British rap icon Stormzy has confirmed details of his highly anticipated third album, That’s what I meanset for release worldwide on November 25, 2022 via 0207 Def Jam/Interscope Records.

Returning to social media after a nearly three-year hiatus, Stormzy also unveiled the album’s poignant artwork; a letter, placed on a doorstep, bearing the words “That’s what I want to say”. The artwork also reveals the album’s tracklist.

With the release of his third album, Stormzy is not only one of Britain’s most accomplished rappers, but also one of its most accomplished musicians of any genre and a cultural icon. With his new record he has delivered an undeniable modern classic, effortlessly condensing a number of disparate styles and genres into music that thrillingly addresses any divide between soul, hip-hop and more.

A bold, brave and courageous leap forward from her previous two critically acclaimed #1 records, Gang signs and prayer and heavy is the head, it’s not just music for the pop charts but rather an intimate love letter to music. It’s an album that features intensely personal and lyrical themes that lay bare vulnerabilities, regrets, frailties, healing, joy and triumph.

The confidence that drove the album stems from a deeper and much more spiritual place than what we’ve seen from Stormzy before. Despite all the successes and accolades he racked up during his brief and meteoric career, the lockdown that followed the coronavirus pandemic gave him a commodity he had long lacked: time. And thanks to his sense of accomplishment after Glastonbury, he was, for the first time, able to make the most of it.

Much of the creative energy that shaped the album emerged from a Stormzy music camp on Osea Island, a remote island in the Essex estuary that is only accessible by a Roman causeway for four hours a day at low tide. Surrounded by top producers and musicians (all of whom will be revealed in due course), each morning they ate and prayed together, then spent the rest of the time pushed to creative heights by each other’s talents. “When you hear about music camps, they always sound intense and dark,” says Stormzy.

“’People say: we have to make an album. We have to make hit records. But it seemed beautifully gratuitous. We are all musicians but we haven’t always made music. Some days we played football or walked around taking pictures. And the by-product of that was really beautiful music. Because when you marry that ethos with world-class musicians and the best producers, writers, and artists in the world, and we’re in one space, it’s a recipe for something no one can quite imagine. You can’t even calculate what it’s going to be like. And it came with a big part of this album.

Pre-order That’s what I mean.