If Bryn Christopher's debut album, My World, sounds like the work of an assured, confident, old-school soul man trapped in the body of a new kid on the pop block itching to make his mark, it should not come as a surprise. Ask him about his own songs, and he'll talk to you about addiction, undervaluing yourself, the Iraq war and writing lyrics on his mobile phone. If you want soul-steeped authenticity in 21st century togs, Bryn is your man. Bryn was brought up in Great Barr, Birmingham, one of four children born to a black father and a white mother. His parents separated before Bryn's seventh birthday, and he was raised by his mother and maternal grandmother. Gaining a love for music from a young age, it was a chance encounter with Otis Redding’s music that turned Bryn's musical life upside down: suddenly, he knew that he wanted to make music with this combination of passionate intensity and melodic accessibility, something he also discovered in the music of Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. Bryn got a chance to escaping his small-town existence with a scholarship to a top London stage school, and evenutally caught the attention of the management team who brought him to Polydor’s Colin Barlow. Soon, Bryn was supporting the Amy Winehouse tour, one of the highest-profile string of dates in 2007, and later secured the biggest live agent in the US, William Morris.

For Bryn’s new album My World, it was an experimental writing session with Australian producer/songwriter Jarrad Rogers that proved a turning point. The song they wrote together - “Gone Gone Gone” - instantly eclipsed everything Bryn had worked on before. Bryn also worked with production crew Midi Mafia, who managed to secure the exclusive rights to use samples of songs from the famous Stax / East Memphis catalogue for the first time ever for Bryn’s debut, a massive coup. They’ve used a sample from Eddie Floyd’s “Big Bird” for “Stay With Me,” “Going Home” by Prince Conley for “Found a New Love” and “Hot Dog” by The Four Shells on “Help Me.” Midi Mafia felt Bryn would be great to be the first artist to sing over these samples because his voice and delivery is so reminiscent of that era. The tracks on My World bristle with the freshness, exuberance and spontaneity of the Christopher/Rogers approach. The opening cut “Help Me” is Edwin Starr meets Gnarls Barkley, a strutting, hollering, soul testifying session with a tricked-out nu-school undercarriage. “The Quest,” Christopher's first single, is inspired by his soldier brother's experiences in Baghdad, while “Smiling” is, he admits, deliberately ambiguous. At 22 years of age it’s a long career that Bryn Christopher is doing his best to build for himself, and he’ll take things at the pace they come. "I’d like to make some money of course, but it's the music, me singing, that comes first," he emphasises. "You only get one chance, really, and this is mine."

The Quest