Elmiene Is Making Music That Lasts Forever

Our Timeless Issue cover star Elmiene is planning to be here for a very long time.

Oct 01, 2025

British singer-songwriter Elmiene has quickly become one of R&B’s most essential new voices. From his breakout 2023 EPs El-Mean & Marking My Time, to a standout performance at the 2025 BET Awards, Elmiene is carving out a lane rooted in soul but reaching for something bigger: timelessness.

With the release of his new mixtape Heat the Streets and this cover story for our Timeless Issue, Elmiene stands as both a student and a torchbearer — an R&B favorite whose rise has been built on curiosity, reverence, and a steady refusal to rush the process.

If you talk to Elmiene long enough, you’ll quickly realize that his story is less about a straight line and more about a series of rabbit holes. The singer-songwriter, who was born in Germany to Sudanese parents and raised in the UK, speaks about music the way a crate digger speaks about vinyl. Every song leads to another discovery, and every influence opens a new door. His origin story isn’t built on conservatory training or talent show auditions. It started with a messy hard drive.

“My older cousin had this old database of songs. It wasn’t even LimeWire, but it was like a collection of tracks ripped from LimeWire. Some of them would bleed into each other. Like at the end of Usher’s ‘You Remind Me,’ suddenly you’d hear the intro to ‘Love in This Club Part II.’ But the song wouldn’t even be in the folder. I spent years chasing down those pieces like a treasure hunt. That was the start of my nerdism with music. Always chasing the next thing.”

That chase led him down a path of observation, study, and, eventually, artistry. As a kid, Elmiene wasn’t the loudest in the room. He describes himself as a quiet observer, someone who analyzes people more than he speaks. But when he discovered singing, he threw himself into it with the same obsessive energy he brought to hunting down those lost tracks.

“I used to copy Stevie Wonder. If I didn’t get it right, I’d keep trying. Same with Michael. Same with Donny Hathaway. I didn’t even realize I was building a voice. I just thought I was practicing impressions. That was until someone told me, ‘You can actually sing.’”

A Lineage of Soul

Elmiene doesn’t hesitate when naming his biggest inspirations: Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway, and D’Angelo. “That’s the lineage. That’s where it all comes from,” he says. But his list quickly spirals into a roll call of R&B icons: Marvin Gaye, Joe, Sly Stone, Stokley, Raphael Saadiq. His reverence for R&B’s icons isn’t casual; he speaks like a student citing a canon.

That student became a peer when Saadiq invited him into the studio one day. For Elmiene, it was his true “aha” moment.

“Raphael Saadiq told me, ‘You’re one of them ones.’ That was it. He liked a song I wrote. That’s when I knew—no one can tell me anything. That’s validation from my hero.”

From Oxford to the World Stage

That validation has embodied Elmiene’s remarkable rise over the past few years. I first discovered Elmiene’s voice during Virgil Abloh’s final Louis Vuitton collection show, which took place two days after his passing. “Golden” – an unreleased song – played at the 4:55 mark of the runway show’s YouTube stream. Despite my best efforts to Shazam it, I found nothing. I searched lyrics on Google to see if anything would hit – nothing. Elmiene was virtually unknown, but the song would be released weeks later as his first-ever official release. And then came Elmiene’s first EP, El-Mean, in 2023.

After breaking out with the El-Mean EP and its follow-up EP Marking My Time, he quickly became one of R&B’s most promising voices, praised for his vulnerability, musicality, and vocal ability. The projects introduced listeners to his world — lush, thoughtful, emotionally honest — and earned him critical acclaim across both the UK and the US.

Collaborations soon followed. He connected with singer-producer Leon Thomas, whose own blend of musicianship and soul gave Elmiene space to stretch creatively. He appeared on A$AP Ferg’s 2024 DAROLD album. He’s had jazz ensemble BadBadNotGood and producer legends like Timbaland remix his music.

By 2025, his momentum reached new heights when he took the stage at the BET Awards, bringing UK R&B to one of Black music’s biggest platforms. For an artist who once chased down snippets of songs on an old hard drive, the moment was inevitable. It was proof that the lineage he studied so closely had room for his own chapter.

Heat the Streets and the Prince School of Output

This summer’s Heat the Streets mixtape is Elmiene’s most recent statement, and he’s quick to frame it as both a warm-up and a mission statement. “It’s an exercise,” he explains. “I was writing my debut album, but I had all these other songs that bundled together really well. We thought, let’s put this out first, to heat the streets before the big one. But in doing it, I realized how fun it was. I want to keep doing this: album, then mixtape, then album, then mixtape.”

The approach is inspired by Prince, an artist Elmiene admires not just for his sound but for his relentless pace. “Prince fans can love totally different sides of his catalog. You could be into four albums I’ve never touched, but it’s still all Prince. That’s what I want. I want people to discover different facets of me through different projects.”

His personal favorite track on Heat the Streets is “Capable,” which he calls “the most honest song I’ve ever written.” It came together quickly, with lyrics spilling out almost fully formed. “Some songs are like that. They’re hot, fresh out of the oven. That was one of them. Even the repetition…it just felt raw, and I love that.”

The UK R&B Perspective

In recent years, UK artists like FLO, Odeal, and Elmiene himself have brought a global spotlight to British R&B. For Elmiene, the difference lies in distance. “We’re so far away from where R&B started, physically and culturally. That distance makes us appreciate it even more. It feels “exotic” to us, in the sense of being special. When I first came to New York, it felt like GTA IV come to life. Same with LA and GTA V. Everything felt magical because we didn’t grow up surrounded by it. That appreciation is our secret power.”

It’s also why he sees UK R&B as deeply connected to legacy. To him, it’s about carrying music across oceans, generations, and communities with care. “That appreciation fuels everything we do.”

The Art of Timelessness

Timeless is not just an aesthetic choice — it’s a mission. He recalls seeing Stevie Wonder live in Hyde Park, surrounded by a crowd that spanned from toddlers to grandparents. “He sang ‘Happy Birthday’ and everyone knew it. Every age, every color, every background. That’s the most powerful music: something a 5-year-old and an 80-year-old can sing together.”

For Elmiene, that means never chasing trends just for the sake of it. “You’re never going to see a swear word in my songs,” he says. “That’s intentional. I want music that an 8-year-old can sing, I can sing, my parents can sing, and their parents can sing. That’s timeless.”

Playful songs like “Useless (Without You)” found new life when his manager’s 3-year-old daughter fell in love with it. “She kept running around singing ‘stupid’ because I said it in the song. Her dad told her not to say stupid, but she was like, ‘Uncle Abdala said it, so I can!’ That little playfulness, that’s what Stevie gave me. Music you can grow with, from five years old to forever.”

At the end of the day, Elmiene wants listeners to hear more than riffs, runs, or swanky productions. He wants them to hear a person. “The feeling I want people to leave with is that they just listened to something human. Donny Hathaway is the king of that. You hear his pain, his choices, the way he bends a note, and you know it’s real. That’s what I want: to make music that feels like I’m sitting right next to you, telling you a story.”

It’s why Heat the Streets feels like both a beginning and a promise. Elmiene is carving out his own lane, but with deep roots in the lineage he studies so closely. He’s not afraid to experiment, to chase the next thing like he did on that old database of LimeWire tracks. But he’s also unshakable in his goal: music that lasts.

“I want people to say, ‘I just listened to a man who lives and breathes and is telling me a story.’ That’s it. That’s timeless.”

Credits:
Photography – Kendall Bessent
Editorial & Creative Director – Dante Nicholas
Executive Producer – Dante Nicholas
Assistant Photographer – Greg Rooks
Lighting – Moonlight Grip Truck
Video Director – Dale Roberson
Director Asst. – Courtland Barker