The latest development in Idris Elba’s parallel career as a recording artist has arrived: after months of speculation, the actor features on a remix of grime star Skepta’s Shutdown.
Elba originally tweeted his request to appear on the track back in March (“put me on the remix!!!! Cus I SHUT DOWN prime TV on the regular,” he tweeted) and his wish has been fulfilled: the remix was launched on 1 June and has since gone to No 1 on the Billboard + Twitter Trending 140, with over 250,000 plays on SoundCloud so far. As well as flexing his muscles as an MC, Elba references his roles as Stringer Bell, Nelson Mandela and detective John Luther.
Speaking about the actor’s involvement on the track, Skepta told CapitalXtra: “Basically a lot of people have asked to jump on the Shutdown remix, I’m not gonna front. But cos of quality control we wanted to make it really big: it’s all about spreading the British sound and culture.”
This is the latest musical tangent for the British actor, who has suggested he may create music inspired by his roles in Luther and The Wire in future:
“[Mi Mandela is] part of a series of albums that I’m going to make called character pieces, character albums,” Elba explained in an interview with NME . “[For each one] I take the character that I played and sort of explain the journey playing him, and the journey of the character, in music. What would he have listened to, what might have influenced him, what influenced me as an actor … This suddenly becomes these new songs, these new ways to write songs and [to] express [the] emotion attached to a character.”
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