Standing at 6ft 4in in his Converse high tops, the London singer and producer-to-the-stars MNEK cuts a strapping figure as he prowls around the stage, tossing his plaits. There’s a lot of presence here to pack into turquoise sequins. MNEK is, essentially, clad in a two-piece suit made of iridescent mermaid.
Uzoechi Emenike (“MNEK” is a snappier rendering of his Nigerian surname; “sounds like an STD”, goes the quip on his album) literally dazzles the front rows as he delivers his first song, the poised Correct, a nagging tune about the 23-year-old’s track record. Advising anyone following in his footsteps not only to “come correct” – ie, grant him respect – it also urges them to keep an eye on “the residuals” (AKA royalties).
As he sings, MNEK is backed not by a band, but by four fierce male dancers in athleisure; fans will recognise the KiKi – as they are known – from MNEK’s lush recent videos, which pay tribute to the dance routines of 90s US R&B, the New York voguing underground, and pretty much every other contortion going. The KiKi flex and act out MNEK’s song lyrics throughout the night, traipsing on and off stage to allow MNEK to emote unaided every so often.
The tunes themselves are triggered electronically. This is very much a pop show, but not quite as many Radio 1 Big Weekend attendees would recognise it. MNEK’s songs tonight range from Colour, a treatment of love so blithe it would not sound out of place at a key stage 1 school disco, to Girlfriend – a 90s-flavoured workout in which MNEK takes a closeted lover to task for not telling his girlfriend about the meaningful sex he is having with MNEK. “It’s your fifth anniversary/ You’ve been at my yard constantly,” he seethes.
Although his name doesn’t always trip easily off every tongue, MNEK is one of the busiest of our 21st-century pop operatives; he is also on a mission to be a highly visible gay British black man in the musical mainstream. Earlier, MNEK spent the day in Manchester with the Albert Kennedy Trust, which works with homeless or vulnerable LGBTQ+ youth.
Raised in south-east London, Uzo was signed to a publishing deal at 14 and started being tipped soon after; he landed his first hit at 16, when the Saturdays released his co-authored All Fired Up. Around the same time, still baby-faced, he made his feature debut on a track by Rudimental, the east London drum’n’bass collective (and incidental talent incubator).
Those years of pro backroom action are summarised tonight in a medley of some of MNEK’s hit guest features, working the crowd into a happy lather of easily comestible club-pop. There are a lot of residuals to keep track of: an energetic bop through Gorgon City’s once-ubiquitous Ready for Your Love, on which MNEK sang the hook in 2014, and another house-pop banger, Riton’s Deeper, from last year. And then the doozy: Never Forget You, MNEK’s collaboration with Zara Larsson, inescapable in 2017. These songs are just the tip of a vast collaborative iceberg that includes Beyoncé’s Hold Up and fellow south Londoner Stormzy’s religious turn, Blinded By Your Grace Pt 2, from last year.
The real focus now, however, is on MNEK’s own debut album. Titled Language, it was announced in 2014 and finally came out last month. It has pretty much everything you could want from a juicy old-school pop album: emotion and humour, and eclectic productions that meld all of MNEK’s various touchstones – the R&B of Jam & Lewis and Timbaland, tuneful chart-fodder, light Caribbean tinges. It charts the ups and downs of relationships, from coming out (“a father is disappointed in his son”) and seduction (Tongue) to the reality of long-term monogamy (Honeymoon Phaze); there is longing for lost love (Touched By You), and for a non-judgmental place of peace and equality (Paradise, Crazy World). “Why’d you call my phone when you know I need time alone?”, asks Phone, which ends with the sound of an old-fashioned phone hanging up.
You can dance to all of it, except the one ballad. Stopping only to wipe himself down with a large towel, MNEK works through the album’s many highlights, every inch the front-person, semi-conducting the beats with one long-fingered hand. Although this devoted crowd holler his lyrics back at him with the fervour of an arena audience, MNEK is playing the first night of his first-ever headline tour in a mere 500-capacity room. Language has – by the cut-throat metrics of pop – “underperformed”. Such is MNEK’s profile, this damp chart squib merited a long and agonised analysis in Billboard, the magazine of record of the US music industry.
Why is this album not getting the love it deserves? Racism is one easy answer, although other reasons are a little more nuanced. While the pop world is now quite comfortable with gay white men singing about same-sex love – Sam Smith and Years & Years’ Olly Alexander, to name but two obvious British examples – gay men of BAME descent are conspicuous by their absence. Frank Ocean is the trailblazer, but he’s more of a brooding introvert than a Tiggerish party-starter prone to winking at the camera. Somehow, women of all ethnicities don’t seem to suffer financially when they declare themselves pansexual, as hits by Kehlani and Hayley Kiyoko attest; and while there are many riveting gay black men working in left-field – Mykki Blanco, serpentwithfeet – none is actively courting the big happy dance-pop dollar in the same way as MNEK.
Still: another reason for Language’s muted uptake is that the chart market, certainly in the US, is currently in thrall not to vintage Brandy & Monica, but to hip hop – specifically trap, the stark, clattery sound of 21st-century Atlanta. Although MNEK’s beats can skitter, his retro, feelgood aesthetic is out of kilter with the mass market.
What’s an artist to do? Live his truth, you can only conclude. Tongue, the energetic finale, finds MNEK working through Language’s cri de coeur. When the smouldering video went up last March, MNEK shut down a homophobic troll with the assertion that his “moodboard” was currently “BLACK FAGGOT POP SUPERSTAR”. In the lyrics, though, MNEK is really just fretting about saying “those three little words” too soon: a perfectly universal emotion.
