bone Man just as well as they knew the first, if not better…” Polly Comber and Josh Tieku-Smith co-manage Graham through Blackfox Management, and their relationship goes back seven years. They, too, feel he has a perfect second record.
“Rory’s delivered exactly the kind of second album that we would have hoped for,” says Tieku-Smith. “It’s a very confident statement by an artist who is stepping even further into his own lane. There are some very personal songs on the record, which show a real maturity that has developed in Rory’s songwriting. At the same time, I think people are going to be surprised at the new direction and I expect people will lift their heads when they hear the first single, which is exactly the kind of reactions we got when Rory was first breaking.” Comber’s praise is unequivocal. “Rory is the voice of a generation,” she says. “A voice like his only comes along every 10 years, that’s a big impact on British music.”
Graham, she explains, goes very much against the grain. “He’s very clear about who he is as an artist and is unapologetic if that doesn’t fit someone else’s template,” she says. “And from the beginning it feels like that’s been a big part of his attraction: people can see that he’s totally authentic,
uncompromising, and that he won’t ever chase a hit.”
Comber and Tieku-Smith are optimistic that Rag’N’Bone Man will be on the road again this autumn – a run of summer outdoor shows are the only dates in the diary at present – but admit that the absence of full touring could hit hard. “The cornerstones are exactly the same as the last campaign, but without live this is a setback, we see huge increases across the board when Rory tours,” says Comber. The co-managers are forecasting growth on DSPs (Rag’N’Bone Man has 7,338,838 monthly Spotify listeners) and predict a strong physical showing for
Give them what fur: Rag’N’Bone Man
“Rory is the voice of a generation. A voice like his only comes around every 10 years, that’s a big impact on British music” POLLY COMBER
BLACKFOX MANAGEMENT 30 | Music Week
musicweek.com
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